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Humans are Good and there is No Evil that the Mind Cannot Overcome!
There are only three sins—causing pain, causing fear, causing anguish. The rest is window dressing. A somewhat less drastic expression of necrophilia is a marked interest in sickness in all its forms, as well as in death. An example is the parent who is always interested in one’s child’s sicknesses, one’s failures, and makes dark prognoses for the future; and the same time one is unimpressed by a favourable change, one does not respond to the child’s joy or enthusiasm, and one will not notice anything new that is growing within the child. One does not harm the child in any obvious way, yet one may slowly strangle one’s joy of life, one’s faith in growth, and eventually one will infect the child with one’s own necrophilous orientation. Anyone who has occasion to listen to conversations of people of all social classes from middle age onward will be impressed by the extent of their talk about sickness and death of other people. To be sure, there are a number of factors responsible for this. For many people, especially those with no outside interest, sickness and death are the only the only dramatic elements in their lives; it is one of the few subjects about which they can talk, aside from events in the family. However, granting all this, there are many persons for whom these explanations do not suffice. They can usually be recognized by the animation and excitement that comes over them when they talk about sickness or other sad events like death, financial troubles, and so forth. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
The necrophilous person’s particular interest in the dead is often shown not only in one’s conversation but in the way one reads the newspapers. One is most interested—and hence reads first—the death notices and obituaries; one also like to talk about death from various aspects: what people died of, under what conditions, who died recently, who is likely to die, and so on. One likes to go to funeral parlors and cemeteries and usually does not miss an occasion to do so when it is socially opportune. It is easy to see that this affinity for burials and cemeteries is only a somewhat attenuated form of the more gross manifest interest in morgues and graves. A somewhat less easily identifiable trait of the necrophilous person is the particular kind of lifelessness in one’s conversation. This is not a matter of what the conversation is about. A very intelligent, erudite necrophilous person may talk about things that would be very interesting were it not for the way in which one presents one’s ideas. One remains stiff, cold, aloof; one’s presentation of the subject is pedantic and lifeless. One the other hand the opposite character type, the life loving-person, may talk of an experience that in itself is not particularly interesting, but there is life in the way one present it; one is stimulating; that is why one listens with interest and pleasure. The necrophilous person is a wet blanket and joy killer in a group; one is boring rather than animating; one deadens everything and makes people feel tired, in contrast to the biophilous person who makes people feel more alive. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Interior Word—it speaks not through uttered words clairaudiently heard as in spiritistic phenomena but through the higher form of spontaneous intuitively formulated thoughts. A voice comes to one’s hearing but not with the ordinary kind of audibility. It is within one for it is only a mental voice yet it speaks with a strange authority. It says to one, “I am the Way, the Truth, the Life.” However, still another dimension of necrophilous character only the past is experienced as quite real, not the present or the future. What has been, id est, what is dead, rules one’s life: institutions, laws, property, traditions, and possessions. Briefly, things rule the human; having rules being; the dead rule the living. In the necrophile’s thinking—personal, philosophical, and political—the past is sacred, nothing new is valuable, drastic change is a crime agist the “natural” order. Another aspect of necrophilia is the relation to colour. The necrophilous person generally has a predilection for dark, light-absorbing colours, such as black or brown, and a dislike for bright, radiant colours. (This colour preference is similar to the one often found in depressed persons.) One can observe this preference in their dress or in the colours they choose if they pain. Of course, in cases when dark clothes are worn out of tradition, the colour has no significance in relation to character. As we have already seen in the clinical material above, the necrophilous person is characterized by a special affinity to bad odors—originally the odor of decaying or putrid flesh. They have a frank enjoyment of bad odors. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
That form of enjoyment leads to the repression of the desire to enjoy bad odor that in reality does not exist. (This is similar to the overcleanliness of the anal character.) Whether of the one form or the other the necrophilic person’s fascination with bad odors frequently gives such persons the appearance of being “sniffers.” Not infrequently this sniffing tendency even shows in their facial expression. Many necrophilous individuals give the impression of constantly smelling a bad odor. Anyone who studies the many pictures of Hitler, for instance, can easily discover this sniffing expression in his face. This expression is not always present in necrophiles, but when it is, it is one of the most reliable criteria of such a passion. Another characteristic element in the facial expression is the necrophile’s incapacity to laugh. One’s laughter is actually a kind of smirk; it is unalive and lacks the liberating and joyous quality of normal laughter. In fact it is not only the absence of the capacity for “free” laughter that is characteristic of the necrophile, but the general immobility and lack of expression in one’s face. One can observe that such people in reality never “laugh” but only “grin.” While watching television one can sometimes observe a speaker whose face remains completely unmoved while one is speaking; one grins only at the beginning or the end of one’s speech when, according to American custom, one knows that one is expected to smile. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
Such persons cannot talk and smile at the same time, because they can direct their attention only to the one or the other activity; their smile is not spontaneous but planned, like the unspontaneous gestures of the poor actor. The skin is often indicative of necrophiles: it gives the impression of being lifeless, “dry,” sallow; when we sense sometimes that a person has a “dirty” face, we are not claiming that the face is unwashed, but are responding to the particular quality of a necrophilous expression. The necrophilous person is characterized by the predominant use of words referring to destruction and to feces and toilets. They frequently use foul language, one word in particular. They live in a deadened, joyless atmosphere. Mussolini and Hitler were, perhaps, rebels (Hitler more than Mussolini), but they were not revolutionaries. They had no genuinely creative ideas, nor did they accomplish any significant changes that benefited humans. They lacked the essential criterion of the revolutionary spirit: love of life, the desire to serve its unfolding and growth, and a passion for independence. However, some people disagree with that. They believe that Hitler’s belief that blonde, blue eyed, Germans were God’s chosen people and a master race is what lead to genetic editing and the idea of the American dream. The American Dream is more than just owning a beautiful house in the suburbs, a college education, successful career, a married couple with two kids and a car. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
The American dream also includes being beautiful or handsome and having blonde hair and blue eyes, fairly tall, and thin. Also loving things like red meat, barbeque, apple pie, milk, baseball, church, and American cars. There is also a love for the colour blue because it signifies intelligence. America is supposed to be the baby of Germany. “For any government deliberately to deny to their people what must be their plainest and simplest right, to live in peace and happiness without the nightmare of war, would be to betray their trust, and to call down upon their heads the condemnation of all humankind. I do not believe that such a government anywhere exists among civilized peoples. I am convinced that the aim of every state’s person worthy of the name, to whatever country one belongs, must be the happiness of the people for whom and to whom one is responsible, and in that faith I am sure that a way can and will be found to free the World from the curse of armaments and the fears that give rise to them, and to open up a happier, and wiser future for humankind,” reports Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, November 1937. Interior Word: Something within begins to speak to one, some mind beings to find its own expression. It is one’s, and yet not one’s. Government is a natural vocation for those raised in Unitarian tradition, with its belief in the universal goodness of all humans, growing out of a sense of duty to humankind and a deep-seated belief that reasonable, fair-minded humans can work together to solve any difficulty. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
The Overself issues its commands and exacts its demands in the utter silence and privacy of a human’s heart. Yet they are more powerful and more imperious in the end than any which issue from the noisy bustling World. If one comes under the tutelage of the Interior Word, one may count oneself fortunate. However, one’s good fortune will last only as long as one faithfully obeys it. The failure to do so will bring painful but educative retribution. It is as if no one existed but these two—the listening mind and the soundless voice. This is real solitude; this is the true cloister to which a human may retire in order to find God; this is the desert, cave, or mountain where, mentally, one renounces the World’s business and abandons friends, family, and all humanity. The Germans believed themselves, on the whole, to be the most powerful humans of the most powerful empire in the history of the World. His Majesty’s Government could not take responsibility of advising the chancellor to take any course of action that might expose his country to dangers against which His Majesty’s Government was unable to guarantee protection. Nancy Astor, a devout Christian Scientist, always had Christian Science lectures at her weekend gatherings. Lord Astor and Lord Lothian were Christian Scientists too. Their sympathetic view of Germany was strengthened by the Christian Science doctrine that humans are good, that there is no evil that the mind cannot overcome. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
If human beings can sit down and reason together, it would be possible to ease tensions overnight. Yet some people are intent on singing the love of danger, the habit of energy and fearlessness. They glorify war as they believe in is the World’s only hygiene, and want to destroy museums, libraries, academies of every kind, and want to fight moralism, feminism, and every opportunistic individual. Nancy Astor said in one of her wild, stabbing protests, “It’s madness. War will destroy Western civilization. Europe will be destroyed. Then certainly Communism will spread, for it always feeds on death like a vulture.” Unquestionably! We would not be fighting to preserve something. Unless war is averted now there will be no one left who knows the meaning of the words right and wrong. This is no longer an affair of national pride and laws of right and wrong. It is a case of our whole civilization going under. A darkness hangs over America. Trenches are being dug in secret locations. Children are expected to be herded into trains, evacuating cities that everyone expects to be annihilated by COVID-19. Our first duty is not to avoid confrontations with evil but to restrain it. Place your faith in the innate goodness and reasonableness of humans. Christian Scientists believe that all evil is an illusion that can be eliminated by the exercise of the mind. We need an independent moral voice for the country. God Himself speaks exclusively through international gatherings. However, many people are putting more faith in progressive politics and economics and the fictional news media than in God. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
Many churches, representing the Kingdom of God, are caught up in the trendy issue of the time, surrendering its influence as an independent moral voice. This failure of both the state and the church contributed to the disaster that has befell the World. However, peace may be restored. It is my earnest hope and indeed the hope of all humankind that from this solemn occasion a better World shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past—a World founded upon faith and understanding—a World dedicated to the dignity of humans and the fulfillment of their most cherished wish—for freedom, tolerance, and justice. Nietzsche was not saying that God does not exist, but the God had become irrelevant to people because they are closing the church, partaking in evil, worshipping fictional news and political, not God. Men and women may assert that God’s exists or that He does not, but it makes littler difference either way. God is dead not because He does not exist, but because we live, play, procreate, govern, and die as though He does not. The effect of this widespread notion can be seen in the despair that followed the COVID-19 pandemic. Churches were forced to close, but you see people out in the streets eating expensive restaurant food, but no accommodations like that being made for people who want to worship God. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
This militant atheism that has claimed countless lives Worldwide and caused the death of God has had profound implications for individuals as well as for society and politics because it is the philosophic context in which modern governments operate. In the New World civilization, God has traditionally played the role of legitimizing government. In classical and Christian political philosophy He was the author of natural law—that body of just and reasonable standards that guided human rulers and by which the ruled were bound to respect and obey those given charge over them. Even atheistic political philosophy acknowledged that the idea of God was useful: a little dose of religion would keep the masses quiet. As Napoleon said, “Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.” Atheism has become militant…insisting it must be believed. Atheism has felt the need to impose its views, to forbid competing visions. Without Gd there will be wars of a kind that have never happened on the Earth, this is more serious the climate change. The devaluation of all values is what the death of God has meant to politics. Distinctions between right and wrong, justice and injustice have become meaningless. No objective guide is left o choose between “all men are created equal” and “the weak to the wall.” In Year Zero no one could have predicted the consequences that the void at the heart of nations would produce. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
However, this spiritual vacuum means that humans can only pursue two options: first to imagine that they are gods themselves, or second, to seek satisfaction in their senses. “If you will not have God (and He is a jealous God), you should pay your respects to Hitler and Stalin,” reports T.S. Eliot. God remains dead. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves? Must not we ourselves become gods simply to seem worthy of it? Today, 33 percent of the World’s population and growing lives in the viselike grip of states that are the product of such gangster-state’s people who established governments that attempt to fill the vacuum of values with secular ideology or the cult of personality. The goal of these massive bureaucracies is to preside over the death of God; their system for achieving it is most often called Marxist Leninism. It carries out its policies with surgical efficiency, as millions of Christians and Jews who have passed through Communist gulgas would testify. If they could. However, sometimes the system performs with comic clumsiness. We live in a Cairo bazaar of competing models. In this psychological phantasmagoria we search for a style, a way of ordering our existence, that will fit our particular temperament and circumstances. We look for heroes or mini-heroes to emulate. The style-seeker is like the lady who flips through the pages of a fashion magazine to find a suitable dress pattern by Paris Hilton. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
She studies ne after another, settles on one that appeals to her, and decide to purchase that dress. Next she begin to collect the necessary materials, thinks about how many hours she will have to work to earn the dress, imagines the cloth, thread, piping, buttons, et cetera. In precisely the same way, the life style creator acquires the necessary props One lets one’s hair grow. One buys art nouveau paintings and hardcovers of Anne Rice’s novels. One learns to discuss Marcuse, Guevara, Edith Warton, and Frantz Fanon. One picks up a particular jargon, using words like “relevance” and “establishment.” None of this means that one’s political actions are insignificant, or that one’s opinions are unjust or foolish. One may (or may not) be accurate in one’s views of society. Yet the particular way in which one chooses to express them is inescapable part of one’s search for personal style. The lady, in constructing the work hours to pay for her dress, alters her habits here and there, deviating from the usual pattern in minor ways to make sure she has enough money saved up to buy that high quality dress. If she buys one a month, in a year she will have 12 fancy dresses that may last a lifetime. The end product is she has a truly custom-made wardrobe; enough dresses to wear a new one everyday for nearly two weeks. In quite the same way we individualize our style of living, yet usually winds up bearing a distinct resemblance to some life style model previously packaged and marketed by a subcult. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
People know how to make themselves look rich. They do not waste money, but they save up and buy the things they desire. Often we are unaware of the moment when we commit ourselves to one life style model over all others. The decision to “be” and Executive or Militant Atheists or a West Side Intellectual is seldom the result of purely logical analysis. Nor is the decision always made cleanly, all at once. The research scientist who switches from Ocean Spray Cranberry 100 percent juice to R. W. Knudsen 100 percent cranberry juice may do so for health reasons without recognizing that the trat taste of cranberry juice is part of a whole life style toward which one finds oneself drawn to. The couple who choose the Tiffany Magnolia Nouveau Floral 73” floor lamp think they are furnishing their Cresleigh Home; they do no necessarily see their actions as an attempt to flesh out an overall style. Most of us, in fact, do not think of our own lives in terms of life style, and we often have difficulty in talking about it objectively. We have even more trouble when we try to articular the structure of values implicit in our style. The task is doubly hard because many of us do not adopt a single integrated style, but a composite of elements drawn from several different models. We may emulate both Hippie and Surfer. We may choose a cross between West Side Intellectual and Executive—a fusion that is, in fact, chose by many publishing officials in Manhattan, New York USA. When one’s personal style is a hybrid, it is frequently difficult to disentangle the multiple models on which it is based. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
Once we commit ourselves to a particular model, however, we fight energetically to build it, and perhaps even more so to preserve it against challenge. For the style becomes extremely important to us. This is doubly true of the people of the future, among whom concern for style is downright passionate. This intense concern for style is not, however, what literary critics means by formalism. It is not simply an interest in outward appearances. For style of life involves not merely the external forms of behaviour, but the values implicit in that behaviour, and one cannot change one’s life style without working some change in one’s self-image. The people of the future are not “style conscious” but “life style conscious.” This is why little things often assume great significance for them. If it challenges a hard-worn life style, if it threatens to break up the integrity of the style, a single small detail of one’s life may be charged with emotional power. Aunt Wendy gives us a wedding present. We are embarrassed by it, for it in in a style alien to our own. It irritates and upsets us, even the we know that “Aunt Wendy does not know any better.” We banish the Sophia 35-Light Candle Style Tiered Chandelier with Crystal Accents by Schonbek to the attic of the house. Aunt Wendy’s Amana MXP22TLT Menumaster Higher Speed Combination Oven – WiFi ready or the set of eight Prestige Gala Charger Dinner Plates is not important in and of itself. However, it is a message from a different subcultural World, and unless we are weak in commitment to our own style, unless we happen to be in transition between styles, it represents a potential threat. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
The psychologist Leon Festinger coined the term “cognitive dissonance” to mean the tendency of a person to reject or deny information that challenges one’s preconceptions. We do not want to hear things that may upset our carefully worked out structure of beliefs. Similarly, Aunt Wendy’s gift represents an element of “stylistic dissonance.” It threatens to undermine our carefully worked out style of life. Why does the life style have this power to preserve itself? What is the source of our commitment to it? A life style is a vehicle through which we express ourselves. It is a way of telling the World which particular subcult or subcults we belong to. Yet this hardly accounts for its enormous importance to us. The real reason why life styles are so significant—and increasingly so as the society diversifies—is that, above all else, the choice of a life style model to emulate is a crucial strategy in our private war against crowing pressures of overchoice. Deciding, whether consciously or not to be “like” William Buckley or Joan Baez, Lionel Trilling, Paris Hilton, Jet Li, Aaliyah Haughton, E40, or his surfer equivalent, J. J. Moon, rescues us from need to make millions of minute life-decisions. Once a commitment to a style is made, we are able to rule out many forms of dress and behaviour, many ideas and attitudes, as inappropriate to our adopted style. The college boy who chooses to give it the Ole American try wastes little energy agonizing over whether who to vote for in the presidential election, carry an attache case, or invest in mutual funds. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
By zeroing in on a particular life style we exclude a vast number of alternatives from further consideration. The fellow who opts for a BMW M8 need no longer concern oneself with the hundreds of types of automobiles available to one on the open market, but which violate the spirit of one’s style. One need only choose among the far smaller repertoire of M8 Competition Ultimate Driving Machines from Niello BMW in Sacramento, California that fit within the limits set by one’s model. And what is said of BMW M8 Competition Ultimate Driving Machines is equally applicable to one’s ideas and social relationships as well. The commitment to one style of life over another is thus a super-decision. It is a decision of a higher order than the general run of everyday life-decisions. It is a decision to narrow the range of alternatives that will concern us in the future. So long as we operate within the confines of the style we have chosen, our choices are relatively simple. It is painful because, freed of our commitment to any given style, cut adrift from the subcult that gave rise to it, we no longer “belong.” Worse yet, our basic principles are called into question and we must face each new life-decision afresh, alone, without security of a definite, fixed policy. We are, in short, confront with the full, crushing burden of overchoice again. The Interior Word: When another personality speaks from the entranced or semi-entranced body, be the latter a spiritualist medium, a hypnotized person, or a psychologically auto-suggested one, we have a phenomenon in which no true mystic would take part. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
When this same personality announces itself to be Jesus, Krishna, Saint Francis, Mrs. Eddy, or Mme. Blavatsky, it may immediately be labelled as spurious. Whether the phenomenon be produced by actual spirit-possession (when usually a lying spirit is the operating agent) or by psychological self-obsession, with the wakeful personality unconscious of what the other has said, in both cases it is one which ought to be avoided. The Catholic Church, with its very wide experience in such matters, has cautioned its adherents against being seduced either into allowing the thing to happen or into believing the teaching given by the mysterious visitor. Pope Benedict XIV went so far as to ascribe a diabolic origin in the voice. From the standpoint of philosophy it may be said that the Inner Word speaks only to a human, never through one to others. Nor is it heard clairaudiently and therefore psycho-physically; it is heard only mentally and inwardly. The phenomenon of the Interior Word does not ordinarily appear before one is able to carry the mind to a certain depth or intensity of concentration, and to hold it there continuously for not less than about a half hour. In that state of inspired communion when the Interior Word is heard, thoughts keep coming into consciousness from a source deeper than the personal mind. The ego is not directly thinking them but instead experiences them as being impressed upon it or released into it. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
The utterance of the Interior Word can be heard only in Heaven, only in a state detached from the animality and triviality of the common state. It is as if another being spoke inside me—not with audible voice but with mental voice—and imposed itself strongly on my own mind. Interior Word: Out of this blankness something will begin to speak to one. It will not be a sound heard with the body’s ears. If it happened, that would be a low psychic manifestation which must be stopped at once. Until the internal Word speaks in one one is really incapable of helping others spiritually. One may be able to do so intellectually or to comfort them emotionally but that is a different and inferior thing. If the Interior Word bids one move in any direction which seems encompassed by difficulties or blocked by obstacles so that one can see no way before one, let one not doubt or fear. A way will be made by the power of the Overself. One need only obey, relax, and trust the guidance. When the Inner Word begins to speak to one, one may begin to speak to others—not before. For only then will what one says bear any creative power, spiritual inspiration, enlightenment, or healing in it. The Interior Word carries an authoritative and commanding tone. Adults have some control over their environment, but children depend on adults to provide a home for them. In addition to love, security, understanding, and encouragement, reverence plays an important part in a safe and happy home. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
Reverence is respect, honour, and love for our Heavenly Father, for His Son, Jesus Christ, and for all of His creations. It is more than just holding bodies still and being quiet during meetings; it is an attitude. It can become a way of life for each of us as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Reverent habits often precede reverent feelings. Prayer is a source of great peace for all of us. Habits of reverence can begin early in our home when we help children learn to pray. The way we pray with our children can be a teaching and building experience. In general, the divine beings like us. That is one of the reasons they want our prayers and offerings; if they did not care about us, they would not care about our prayers. That is why they respond well to petitionary prayers; they want to help us. They really do. Some of them are ambivalent, however. Why should the Land Spirits feel warmly toward us when we cut down their forests and pave over their meadows? Do not feel too smug because you have protested against logging in old growth forest or rain forest. Where do you think the land your house is built on came from? What kind of land was there before it was plowed under to grow your food? There used to be rain forests in the Bay Area. Dealing with Land Spirits can be difficult. We have to show them we are grateful for their sacrifice. We do this by giving something back. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
Dear Lord in the shining Heaven, I offer you my thanks and condolences for your sacrifices. I know you are here, and I wish for your friendship, for me and my people. Please accept what I give you, and please do not forget me. The Interior Word is not heard with the reasoning mind, even though its statements may be very reasonable. It is not connected with the intellect at all, as are all our ordinary words. It is received in the heart, felt intensively and deeply. Now that one has developed the capacity to hear, there are sounds forth out of the obscure recesses of one’s being a silent voice, a messenger without name or form. It is the Word. The Interior Word is never enigmatic and puzzling but always direct and simple. Only the revelations of occultism are obscure, never the revelations of truth itself. What the German mystics called “the Interior Word” is precisely the same as what two thousand years earlier the Mandarin Chinese mystics called the “Voice of Heaven.” The Interior Word cannot speak frequently until there is complete silence within the human’s being. The ideas which come to one’s mind through the Interior Word come stamped with the certitude of truth. Internal Word: In the New Testament, John introduces the idea of the logo, the Word which speaks in every human who comes into the Word. Every human is not able to hear it although it is always there, always immanent. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
The Interior Word is referred to in the Bible: “I will hear what the Lord God will speak to me,” reports Psalms 84.9. To corrupt nature is not the work of providence. However, it is the nature of some things to be contingent. Divine providence does not therefore impose any necessity upon things so as to destroy their contingency. Divine providence imposes necessity upon some things; not upon all, as some formerly believed. For to providence it belongs to order things towards an end. Now after the divine goodness, which is an extrinsic end to all things, the principal good in things themselves is the perfection of the Universe; which would not be, were not all grades of being found in things. Whence it pertains to divine providence to produce every grade of being. And thus it has prepared for something necessary causes, so that they happened of necessity; for others contingent causes, that they may happen by contingency, according to the nature of their proximate cause. The effect of divine providence is not only that things should happen somehow; but that they should happen either by necessity or by contingency. Therefore whatsoever divine providence ordains to happen infallibly and of necessity happens infallibly and of necessity; and that happens from contingency, which the plan of divine providence conceives to happen from contingency. The order of divine providence is unchangeable and certain, so far as all things foreseen happen as they have been foreseen, whether from necessity or from contingency. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
That indissolubility and unchaneableness of which Boethius speaks, pertain to the certainty of providence, which fails not to produce its effect, and that in the way foreseen; but they do not pertain to the necessity of the effects. We must remember that properly speaking “necessary” and “contingent” are consequent upon being, as such. Hence the mode both of necessity and of contingency falls under the foresight of God, who provides universally for all being; not under the foresight of causes that provide only for some particular order of things. Our God and God of our fathers, please bless us with the threefold blessing written in the Torah of Moses, Thy servant, and spoken by Aaron and his sons, Thy consecrated priests: May the Lord bless thee and keep thee; so may it be His will. May the Lord make His countenance to shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee; so may it be His will. May the Lord turn His countenance unto thee and give thee peace. So may it be His will. Please grant peace, well-being and blessing unto the World, with grace, lovingkindness and mercy for us and for all America, Thy people. Bless us, O Father, all of us together, with the light of Thy presence; for by that light Thou hast given us, O Lord our God, the Torah of life, lovingkindness and righteousness, blessing and mercy, life and peace. O may it be good in Thy sight at all times to bless Thy people America with Thy peace. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, wo blesses Thy people American with peace. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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The Touch of the Untouchable—All Were Re-animated and there Arose a Noise of Harmony!
I want you all to stonewall it; let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover up or anything else, if it will save it—save the plan. To support him they will have to affirm the divine right of kings. In grammar, sentences are built up basically from three things: a subject, a verb, and an object, with the subject acting upon the object through the verb. A sentence is not considered complete unless it has these three things, this relationship between the subject and the object. In metaphysics, every experience also requires a subject and an object—a person or a thing who is affected by or produces an action on a second entity. All statements about human experiences must include this subject-object relationship. Thus, in the relationship between a human and one’s thoughts, the human is the subject and the thoughts are the objects. In Old World metaphysics, a similar relationship holds good—except that the subject is there called the seer, the object is called the seen, and seeing describes the relationship between the two. All existence in time-space order as experienced by a human being necessarily has these three elements within it. There is no subject without an object, no seer without a seen plus the relationship or the action between them. They are always linked together. If however we look beyond this existence to the timeless spaceless Reality, it is obvious that there can be no such relationship therein, for it is completely nondual, the Reality which never changes, which has no second thing. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
We learn from mentalism that this Reality is Mind. If we are ever to find it, we know that it cannot be found as if it were a second thing, with us as subject and it as object. In that sense we can never find it, but only substitutes which themselves are in duality. We have indeed to set up a search for the kind of consciousness where there is no object to be experienced and therefore where there is no subject-ego to receive the experience. Such is the unified consciousness which is none other than Mind itself. We can use this criterion not only with reference to our experiences of the World but also with reference to our inner mystical experiences and check from this on what level they really are. Mind also has no second thing to know an experience, no World. Nor can anyone know and experience Mind and yet remain an individual, a person. Whoever finds one’s Overself and draws from it the will and desire to serve others, will radiate joy, confidence, and peace to them. From that high source of inspiration may come great actions, immense inner strength, superb artistic creativity, and a beautiful, delicate inner equilibrium. What inspired artist ever creates a new work expect in joy? Is this not a clue to the fact that the inspirational or best level of one’s mind is a happy one? One lives in the sunny light of one’s own inspired thoughts. When thought of the little self vanished, even gloating thought of its spiritual rapture, and That which is behind or beyond it in utter stillness is alone felt and known, then one is said to experience “the touch of the Untouchable,” as ancient self-actualized called it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The literal meaning is “non-touching” or, possibly “touching the Untouchable.” Everything is either related to, or in contact with, something else, that is, in touch with it. However, in the states of Asparsa there is no such possibility because nondual Brahman is alone acknowledged, THAT which is uncontacted by anything. If you believe that you have had the ultimate experience, it is more likely that you had an emotional, or mental, or mystic one. The authentic thing does not enter consciousness. You do not know that it has transpired. You discover it is already here only by looking back at what you were and contrasting it with what you now are; or what others recognize it in you and draw attention to it; or when a situation arises which throws up your real status. It is a permanent fact, not a brief mystic “glimpse.” The true union, completely authentic and completely beatific, where mind melts into Mind without the admixture of personal wish or traditional suggestion, cannot be properly described in words. For one who experiences it may know its onset or its end because of the enormous contrast with one’s ordinary self, but one will not know its full height simply because one will not even know that one is experiencing it. For to do so would be to re-introduce the ego and thus fall away from the purity of the union. There would then be admixture—which is the fate of unions. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
All teachings which try to inform us what the Real is like can only honestly do so if they use negative terms: they can only say what it is not like. For where is the individual who can continue to exist in its discovery and note its nature or attributes? One’s limited consciousness has dissolved in the larger one. Only afterwards, when looking back at the experience, dare one say that the experience itself was ineffable but what it concerned was incomprehensible; it was luminous, but that which shone was an unseen power. “What other hath He appointed over the earth? or whom hath He set over the World which He Himself hath made,” reports Job 34.13. Two things belong to providence—namely, the type of things foreordained towards an end; and the execution of this order, which is called government. As regards the first of these, God has immediate providence over everything, because He has in His intellect the types of everything, even the smallest; and whatsoever He causes assigns to certain effects, He gives them the power to produce those effects. Whence it must be that God has before hand the type of those effects in His mind. As t the second, there are certain intermediaries of God’s providence; for He governs things inferior by superior, not on account of any defect in His power, but by reason of the abundance of His goodness; so that the dignity of causality is imparted even to creatures. Thus Plato’s opinion, as narrated by Gregory of Nyssa (De Provid. Vii, 3) is exploded. He taught threefold providence. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
First, one which belongs to the supreme Deity, Who first and foremost has provision over spiritual things, and thus over the individuals of all that can be generated and corrupted, he attributed to the divinities who circulate in the Heavens; that is, certain separate substances, which move corporeal things in a circular direction. The third providence, over human affairs, he assigned to demons, who the Platonic philosopher placed between us and the gods, as Augustine tells us (De Civ. Dei, 1, 2: viii, 14). It pertains to a king’s dignity to have minster who execute his providence. However, the fact that one has not the plan of those things which are done by them arises from a deficiency in oneself. For every operative science is the more perfect, the more it considers the particular thing with which its action is concerned. God’s immediate provision over everything does not exclude the action of secondary causes; which are the executors of His order, as was said above. It is better for us not to know low and vile things, because by them we are impeded in our knowledge of what is better and higher; for we cannot understand many things simultaneously; because the thought of evil sometimes perverts the will towards evil. This does not hold with God, Who sees everything simultaneously at one glance, and whose will cannot turn in the direction of evil. When you speak of “an experience” you imply that first, there is an experiencer, and second, there is an object of which one has an experience. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
That is, you refer to the realm of duality. It may be lofty, inspiring, unusual, but it is an event with a beginning and an ending; it is inside time, however variously the sense of time changes. It is not to be identified with the Real. The ordinary person is quite incapable of penetrating the absolute. The extraordinary person—the genius—may get flashes of intuition which reflect some of truths that lift one above the little self. However, no one really attains the absoluteness without getting dissolved in it, without knowing and remembering nothing of it. Those who claim these “unions with God’ are really describing something quite different. Too often they are overwhelmed by their experience and quite naturally take it to be outside reality when it is in fact a higher degree of it. The question of “I” and of self-consciousness in any form, whether universal or personal, vanished when the truth is known because there is none then to mark out selfhood of any kind. When it is understood that the mind cannot become an object to itself, it will be understood that everything one may say about it will merely impose an illusory limitation upon it. There are not two thoughts, the ego and the universal self, to enter into relationship in the final stage. The ocean of infinite impersonal being closes over the human’s ego, and one is forever submerged in anonymity, never again to see or be seen. The final grade of inner experience, the deepest phase of contemplation, is one where the experience oneself disappears, the meditator vanishes, the knower no longer has an object—not even the Overself—to know for duality collapses. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Because this grade is beyond the supreme “Light” experience where the Overself reveals its presence visually as a dazzling mass, shaft, ball, or ray of unearthly radiance which is seen whether the bodily eyes are open or closed, it has been called the divine darkness. One can find nothingness within oneself only after one has evaluated the nothingness of oneself. They mystery of the Great Void does not disclose itself to the smugly satisfied or the arrogantly proud or the intellectually conceited. The truth becomes self-evident on this highest level and needs no endorsement from anything or anyone outside. It puts the searching intellect and the aspiring emotions back in their place as mere channels for its use. Here is the most private experience anyone can have—to be alone with the Alone! To return to the Source is to hold on until you immerse yourself in the threefold being of Time, Space, and Mind which together make the One, the Source of God. What the Self-Actualized Plotinus called the First Principle, the One, is as high as enlightenment can bring the seeker. In this astonishing revelation, one discovers that one oneself is the seeker, the teacher, and the sought-for goal. Without keeping steadily in view this original mentalness of things and hence their original oneness with self and Mind, the mystic must naturally get confused if not deceived by what one takes to be the opposite of Spirit and Mater. The mystic looks within, to self; the materialist looks without to the World. And each misses what the other finds. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
However to the philosopher neither of these is primary. One looks to that Mind of which both self and World are but manifestations and in which one find the manifestations also. It is not enough for one to receive, as the mystic receives, fitful and occasional illuminations from periodic intersessionary prayers. One relates this intellectual understanding to one’s further discovery got during mystical self-absorption in the Void that the reality of one’s own self is Mind. Back in the World once more one studies it again under this further light, confirms that the manifold World consists ultimately of mental images, conjoins with one’s full metaphysical understanding that it is simply Mind in manifestation, and thus comes to comprehend that it is essentially one with the same Mind which one experiences in self-absorption. Thus one’s insight actualizes, experiences, this Mind-in-itself as and not apart from the sensuous World whereas the mystic divides them. With insight, the sense of oneness does not destroy the sense of difference but both remain strangely present, whereas with the ordinary mystical perception each cancels the other. The myriad forms which make up the picture of this World will not disappear as an essential characteristic of reality nor will one’s awareness of them or one’s traffic with them be affected. Hence one possesses a firm and final attainment wherein one will permanently possess the insight into pure Mind even in the midst of physical sensations. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
One sees everything in this multitudinous World as being but the Mind itself as easily as one can see nothing, the imagesless Void, as being but the Mind itself, whenever one cares to turn aside into self-absorption. One sees both the outer faces of all humans and the inner depth of one’s own self as being but the Mind itself. Thus one experiences the unity of all existence; not intermittently but at every moment ne knows the Mind as ultimate. This is the philosophic or final realization. It is as permanent as the mystic’s is transient. Whatever one does or refrains from dong, whatever one experiences or fails to experience, one gives up all discriminations between reality and appearance, between truth and illusion, and lets one’s insight function freely as one’s thoughts select and cling to nothing. One experiences the miracle of undifferentiated being, the wonder of undifferenced unity. The artificial human-made frontiers melt away. One sees one’s fellow humans as inescapably and inherently divine as they are, not merely as the mundane creatures they believe they are, so that any traces of an ascetical holier-than-thou attitude fall completely away from one. Only after one has worked one’s way through different degrees of comprehension of the World whose passing one’s own development requires, and even after one has penetrated the mystery beyond it, does one come to the unexpected insight and attitude which frees one from both. In other words one is neither in the Void, the One, or the Many yet nor is one not in them. Truth thus becomes a triple paradox! #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
In the highest level there are utterly unalterable truths. They are not got by logic, worked out by intellect, or discovered by observation. They are announced. No one can know their mysterious source in the sense that we know anything else. It is unique, indescribable, and hence unnameable, unimaginable, and beyond all the forms of worship given to all other gods—nowhere to be found in place or time, history or commentary. It is more honest to let the Mystery of Mysteries remain as it is than to repeat ancient portrayals or create new ones—all the labour of the human ego’s trivial or even misleading ideation. Within that silent seeming void, which is as near as most are likely to come, they may be pacified, content, perhaps even dissolved during those utterly surrendered lapses. The application of statistical laws to processes of atomic magnitude in physics has a noteworthy correspondence in psychology, so far as psychology investigates the bases of consciousness by pursuing the conscious processes until they lose themselves in darkness and unintelligibility, and nothing more can be seen but effects which have an organizing influence on the contents of consciousness. Investigation of these facts yields the singular fact that they proceed from an unconscious, id est, objective, reality which behaves at the same time like a subjective one—in other words, like a consciousness. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Hence the reality underlying the unconscious effect includes the observing subject and is therefore constituted in a way that we cannot conceive. It is, at one and the same time, absolute subjectivity and universal truth, for in principle it an be shown to be present everywhere, which certainly cannot be said of conscious contents of a personalistic nature. The elusiveness, capriciousness, haziness, and uniqueness that lay mind always associates with the idea of the psyche applies only to consciousness, and not to the absolute unconscious. The qualitatively rather than quantitatively definable units with which the unconscious works, namely the archetypes, therefore have a nature that cannot with certainty be designated as psychic. Although I have been led by purely psychological considerations to doubt the exclusively psychic nature of the archetypes, psychology sees itself obliged to revise its “only psychic” assumptions in the light of the physical findings too. Psychics has demonstrated, as plainly as could be wished, that in the realm of atomic magnitudes an observer is postulated in objective reality, and that only on this condition is a satisfactory scheme of explanation possible. This means that a subjective element attaches to the physicist’s World picture, and secondly that a connection necessarily exists between the psyche to be explained and the objective space-tie continuum. Since the physical continuum is inconceivable it follows that we can form no picture of its psychic aspect either, which also necessarily exists. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Nevertheless, the relative or partial identity of psyche and physical continuum is of the greatest importance theoretically, because it brings with it a tremendous simplification by bridging over the seeming incommensurability between the physical World and the psychic, not of course in any concrete way, but from the psychological side by means of empirically derived postulates—archetypes—whose content, if any, cannot be represented to the mind. Archetypes, so far as we can observe and experience them at all, manifest themselves only through their ability to organize images and ideas, and this is always an unconscious process which cannot be detected until afterwards. By assimilating ideational material whose provenance in the phenomenal World is not to be contested, they become visible and psychic. Therefore they are recognized at first only as psychic entities and are conceived as such, with the same right with which we based the physical phenomena of immediate perception on Euclidean space. Only when it comes to explaining psychic pehnomena of a minimal degree of clarity are we driven to assume that archetypes must have a nonpsychic aspect. Grounds for such a conclusion are supplied by the pehnomena of synchronicity, which are associated with the activity of unconscious operators and have hitherto been regarded, or repudiated, as “telepathy,” et cetera. Scepticism should, however, be levelled only at incorrect theories and not at facts which exist in their own right. No unbiased observer can deny them. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Resistance to the recognition of such facts rests principally on the repugnance people feel for an allegedly supernatural faculty tacked on to the psyche, like “clairvoyance.” The very diverse and confusing aspect of these phenomena are, so far as I can see at present, complete explicable on the assumption of a psychically relative space-time continuum. As soon as a psychic content crosses the threshold of consciousness, the synchronistic marginal phenomena disappear, time and space rescue their accustomed sway, and consciousness is once more isolated in its subjectivity. We have here one of those instances which can best be understood in terms of the physicist’s idea of “complementarity.” When an unconscious content passes over into consciousness its synchronistic manifestation ceases; conversely, synchronistic phenomena can be evoked by putting the subject into an unconscious state (trance). The same relationship of complementarity can be observed just as easily in all those extremely common medical cases in which certain clinical symptoms disappear when the corresponding unconscious content are made conscious. We also know that a number of psychosomatic phenomena which are otherwise outside the control of the will can be induced by hypnosis, that is, by this same restriction of consciousness. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
It rests with the free choice of the experimenter (or observer) to decide…which insights one will gain and which one will lose; or, to put it in popular language, whether one will measure A and ruin B or ruin A and measure B. It does not rest with one, however, to gain only insights and not lose any. This is particularly true of the relation between the physical standpoint and the psychological. Physics determine quantities and their relation to one another; psychology determines quantities and their relation to one another; psychology determines qualities without being able to measure quantities. Despite that, both sciences arrive at ideas which come significantly close to one another. The parallelism of psychological and physical explanations has already been pointed out. Moderne Physik—Moderne Psychologie explaines that both sciences have, in the course of many years of independent work, amassed observations and systems of thought to match them. Both sciences have come up against certain barriers which display similar basic characteristics. The object to be investigated, and the human investigator with one’s organs of sense and knowledge and their extensions (measuring instruments and procedures), are indissolubly bound together. That is complementarity in physics as well as in psychology. Between physics and psychology there is in fact a genuine and authentic relationship of complementarity. Even the best of humans are subject to the peculiarities of their temperament, to the form of their individuality; and even if they always seek to stay upon the level of inspiration they cannot help expressing the channel through which the inspiration has to come, which is human channel subject to human limitations. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
The inspiration may be pure Spirit but, because it must come into a particular human, one receives it in a particular way, interprets, expresses, and communicates it in a personal way, so that the purity is at best a little adulterated, the integrity a little lost. One’s character may be as selfless as one can make it, but the colouring of one’s mind can only fade out to a piacular extent because one’s body is still there, one’s entire past history is there graven in the subconscious, and body is interfused with mind. All this will vanish with death, or some while after death if one is not fully advanced. Regardless of the fears and dreads, the hesitances and timidities of the lower ego, one must carry out whatever one’s newly found commander bids one do. However, this will not be so hard and unpleasant a task as it might seem to others. For one will now feel at least the same satisfaction in yielding to the higher self’s bidding that one formerly felt in yielding to the lower one’s desires. And with the bidding will come the needed strength, courage, and wisdom to obey it. The World’s opposition and danger may be recognized but will not deter one. It is not by one’s own will that one engages oneself in such work, but by a will that supports and guides one better than ever one could support or guide oneself. This one clearly comprehends and gladly accepts. It is a mistake to believe that to find the Overself is to find eternal monotony and boredom. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
On the contrary, it holds out the promise of life more abundant—of joy, happiness, and satisfaction physically as well as spiritually. All great poetic utterance is discovery. Its moments are angels’ visits. These experiences leave memory-traces—neural processes organized in structures which reflect the experience. Concepts form when similar patterns of experiences repeatedly leave similar structure of memory-traces. One will be an inspired human in one’s labours of spiritual service or artistic expression. One will be aware that a power greater than one’s own is working through one and affecting others. And ne will know that this power comes from the secret God within oneself. So immense is the security which the Overself enfolds one with that ne will not hesitate to take chances which prudence, caution, discretion, or fear would never take. However, one will do so only if the Overself guides one to. One who commands one’s thoughts and senses from one’s divine center commands life. A time some when these records of the past, built up from experiences, themselves affect new experiences, creatine expectations, directing attention, and so on. There is an interplay between more central processes and the sensory life: the very development of a True Self depends on whether the individual’s needs were met when one experienced them or at more arbitrary times. The Overself makes the being comfortable, and arranges a setting in which spiritual nourishment may happen, is all goes well. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
When the Overself is feeding the being, one is free and one’s soul can be felt, it is a warm and pleasant feeling. They are many reasons God provides humans with the things they want and ask for. No doubt the individual’s sensations in respects to God are very acute, and if they are acute we can be sure they are important. The individual first of all needs all these rather quiet experiences in prayer, and needs to feel held lovingly, that is, in an alive way, yet without fuss and anxiety and tenseness. This is the setting. Sooner or later there will be some kind of contact between the soul and God. It does not matter exactly what happens. God is there in the situation and part of it, and He particularly likes the intimacy of the relationship. He comes without preconceived notions as to how the human ought to behave. That is why even people who commit bad acts are blessed with the grace of God, He truly loves all His children. This grace of God gives the human ideas! “Perhaps there is something there outside in the World worth being righteous for.” Spiritual communion begins to flow; in fact, so many blessings are poured out that the individual is encouraged to obey God’s laws, and for a time hardly needs any other external joy. Gradually, God enables the human to build up in the imagination the very thing He has to offer, and the human begins to yield to His will and to get to the root of humanity. These sensory experiences, when repeated in the right emotional atmosphere, eventually build up expectations: phantasies. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
One then goes on to imagine how the fortunate spiritual experiences lead to desired sensory experiences, how one’s wish for salvation seems to bring it about: the human wants something, discovers the power of God, and discovers that God’s love is what one wants. Gradually an individual is enabled to build up the armour of God. Do you see how important this is? The wonder and joy of finding oneself to be a channel of blessing, teaching, healing, peace, and uplift to others will increase as the results themselves increase. The inspiration may be made manifest in a production, so that others may have the chance to feel its reflection; but there can be no guarantee that they will do so. It is true that inspiration comes at unpredictable times. However, if we prepare conditions advantageous to it, we are more likely to receive its visitation. In ancient recorded sayings of Jesus, we may trace one part of the history of human’s search after truth. However, there is another part, a joyous and happier part. The early experiences of people whose lives are governed by their instinctual drives and the early experiences of those whose lives are governed by their relationships with others form a personal possession lent for a moment to a person who knows what to do with it. At first the individual’s experience is concerned, the individual and God are merged into one another: God is a sensory experience of the human’s. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
However, someone not merged with the individual has to make actual what the individual is ready to find. There then follows a time of to-and-from while God is repudiated, reaccepted, and finally perceived as less under the person’s control than the person has assumed. It may seem paradoxical at first glance that, for the best development of a person’s autonomy and self-respect, there has to be this period of utter dependence. However, one will learn and have some actual experience of magical control, of omnipotence, of almightiness and creation. For what the person thinks of, there it is, and it is good. For example, a previously unhappy and disturbed little boy was asked what had helped him, he replied, “Reading about Job, and how he was stripped of everything, but kept his faith in God and had things even better restored to him.” The forces of heredity and the dominion of environment would appear to be the overwhelming impulsions of a human’s actions. However, let the Soul arise in its masterful urgency, and they vanish! Inspiration brings the mind to its most exalted pitch, whether it be a mystic’s mind or an artist’s. Such is the power of true inspiration that it lifts humans to the plane of hero in action, genius in art, or master in renunciation. This is the power that coaxes the unwilling personality to enter the fires of expiation; this is the urge that makes a human swim through bitter waters to find wisdom. The truth is that the source of human’s inspiration is always there, but one’s awareness of it is intermittent. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Most of us cannot turn on the tap of inspiration at will, cannot put Pegasus between the shafts. Often we deceive ourselves and imagine the presence of inspiration when it is really absent. The works we do then are our humble own, not fiery gifts from Heaven. Dear Lord in the shining Heaven, please speak to me as you follow the wind. Please follow perfectly the waves of their air-ocean, making known to me their invisible pattern. Out of the well of the World they flow, carrying the wisdom of her gift. Please carry it to me also, please give to me, God Almighty, the knowledge that you have, the knowledge I seek. We thankfully acknowledge Thee, O Lord our God, our fathers’ God to all eternity. Our Rock art Thou, our Shield that saves through every generation. We give Thee thanks and we declare Thy praise for all Thy tender care. Our live we trust into Thy loving hand. Our souls are daily with us, evening, morn, and noon. O Though who art all-good, whose mercies never fails us, Compassionate One, whose lovingkindness never cease, we ever hope in Thee. We thankfully acknowledge that Thou art the Lord our God and God of our fathers, the God of all that lives, our Creator and Creator of the Universe. We offer blessings and thanksgiving to Thy great and holy name because Thou hast kept us in life and sustained us; so mayest Thou continue to keep us in life and sustain us. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Like a Diamond in the Sky Discipline Must be Maintained!
Every time I open a book, I risk my life…Every work of imagination offers another view of life, an invitation to spend a few days inside someone else’s emotions. The wise person lets the Overself’s presence flow through one’s life, never blocks it by one’s ego nor turns it aside by one’s passions. The ego can no longer foresee what will happen to the outer course of its personal life when the Overself takes the lead, nor can it dictate what that course should be. With all one’s humility before the Overself, one will bear oneself among one’s fellow human beings with serene self-assurance and speak with firm conviction of that which one knows. When these experiences increase and multiply to such an extent that they accumulate into a large body of evidence, one will become convinced that some power is somehow using one as a beneficent channel. It is the real originator of these experiences, the real bestower of these blessing, the real illuminator of these other people. What is this power? Despite its seeming otherness, its apparent separateness, it is really one’s own higher self. Humanity is one, with psyche. Humility is a not inconsiderable virtue which should prompt Christians, for the sake of charity—the greatest of all virtues—to set a good example and acknowledge that though there is only one truth it speaks in many tongues, and that if we still cannot see this is simply due to lack of understanding. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
No one is so godlike that one alone knows the true word. All of us gaze into that “dark glass” in which the dark myth takes shape, adumbrating the invisible truth. In this glass the eyes of the spirit glimpse an image which we call the self, fully conscious of the fact that it is an anthropomorphic image which we have merely named but not explained. By “self” we mean psychic wholeness, but what realities underlie this concept we do not know, because psychic contents cannot be observed in their unconscious state, and moreover the psyche cannot know itself. The conscious can know the unconscious only so far as it has become conscious. We have only a very hazy idea of the changes an unconscious content undergoes in the process of becoming conscious, but no certain knowledge. The concept of psychic wholeness necessarily implies an element of transcendence on account of the existence of unconscious components. Transcendence in this sense is not equivalent to a metaphysical postulate or hypostasis; it claims to be no more than a borderline concept, to quote Kant. That there is something beyond the borderline, beyond the frontiers of knowledge, is shown by the archetypes and, most clearly of all, by numbers, which this side of the border are quantities but on the other side are autonomous psychic entities, capable of making qualitative statements which manifest themselves in a priori patterns of order. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
These patterns include not only causally explicable phenonmena like dream-symbols and such, but remarkable relativizations of time and space which simply cannot be explained causally. They are the parapsychological phenomena which I have summed up under the terms “synchronicity” and which have been statistically investigated by Rhine. The beneficial results of experiments elevate these phenomena to the rank of undeniable facts. This brings us a little nearer to understanding the mystery of psychophysical parallelism, for we know that a factor exists which mediates between the apparent incommensurability of body and psyche, giving matter a kind of “psychic” faculty and the psyche a kind of “materiality,” by means of which the one can work on the other. That the body can work on the psyche seems to be a truism, but strictly speaking all we know is that any bodily defect or illness also expresses itself psychically. Naturally this assumption only holds good if, contrary to the popular materialistic view, the psyche is credited with an existence of its own. However, materialism in its turn cannot explain how chemical changes can produce a psyche. Both views, the materialistic as well as the spiritualistic, are metaphysical prejudices. It accords better with experience to suppose that living matter has a psychic aspect, and the psyche a physical aspect. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
If we give due consideration to the facts of parapsychology, then the hypothesis of the psychic aspect must be extended beyond the sphere of biochemical process to matter in general. In that case all reality would be grounded on an as yet unknown substrate possessing material and at the same tie psychic qualities. In view of the trend of modern theoretical physics, this assumption should arouse fewer resistances than before. It would also do away with the awkward hypothesis of psychophysical parallelism, and afford us an opportunity to construct a new World model closer to the idea of the unus mundus. The “acausal” correspondence between mutually independent psychic and physical events, id est, synchronistic phenomena, and in particular psychokinesis, would then become more understandable, for every physical event would involve a psychic one and vice versa. Such reflections are not idle speculations; they are forced on us in any serious psychological investigation of the UF phenomenon. Undoubtedly the idea of the unus mundus is founded on the assumption that the multiplicity of the empirical World rests on an underlying unity, and that not two of more fundamentally different Worlds exist side by side or are mingled with one another. Rather, everything divided and different belongs to one and the same World, which is not the World of sense but a postulate whose probability is vouched for by the fact that until now one has been able to discover a World in which the known laws of nature are invalid. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
That even the psychic World, which is so extraordinarily different from the physical Word, does not have its roots outside the one cosmos is evidence from the undeniable fact that causal connections exist between the psyche and the body which point to their underlying unitary nature. All that is is not encompassed by our knowledge, so that we are not in a position to make any statements about its total nature. Microphysics is feeling its way into the unknow side of matter, just as complex psychology is pushing forward into the unknown side of the psyche. Both lines of investigation have yielded findings which can be conceived only by means of antinomies, and both have developed concepts which display remarkable analogies. If this trend should become more pronounced in the future, the hypothesis of the unity of their subject-matters would gain in probability. Of course there is little or no hope that the unitary Being can ever be conceived, since our powers of thought and language permit only of antinomian statements. However, this much we do know beyond all doubt, that empirical reality has a transcendental background—a fact which, as Sir James Jeans has shown, can be expressed by Plato’s parable of the cave. The common background of microphysics and depth-psychology is as much physical as psychic and therefore neither, but rather a third thing, a neutral nature which can at most be grasped in hints since in essence it is transcendental. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The background of our empirical World thus appears to be in fact a unus mundus. This is at least a probable hypothesis which satisfies the fundamental tenet of scientific theory: “Explanatory principles are not to be multiplied beyond the necessary.” The transcendental psychophysical background corresponds to a “potential World” in so far as all those conditions which determine the form of empirical phenomena are inherent in it. This obviously holds good as much for physics as for psychology, or, to be more precise, for macrophysics as much as for the psychology of consciousness. Only when we act in and from the Overself can we really be said to act aright, for only then shall our deeds be wise and virtuous, most beneficial in the ultimate sense both to our own self and to others. What the ego thinks and feels and does is to reflect the Overself’s dominion. The ego itself is now to be subsidiary. Every thought or feeling or act is to be dedicated one, every place where is finds itself a consecrated one. The Overself is not merely a transient intellectual abstraction but rather an eternal presence. For those who have awakened to the consciousness of this presence, there is always available its mysterious power and sublime inspiration. It is the divine moment; no longer foes speech come forth humanly not action individually: the God within has taken over. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
At some mysterious moment a higher power takes possession of one, dictates one’s thoughts, words, and acts. Sometimes one is amazed by them, by their difference from what one would normally have thought, spoken, or done. The unfoldment of intuitive action, intuitive thinking, and intuitive feeling means that the Overself and the personality are then in accord and working together. The little circle of the ego then lies within the larger circle of the Overself, in harmony and in co-operation. It does not matter than whether a human lives as a monk or as a householder, whether one is engaged in the World’s activity, or whether one is in retirement. Of course, such a condition is not attained without a full and deep transformation of the human. It is necessary to point out that the mere removal of thoughts by itself is not enough and could only give an illusory illumination and not the kind of peace which one feels after a dreamless sleep—passive, but not positive. There are various tricks. Some are of a hypnotic nature, whereby thoughts can be kept out of the mind and an apparent stillness obtained; but the mediator who only uses these tricks and nothing more deceives oneself. One might as well go to sleep and then wake up. The spiritual value is about the same, while the psychological value is definitely adverse to one. One will ten be in danger of becoming a dreamer with a dulled mind. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
One must look forward hopefully to the day when one can actually feel the higher self present within all one’s activity. It will reign in one’s inner World and thus be the real doer of one’s actions, not the ego in the outer World. It is not easy to subordinate oneself to this inner voice. However, where can one hide from it? We are to exalt life, not to degrade it. There are times when the Overself accepts no resistance, when it acts with such compelling force that the human is unable to disobey. However, such happenings are special ones. Some elf other than one’s familiar one will rise up within one, some force—ennobling, masterful, and divine—will control one. When a human’s consciousness, outlook, and character are so exalted as this, altruistic duty becomes not a burden to be carried irksomely but a part of one’s path of self-fulfillment from which one would not wish to be spared. There is a strange feeling that not one but somebody else is living and talking in the same body. It is somebody nobler and wiser than one’s own ego. The feeling of being possessed for a while by a holy other-Worldly presence comes over one. One is now under the influence, and later may be under the control, of a superior power. One becomes a vessel, filled from time to time with spiritual presence. One’s words, one’s feelings, and one’ actions will ten not only be expressions of one’s human self but also of that self united indissolubly with one’s divine self. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Mind is the aspect of reality. When this intellectual understanding is brough within one’s own experience as fact, when it is made as much one’s own as a bodily pain, then it becomes direct insight. Such thinking is the most profitable and resultful in which one can engage, for it brings the student to the very portal of Mind where it stops activity by itself and where the differentiations of ideas disappears. As the mental muscles strain after this concept of the Absolute, the Ineffable and Infinite, they lose their materialist rigidity and become more sensitive to intimations from the Overself. When thinking is able to reach such a profound depth that it attains utter impersonality and clam universality, it is able to approach the fundamental principle of its own being. When hard thinking reaches a culminating point, it then voluntarily destroys itself. Such an attainment of course can take place deep within the innermost recesses of the individual’s consciousness alone. One will arrive at the firm unshakable conviction that there is an inward reality behind all existence. If one wishes one may go farther still and seek to translate the intellectual idea of this reality into a conscious fact. In that case the comprehension that is the quest of pure Mind one is in quest of that which is alone the Supreme Reality in this entire Universe, must possess one. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
This mystery Mind is a theme upon which no aspirant can ever reflect enough: first, because of its importance, and second, because of its capacity to unfold one’s latent spirituality. One will doubtless feel cold on these lofty peaks of thought, but in the end one will find a Heavenly reward whilst still on Earth. We are not saying that something of the nature of mind as we humans know it is the supreme reality of the Universe, but only that it is more like that reality than anything else we know of and certainly more like it than what we usually call by the name of “matter.” The simplest way to express this is to say that Reality is of the nature of our mind rather than of our body, although it is Mind transcending the familiar phases and raised to infinity. It is the ultimate being the highest state. This is the Principle which forever remains what it was and will be. It is in the Universe and yet the Universe is in it too. It never evolves, for it is outside time. It has no shape, for it is outside space. It is beyond human’s consciousness, for it is beyond both one’s thoughts and senseless humans may enter into its knowledge, many enter into its Void, so soon as one can drop one’s thoughts, let go one’s sense-experience, but keep one’s sense of being. Then one may understand what Jesus meant when saying: “One that loseth one’s life shall find it.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Such an accomplishment may appear too spectral to be of any use to one’s matter-of-fact generation. What is their madness will one one’s sanity. One will know there is reality where they think there is nothingness. To keep this origin always at the back of one’s mind because it is also the end of all things, is a necessary practice. However, this can only be done if one cultivates reactionlessness to the happenings of every day. This does not mean showing no outward reactions, but it does mean that deep down indifference has been achieved—not an empty indifference, but one based on seeing the Divine essence in all things, all creatures, and a Divine meaning in all happenings. There is only this one Mind. All else is a seeming show on its surface. To forget the ego and think of this infinite and unending reality is the highest kind of meditation. First, remember that It is appearing as ego; then remember to think tat you are It; finally cease to think of It so you may be free of thoughts to be It! To attach oneself to a guru, an avatar, one religion, one creed, is to see stars only. To put one’s faith in the Infinite Being, and in its presence within the heart, is to see the vast empty sky itself. The stars will come and go, will disintegrate and vanish, but the sky remains. In a World of constantly changing scenes, fortunes, health, and relationships, a precious possession is the knowledge that there is the unseen Unchanging Real. Still more precious is awareness within oneself of ITS ever-presence. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
In the moment that there dawns on one’s understanding the fact of Mind’s beginninglessness and deathlessness, one gains the second illumination, the first being that of the ego’s illusoriness and transiency. Not to find the Energy of the Spirit but the Spirit itself is the ultimate goal—not its power or effects or qualities or attributes but the actuality of pure being. The aspirant is not to stop short with any of these but to push on. One will have gone far intellectually when one can understand the statement that mind is the seeker but Mind is the sought. One who puts one’s mind on the Unlimited instead of on the little parts, who does not deal with fractions but with the all-absorbing Whole, gains some of Its power. What we need to grasp is that although our apprehension of the Real is gradual, the Real is nonetheless with us at every moment in all its radiant totality. Modern science has filled our heads with the false notion that reality is in a state of evolution, whereas it is only our mental concept of reality which is in a state of evolution. Thinking can, ordinarily, only produce more thoughts. Even thinking about truth, about reality, however correct it be, shares this limitation. However, if properly instructed it will know its place and understand the situation, with the consequence that at the proper moment it will make no further effort, and will seek to merge into meditation. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
When the merger is successfully completed, a holy silence will pervade the consciousness which remains. Truth will then be revealed of its own accord. When all thought are gone, when all vibration, movement, or activity of thinking faculty has ceased, then is the self-revealing possible of Mind-in-itself, of Consciousness with its states. Where the intellect is active it creates a double result—the thought and thinker. Where the enlightened human goes into the Stillness this duality does not appear but Consciousness remains. It contains nothing created by one. It is the Alone. Every creature, from the most primitive amoeba up to the most intellectual human, has some kind and degree of awareness; but only the Illuminate has that toward which awareness itself is striving to attain—Consciousness. The “Void” means void of all mental activity and productivity. It means that the notions and images of the mind have been emptied out, that all perceptions of the body and conceptions of the brain have gone. The Mind is here, now. However, as soon as any thought arises you miss it. It is like space…unthinkable. The great Emptiness is the Ultimate Being, without form, Matterless and Motionless, ineffable, and undescribable except by statements of what it is not. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Those who study can lead them to this high level must then let go of ward, abandon images, representations, symbols, numberings, divisions, and dualities; must be ready to enter the Stillness. This means being able to attain the utmost Vacuity. Cling single-heartedly to Quietude. Mentalism is the study of Mind and its product, thoughts. To separate the two, to disentangle them, is to become aware of Awareness itself. This achievement comes not by any process of intellectual activity but by the very opposite—suspending such activity. And it comes not as another idea but as extremely vivid, powerfully compelling insight. Nothing that the mind can think into mental existence is IT. Mind in its most unlimited sense is reality. A human can know it only be the intuitive process of being it, in the same manner in which one know one’s name, which is not an intellectual process but an immediate one. We shall never grasp that totality of being with out intellect, but we shall grasp it with the only thing capable of holding it, with Consciousness. The awareness of It as being It is something other, and more, than the mere emptiness of Mind. God in unfathomable and unknowable. Every idea of Him is a false idea, created to satisfy our little human mental need but also sharing our finite human limitations. That is, the idea describes something about humans, nothing about God. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
We prefer to delude ourselves with such images and idols, rather than to take off our shoes at the very remembrance of God and enter the temple of the Silenced Mind. Here, at least, we get no untrue concepts which have to be discarded in the end. Here the wakened faint or strong intuition may bet intimations Godlike in quality, of THAT which must always remain incomprehensible to the intellect. Those who look to God as a healer, or as a mother, or as a father, or as a teacher are still looking for God within the ego. They are thinking of God only in relation to themselves because their first interest is in themselves. However, those who look to God in the Void, and not in any relationship or under any image or idea, really find God. Therefore they really find “the peace which passeth understanding.” If they begin and end in words, all attempts to explain the inexplicable, to describe the inscrutable, to communicate the ineffable must end in failure. For then it is merely intellect talking to intellect. However, let the attempts be made in the stillness, let “hear speak to heart,” and the Real may reveal itself. All talk of things being inside or outside the mind is submission to the spell of a vicious spatial metaphor. All language is applicable to things and thoughts, but not to the august infinite of mind. Here every word can be at best symbolic and at worst irrelevant, while remaining always as remote from definable meaning as unseen and unseeable Universes are from our own. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
We have lived in illusions long enough. Let us not yield the last grand hope of humans to the deceptive sway of profane words. Here there must and shall be SILENCE—serene, profound, mysterious, yet satisfying beyond all Earthly satisfactions. It is not possible for a finite human being to grasp the infinite significance of the Infinite Being, nor to gather any true idea about such Being. One can only think what It is not: otherwise one must retreat into utter silence, not merely of speech alone but also of mental imaginative and passional activity. Awareness alone is whatever it turns its attention to, seems to exist at the time: only that. If to Void then there is nothing else. If to World, then World assumes reality. What is it that is aware? The though of a point of awareness create, gives reality at the lowest level to ego, and at the highest to Higher Self but when the thought itself is dropped there is only the One Existence, Being, in the divine Emptiness. It is therefore the Source of all life, intelligence, form. The idea held becomes direct experience for the personality, the awareness becomes direct perception. Awareness is the very nature of one’s being: it is the Self. Every human credits oneself with having consciousness during the wakeful state. One never questions or disputes the fact. One does not need anyone else to till it to one, not does one tell it to oneself. It is the surest part of one’s knowledge. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Yet this is not a knowing which one brings into the field of awareness. It is known differently from the way other facts are known by one. The difference is that the ego is absent from the knowledge—the fact is not actually perceived. Reason tells us that pure Thought cannot know itself because that would set up a duality which would be false if pure though is the only real itself. Although all ordinary experience confirms it, extraordinary experience refutes it. Consciousness is the best witness to its own existence. When we experience Mind through the sense we call it matter. When we experience it trough imagination of thinking we call it idea. When we experience it as it is in its own pure being, we call it Spirit, or better Overself. Humans are not the authors of nature; but one uses natural things in applying art and virtue to one’s own use. Hence human providence does not reach to that which takes place in nature from necessity; but divine providence extends thus far, since God is the author of nature. Apparently it was this argument that moved those who withdrew the course of nature from the care of divine providence, attributing it rather to the necessity of matter, as Democritus, and others of the ancients. When it is said that God left humans to themselves, this does not mean that humans are exempt from divine providence; but merely that one has not a prefixed operating force determined to only the one effect; as in the case of natural things, which are only acted upon though directed by another towards an end; and do not act of themselves, as if they directed themselves towards an end, like rational creatures, though the possession of free will, by which these are able to take counsel and make choice. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Hence it is significantly said: “In the hand of one’s own counsel.” However, since the very act of free will is traced to God as to a cause, it necessarily follows that everything happening from the exercise of free will must be subject to divine providence. For human providence is included under the providence of God, as a particular universal cause. God, however, extends His providence over the just in a certain more excellent way than over the wicked; inasmuch as He prevents anything happening which would impede their final salvation. For “to them that love God, all things work together unto good,” reports Romans 8.28. However, from the fact that God does not restrain the wicked from the evil of sin, He is said to abandon them: not that He altogether withdraws His providence from them; otherwise they would return to nothing, if they were not preserved in existence by His providence. This was the reason that had weight with Tully, who withdrew from the care of divine providence human affairs concerning which we take counsel. Since a rational creature has, through its free well, control over its action, as was said above, it is subject to divine providence in an especial manner, so that something is imputed to it as a fault, or as a merit; and there is given it accordingly something by way of punishment or reward. In this way, the Apostle withdraws oxen from the care of God: not, however, that individual irrational creatures escape the care of divine providence; as was the opinion of the Rabbis Moses. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Dear Lord in the shining Heaven, during today’s negotiations, please make me eloquent. God, please ease the way, please remove all obstacles, opening the path for a smoothly accomplished deal, opening the path for a profitable outcome. I take up my pen and invoke the Spirit of God, the God of writing, please make my way smooth. I take up the pen and invoke Jesus Christ: Inspiring Saviour, please enflame my words. O Lord our God, please bestow upon us the blessing of Thy festivals for life and peace, for joy and gladness, even as Thou hast graciously promised to bless us. [Our God and God of our fathers, please accept our rest.] Please sanctify us through Thy commandments, and please grant our potion in Thy Bible; please give us abundantly of Thy goodness and please make us rejoice in Thy salvation. Please purify our hearts to serve Thee in truth. In Thy loving favour, O Lord our God, please let us inherit with joy and gladness Thy holy [Sabbath and] festivals; and may America who sanctifies Thy name, rejoice in Thee. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hallowest [the Sabbath and] America and the festivals. O Lord our God, please be gracious unto Thy people of America and please accept their prayer. Please restore the worship to Thy sanctuary and receive in love the supplications of America; and may the worship of Thy people be ever acceptable unto Thee. O may our eyes witness Thy return to America. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who restorest Thy divine presence unto America. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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I Am the Resurrection, and the Life—Glory to God in the Shining Heavens and on Earth!
From Watergate we learned what generations before us have known; our Constitution works. And during Watergate years it was interpreted again so as to reaffirm that no one—absolutely no one—is above the law. The total rejection of any religious belief is so contrary to human’s natural instincts and so destructive of one’s peace of mind. However, the French revelation was a conscious effort to replace the Kingdom of God with the kingdoms of man. Thus Grace’s irreligion was soon replaced by a new faith—man’s worship of man. Meanwhile, in the New World a radical experiment opened another chapter in church-state relations. There a group of gentlemen farmers, who were neither naïve about human nature nor pretentious about human society, were drawing up the American Constitution. By refusing to assign redemptive powers to the state or to allow coercive power to the church, the American experiment separated these two institutions for the first time since Constantine. What might be considered the modern phase in church-state history has emerged in out live times. It is an amalgam of elements from the previous eras. The rise of totalitarian regimes has brought back the kind of persecution the church experienced in early Rome; like Herod, modern dictators tolerate no other kinds. In the West secularism has aggressively spread irreligion, turning Europe into a post-Christian culture and America into a battleground with orthodox religion in retreat. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
This is dangerous because of people like Heinrich Himmler, who is an excellent example of a vicious, sadistic character who illustrates what has been said about the connection between sadism and the extreme forms of the anal-hoarding, bureaucratic, authoritarian character. The “bloodhound of Europe,” as he was called by many, Mr. Himmler was, together with Adolph Hitler, responsible for the slaughter of between fifteen and twenty million unarmed and powerless Russians, Poles, and Jews. Mr. Himmler impressed one as of uncanny subalternity, narrow-minded conscientiousness, inhuman methodicalness, blended with an element of an automaton. This sadistic authoritarian character is not the description of a hater or of that of a monster as the latter is usually conceived, but of an extremely dehumanized bureaucrat. Mr. Himmler was the type of a cruel educator of the old school, strict against himself but stricter against others. The signs of compassion and especially friendly tone of his thank you letters were all a fake, as one often finds in clearly cold natures. He could be a tender family father, a correct superior and a good comrade. At the same time he was an obsessed fanatic, an eccentric dreamer and a will-less instrument in Mr. Hitler’s hands to whom he was tied in an ever increasing love/hate. The most extreme example of his submission was that to Mr. Hitler, although one must suspect that his opportunism may have induced him to use a degree of flatter that was not entirely genuine. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Mr. Hitler was for Mr. Himmler the god-man, to be compared to the significance of Christ in the Christian religion or of Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita. He writes of him: “He is destined by the Karma of the universal Germanness, to lead the fight against the east and to save the Germanness of the World; one of the very great figures of light has found its incarnation in him.” Mr. Himmler submitted to the new Krishna-Christ-Hitler as he had to the old Christ/God, except much more fervently. It must be noted, however, that under the circumstances the new gods offered greater opportunities for fame and power. Can we conclude from this cursory overview that the church and the state must inevitably be in conflict? To some extent the answer is yes. Dual allegiances always create tension. And in a sinful World the struggle for power, which inevitably corrupts, is unavoidable. When the church is not being persecuted, it is being corrupted. So as much as anything else, it is human’s own nature that has created centuries of conflict. While they know that they represent different nations each living under the normal circumstances of their own society, its power and strength in comparison with other nations, nor do they know their place in their own society. Once again the contracting parties, in this case representatives of states, are allowed only enough knowledge to make a rational choice to protect their interests but not so much that the more fortunate among them can take advantage of their special situation. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
However, every generation has an obligation to seek anew a healthy relationship between church and state. Both are reflections of human’s nature; both have a role to play. Christ’s teaching clearly delineates these roles. Jesus was remarkably indifferent to those who held political power. He had no desire to replace Caesar or Pilate with His apostles Peter or John. He gave civil authority its due, rebuking both the Zealots and Peter for using the sword. This infuriated the religious right of His day. Eager to discredit Jesus, the Pharisees and Herodians tried trapping Jesus over the question of allegiance to political authority. “Tell us,” they asked, “is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” The question puts Jesus in the middle: If He said no, He would be a threat to the Roman government; if He said yes, He would lose the respect of the masses who hated the Romans. Jesus asked them for a coin. It was a Roman denarius, the only coin that could be used to pay the hated yearly poll tax. On one side was the image of the Emperor Tiberius, around which were written the words Tiberius, Caesar Augusts, son of the divine Augustus. “Whose portrait is this?” Jesus asked, rubbing His finger over the raised features of the Roman ruler. “And whose inscription?” “Caesar’s,” they replied impatiently. “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s,” replied Jesus, handing the coin back to them. They stared at Jesus in stunned silence. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Not only had Jesus eluded the trap, but He has put Caesar in his place. Christ might simply have said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.” That is all that was at issue. It was Caesar’s image on the coin, and Caesar had authority over the state. What made Jesus add the second phrase, “Give to God what is God’s”? The answer is found on the reverse face of the coin, which showed Tiberius’s mother represented as the goddess of peace, along with the words highest priest. The blasphemous words commanded the worship of Caesar; they thus exceeded the state’s authority. Jesus’ lesson was not lost on the early church. Government is to be respected, and its rule honoured. “It is necessary to submit to the authorities,” wrote the apostle Paul. “If you owe taxes, pay taxes.” However, worship is reserved solely for God. The distinction Christ made is clear; both the church and state have clear and distinct roles ordained by God. The issue is how to apply these teachings to each institution in today’s volatile World. Christ did not give the keys to of the Kingdom to Caesar nor the sword to Peter. In God’s provision the state is not to seize authority over ecclesiastical or spiritual matters, nor is the church to seek authority over political matters. Yet the constant temptation of each is to encroach upon the other. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
The basic principle of the law of nations is a principle of equality. Independent peoples organized as states have certain fundamental equal rights. This principle is analogous to the equal rights of citizens in a constitutional regime. One consequence of this equality of nations is the principle of self-determination, the right of a people to settle its own affairs without the intervention of foreign powers. Another consequence is the right of self-defense against attack, including the right to form defensive alliances to protect this right. A further principle is that treaties are to be kept, provided they are consistent with other principles governing the relations of states. Thus treaties for self-defense, suitably interpreted, would be binding, but agreements to cooperate in an unjustified attack are void ab initio. Even in a just war certain forms of violence are strictly inadmissible; and where a country’s right to war is questionable and uncertain, the constraints on the means it can use are all the more severe. Acts permissible in a war of legitimate self-defense, when these are necessary, may be flatly excluded in a more doubtful situation. The ai of war is a just peace, and therefore the means employed must not destroy the possibility of peace or encourage a contempt for human life that puts the safety of ourselves and of humankind in jeopardy. The conduct of war is to be constrained and adjusted to this end. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
The representatives of states would recognize that their national interest, as seen from the original position, is best served by acknowledging these limits on the means of war. This is because the national interest of a just state is defined by the principles of justice that have already been acknowledged. Therefore such a nation will aim above all to maintain and to preserve its just institutions and conditions that make them possible. It is not moved by the desire for World power or national glory; nor does it wage war for purposes of economic gain or the acquisition of territory. These ends are contrary to the conception of justice that defines a society’s legitimate interests, however prevalent they have been in the actual conduct of states. Granting these presumptions, then, it seems reasonable to suppose that the traditional prohibitions incorporating the natural duties that protect human life would be chosen. Now if conscientious refusal in time of war appeals to these principles, it is founded upon a political conception, and not necessarily upon religious or other nations. While this form of denial may not be a political act, since it does not take place in the public forum, it is based upon the same theory of justice that underlies the constitution and guides its interpretation. Moreover, the legal order itself presumably recognizes in the form of treaties the validity of at least some of these principles of the law of nations. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Therefore if a soldier is ordered to engage in certain illicit acts of war, one may refuse if one reasonably and conscientiously believes that the principles applying to the conduct of war are plainly violated. One can maintain that, all things considered, one’s natural duty not to e made the agent of grave injustice and evil to another outweighs one’s duty to obey. Conscription is a drastic interference with the basic liberties of equal citizenship, it cannot be justified by any needs less compelling than those of national security. Citizens agree to this arrangement as a fair way of sharing in the burdens of national defense. In a well-ordered society anyway, evils arise externally, that is, from unjustified attacks from the outside. It is impossible for just institutions to eliminate these hardships entirely. The most that they can do is to try to make sure that the risks of suffering from these imposed misfortunes are more or less evenly shared by all members of society over the course of their life, and that there is no avoidable class bias in selecting those who are called for duty. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
And, of course, it is unjust and contrary to the law of nations to attack the liberty of other societies without just cause. Therefore if a just case for war does not exist, and this may be sufficiently evident under some circumstances, a citizen is justified in refusing to discharge one’s legal duty. Both the law of nations and the principles of justice for one’s own society uphold one in this claim. It no more challenges the state’s authority than the celibacy of priest challenges the sanctity of marriage. Governments, with rare exceptions, seek to expand their power beyond the mandate to restrain evil, preserve order, and promote justice. Most often they do this by venturing into religious or moral areas. The reason is twofold: the state needs religious legitimization for its polices and an independent church is the one structure that rivals that state’s clam for ultimate allegiance. However, when the state has presumed on God’s role, whether in ancient Rome, in Germany, or modern America, the first liberty, freedom of conscience, suffers. On the other side of the coin, the church, whose principal function is to proclaim the Good News and witness the values of the Kingdom of God, must resist the tempting illusion that it can usher in that Kingdom through political means. Jesus provided the best example for the church in His wilderness confrontation with Satan when the Devil tempted Jesus to worship him and thus take dominion over the kingdom of this World. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
No small temptation. With that kind of power, Christ could enforce the Sermon on the Mount; love and justice could reign. He might have reasoned that if He did not accept, someone else would. This rationalization is popular today, right up through the highest councils of government: compromise to stay in power because there you can do more for the common good. However, as the saying goes, “People who lie down with dogs, get flees.” It is just another way of achieving success by compromising one’s morals and yielding to coercive power. And think of the popularity Jesus could have gained. After all, the people wanted a Messiah who would vanquish their oppressors. However, Jesus understood His mission, and it could not be accomplished by taking over the kingdoms of the World in a political coup. The mission of the church is to build the kingdom of God on Earth, and the means of the mission is politics. We live with both good (the wheat) and evil (the tares), and cannot root out the tares. Only God is able to do that and He will—when the Kingdom comes in its final glory. However, citizens of the World have a duty to work through civil authority for the advancement of justice and human good. They may provide critical illumination, personal example and vocational leadership. There are proper ways as well for the institutional church to provide society with its moral vision and hold government to moral account. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Some Christian traditional similarly believe that they can best model Kingdom values not by involvement in politics but by the establishment of alternative communities in which they live out the teachings of the Kingdom. In its proper form, this is not a withdrawal from the World or abandonment of Christian responsibility; nor is it a privatization of Christian values as with those who profess to believe but live as they do not. Instead a different strategy to the same end of providing a witness in the kingdom of man to the values of the Kingdom of God. While I do not agree with the generally negative view of government held by such groups, I respect the faithfulness by which they live their convictions. This split up of the social order is precisely analogous to the process of growth in biology. Embryos differentiate as they develop, forming more and more specialized organs. The entire march of evolution, from the virus to the man, displays a relentless advance toward higher and higher degrees of differentiation. There appears to be a seemingly irresistible movement of living beings and social groups from less to more differentiated forms. Thus it is not accidental that we witness parallel trends toward diversity—in the economy, in politics, in religion, in art, in education and mass culture, in the social order itself. These trends all fit together forming part of an immensely larger historic process. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
The Super-age of information Revolution can now be seen for what, in large measure, it is—the advance of human society to its next higher stage of differentiation. This is why it often seems to us that our society is cracking at the seams. It is. This is why everything grows increasingly complex. Where once there stood 1,000 organizational entities, there are now at least 21.6 million in America alone—interconnected by increasingly transient links. Where once there were a few relatively permanent subcults with which a person might identify, there are now thousands of temporary subcluts milling about, colliding, and multiplying. The powerful bonds that integrated industrial society—bons of law, common values, centralized and standardized education and cultural production—are breaking down. All this explains why cities suddenly seem to be “unmanageable” and states “ungovernable.” For the old ways of integrating a society, methods based on uniformity, simplicity, and permanence, are not as effective. For the individual, this leap to a new level of differentiation holds awesome implications. However, not for the ones most people fear. We have been told so often that we are heading for faceless uniformity that we fail to appreciate the fantastic opportunities for individuality that the Super-industrial Revolution brings with it. And we have hardly begun to think about the dangers of over-individualization that are also implicit in it. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Therefore keep in mind that the common grace is God’s provision for the welfare of all His created beings, both those who believe in God and those who do not. The human race, far from being flattened into monotonous conformity, will become far more diverse socially than it ever was before. The new society, the super-age of informational society now beginning to take form, will encourage a crazy-quilt pattern of evanescent life styles. The critical dynamic in the church-state tension is separation of institutional authority. Religion and politics cannot be separated—they inevitably overlap—but the institutions of church and state must preserve their separate and distinct roles. In this regard, the American experiment merits closer examination. The Kingdom of God is universal, bound by neither race nor nation. The church was ordained principally for the conversion of men and women—conversion grounded in individual conscience wrought by the supernatural work of a sovereign God upon the soul. So that state could neither successfully establish nor destroy the church, since it could not rule conscience nor transform people’s hearts and soul. Each rational soul has an equal right to judge for oneself, every person has an unalienable right to act in all religious affairs according to the full persuasion of one’s own mind. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Thus two typically mortal enemies, the Enlightenment and the Christian faith, found a patch of common ground on American soil. Both agreed (for different reasons) that the new government should neither establish nor interfere with the church. The religion of every human must be left to the conviction and conscience of every human; and it is the right of every human to exercise it as these may dictate. It was this reasoning, not the right for the news reporters to spread lie, that led to the adoption of the First Amendment, expressly to protect the individual’s right to freedom of conscience and expression, and to prevent the establishment of a state church. However, contrary to the belief of many today, this separation of church and state did not mean that America was to be a nation free of religious influence. From the very beginning the American Revolution itself was seen by many as a rebellion fueled by the conviction that humans are creatures of God, and one’s political life is conditioned by that truth. As James Madison insisted, “This duty [homage to the Creator] is precedent, both in order of time and degree of obligation, to the claims of civil society. Before any human can be considered as a member of civil society, one must be considered as a subject of the governor of the Universe.” A nation under God was no idle phrase. Nor did the separation of church and state mean religion and politics could be separated or religious values removed form the public arena. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
For one’s political life is an expression of values, and religion, by definition, most profoundly influences values. The concept of a “wall of separation,” a phrase incidentally first used by Jefferson fifteen years after the Constitution was adopted, applied to institutions of church and state, not religious and political values. The Founding Father were all aware that the form of limited government they were adopting could only succeed if there was an underlying consensus of values shared by the populace. I am reminded of this when I visit the House of Representatives. A beautiful fresco on the upper walls of the chamber itself contains the portraits of history’s great lawmakers. Standing at the speaker’s desk and looking straight ahead over the main entrance, one’s eyes meet the piercing eyes of the first figure in the series: Moses, the one who recorded the Law from the original Lawgiver. John Adams eloquently acknowledged the understanding of our constitutional framers when in 1798 he wrote: “We have no government armed in power capable of contending with human passion unbridled by morality and religion. Our constitution was made only for moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any others. Many of these original American visionaries believed that Christian citizens would actively bring their religious values to the public forum. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
George Washington faintly echoed Augustine when he asserted, “Of all the dispositions and habit which lead to a political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that men claim that tribute of patriotism, who should labour to subvert these great pillars of human happiness.” Thus, when laws were passed reflecting the consensus of Christian values in the land, no one panicked supposing that the Christian religion was being “established” or that a sectarian morality was being imposed on an unwilling people. The point of the First Amendment was that such convictions could only become the law of the land if a majority of citizens could be persuaded (without coercion), whether they shared the religious foundation or nor, of the merits of a particular proposition. Today’s widespread relegation of religion to merely something people do in the privacy of their homes or churches would be unimaginable to the founders of the republic—even those who personally repudiated orthodox Christian faith. Though America has drifted far from the vision of its founders, this system continues to offer one of the World’s most hopeful models in an otherwise contentious history of conflict #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
The record of the centuries should not cause despair, however. Tensions between church and state is inherent and inevitable. Indeed, it is perhaps the outworking of one of God’s great mysteries, part of the dynamic by which He governs His Universe. For from the constant tension—the chafing back and forth—a certain equilibrium is achieved. To maintain this balance the church and the state must fulfill their respective role. One cannot survive without the other; yet neither can do the work of the other. Both operate under God’s rule, each in a different relationship to that rule. Certainly one thing is clear. When they fail in their appointed tasks—that is, when the church fails to be the visible manifestation of the Kingdom of God and the state fails to maintain justice and concord—civic order collapses. The consequences can be catastrophic and tumultuous events demonstrate that. To confess that intellectually we know nothing about the Absolute is understandable. However, to say that therefore we should leave its existence entirely out of our intellectual World-view, is not. For although that exact definition and direct explanation of the spirit is unable to catch the whole of this subtle experience within our receiving range because it is turned into ordinary human intellectual, emotional, and physical experience, by studying the spirit we may nevertheless evoke an intuitive recognition of its beauty; we may be able to better understand the world of the soul and the spirit may arouse the first aspirations towards spiritual enlightenment. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Spiritual enlightenment is the topic most worth writing about yet least understood. Whoever has entered into a partial understanding—it would be too much to demand more—of it, bears some responsibility. One must communicate with one’s fellows. Because the Real is beyond the thinking intellect’s grasp, it cannot be formulated into ideas. Yet because we need signpost and a goal to give guidance and direction, we must tentatively and provisionally formulate it. Dear Lord in shining in Heaven, I drop my fears into your ocean and watch them sink from sight. I place my fears on your broad Earth and see them rot away. I put my fears into your hands and they are no more. When you offer your arms to me, Great Father, your hands hold nothing but love. We sanctify Thy name on Earth even as it is sanctified in the shining Heavens above, as described in the vision of Thy Prophet: And the seraphim called one unto another saying: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole Earth is full of His glory. Whereupon the angels in stirring and mighty chorus rise toward the seraphim and with resounding acclaim declare: Blessed be the glory of God from His Heavenly abode. From Thy Heavenly abide, please reveal Thyself, O our King, and reign over us, for we wait for Thee. O when wilt Thy reign in America? Speedily, even in our days, do Thou establish Thy dwelling here forever. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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Papa—or—His Educational Surrogate—Knows Best!
All illness comes from sin. This everyone must take, whether they like it or not; it comes from sin—where it be of the body, of mind, or of soul. However, it may not be caused by the individual’s sin, but it comes from sin. While certain part of Europe and Japan are still building their first all-purpose supermarkets, the United State of America has already leaped to the next stage—the creation of specialized super-stores that widen still further (indeed, almost beyond belief) the variety of goods available to the consumer. In Washington, D.C., one such store specializes in foreign foods, offering such delicacies as hippopotamus steak, alligator meat, wild snow hare, and thirty-five different kinds of honey. The idea that primitive industrial techniques foster uniformity, while advanced automated techniques favour diversity, is dramatized by recent changes in the automobile industry. The widespread introduction of European, Japanese, and Korean cars into the American market has opened many new options for the buyer—increasing one’s choice from a dozen to nearly 300 car models in 2021. Today even this wide range of choice seems narrow and constricted. Faced with foreign competition, Detroit had to shutdown during the economic crises of 2008. However, Detroit is back to producing General Motors, Ford Motors, and Fiat Chrysler. To increase demand, General Motors, Ford Motors, and Fiat Chrysler are offer 0 percent financing of up to 84 months as well as big discounts on vehicles. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
While United States retail sales were down by about 41 percent during March and April, they have been more resilient than expected during the coronavirus pandemic, according to J.D. Power. When the “stay at home” or “shelter-in-place” orders were initially enacted some expected United States sales to fall by up to 80 percent. “We continue to see evidence that we are over the worst and we are firmly in recover,” reports Thomas Kind, J.D. Power president of data and analytics. They found that customers want cars that will give them the illusion of having-one-of-a-kind. For instance, BMW has an E26 M1 vehicle and only 453 M1 models were manufacture, approximately 54 vehicles are used for the Group 4 Pro Cars series, so they are highly coveted and desirable. BMW also only manufactured 20 examples of the “Frozen Black” E92 M3. These came standard with the Competition Package, DCT transmission, red brake calipers and red contrast stitching among other cosmetic updates. To provide that illusion for the mass consumer, the computerized assembly systems make possible not merely the illusion, but the reality. Thus the beautiful and spectacularly successful Mustang is promoted by Ford as “the one you design yourself,” because, as critic Reyner Banham explains, there “is not a dung-regular Mustang any more,” just a stockpile of options to meld in combinations of 3 (bodies) X 4 (engines) X 3 (transmissions) X 4 (basic sets of high-performance engine modifications) – 1 (rock-bottom six cylinder car to which these modification do not apply) + 2 (Shelby grand-touring and racing set-ups applying to only one body shell and not all engine/transmission combinations).” #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
This does not even take into account the possible variations in colour, upholstery and optional equipment. Both car buyers and auto sales representatives are increasingly disconcerted by the sheer multiplicity of options. The buy’s problem of choice has become far more complicated, the addition of each option creating the need for more information, more decisions and sub-decisions. Thus, anyone who has attempted to buy a car lately, as I have, soon finds that the task of learning about the various brands, lines, models and options (even within a fixed price range) requires days of shopping and reading. The auto industry may soon reach the point at which its technology can economically produce more diversity than the consumer needs or wants. BMW has already started accommodating this trend by alternating production of two of their high-end, large, luxury coupes. Both are very nice and expensive, but experts notice that when the economy is under preforming, BMW tends to produce the 6 Series and cancels the 8 Series, but when the market is doing really well, BMW cancels the 6 Series and produces the slightly more expensive 8 Series. The benefit of this kind of marketing makes these two cars hard to find and highly desirable, and buyers may hold on to their model as they anticipate the release of the next generation. It is also good for the pre-owned market because some buyers fall in love with a body style and do not care if it is not brand it. That is the car they want, no matter the year or cost, they buyer must have that car. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
Marshall McLuhan has noted that, “Even today, most United States automobiles are, in a sense, custom-produced. Figuring all possible combinations of styles, options and colours available on a certain new family sports car, for example, a computer expert came up with 25,000,000 different versions of it for a buyer. When automated electronic production reaches full potential, it will be just about as inexpensive to turn out a million differing objects as a million exact duplicates. The only limits on production and consumption will be the human imagination.” We are, in fact, racing toward “over-choice”—the point at which the advantages of diversity and individualization are cancelled by the complexity of the buyer’s decision-making process. Does any of this matter? Some people argue that diversity in the material environment is insignificant so long as we are racing toward cultural or spiritual homogeneity. “It is what is inside that counts,” they say, paraphrasing a well-known burrito commercial. This view gravely underestimates the importance of material goods as symbolic expressions of human personality differences, and it glibly denies a connection between the inner and outer environment. Those who fear the standardization of human beings should warmly welcome the destandardization of goods. For by increasing the diversity of good available to a human we increase the mathematical probability of differences in the way humans actually live. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
More important, however, is the very premise that we are racing toward cultural homogeneity, since a close look at this also suggests that just the opposite is true. It is unpopular to say this, but we are moving swiftly toward fragmentation and diversity not only in material production, but in art education and mass culture as well. One highly revealing test of cultural diversity in any literate society has to do with the number of different books published per million; the more diverse these tastes, the greater the number of titles. The increase or decrease of this figure over time is a significant clue to the direction of cultural change in the society. The more advanced the technology in a country, the greater the likelihood that it would be moving in the direction of literary diversity and away from uniformity. The same push toward pluralism is evident in painting, too, where we find an almost incredibly wide spectrum of production. Representationalism, expressionism, surrealism, abstract expressionism, hardedge, pop, kinetic, and a hundred other styles are pumped into the society at the same time. One or another may dominate the galleries temporarily, but there are no universal standards or styles. It is a pluralistic market. When art was a tribal-religious activity, the painter worked for the whole community. Later one worked for a single small aristocratic elite. Still later the audience appeared as a single undifferentiated mass. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
Today one faces a large audience split into a milling mass of sub-groups. According to John McHale: “The most uniform cultural contexts are typically primitive enclaves. The most striking feature of our contemporary ‘mass’ culture is the vast range and diversity of its alternative cultural choices. The ‘mass,’ on even cursory examination, breaks down into many different ‘audiences.’” Indeed, artists no longer attempt to work for a universal public. Even when they think they are doing so, they are usually responding to the tastes and styles preferred by one or another sub-group in the society. Like the manufacturers of pancake syrup and automobiles, artists, too, produce for “mini-markets.” And as these markets multiply, artists output diversifies. The push for diversity, meanwhile, is igniting bitter conflict in education. Every since the rise of industrialism, education in the New World, and particularly in the United States of America, has been organized for the mass production of basically standardized educational packages. It is not accidental that at the precise moment when the consumer has begun to demand and obtain greater diversity, the same moment when new technology promises to make destandardization possible, a wave of revolt has begun to sweep the college campus. Though the connection is seldom noticed, events on the campus and events in the consumer market are intimately connected. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Ne basic complaint of the student is that one is not treated as an individual, that one is served up an undifferentiated gruel, rather than a personalized product. Like the BMW E26 M1 and Mustang buyer, the student wants to design one’s own education. The difference is that while industry is highly responsive to consumer demand, education typically has been indifferent to student wants. (In one case we say, “the customer knows best”; in the other, we insist that “Papa—or his educational surrogate—knows best.”) Thus the student-consumer is forced to fight to make the education industry responsive to one’s demand for diversity. While most colleges and universities have greatly broadened the variety of their course offerings, they are still wedded to complex standardizing systems based on degrees, majors and the like. These systems lay down basic tracks along which all students must progress. While educators are rapidly multiplying the number of alternative path, the pace of diversification is by no means swift enough for the students. This explains why young people have set up “para—universities”—experimental colleges and so-called free universities—in which each student is free to choose what one wishes from a mind-shattering smorgasbord of courses that range from guerrilla tactics and stock market techniques to Christian ethics, morals and values, and “underground theater.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Long before the year 2040 A.D., the entire antiquated structure of degrees, majors, and credits will be a shambles. No two students will move along exactly the same educational track. For the students now pressuring higher education to destandardize, to move toward the super-age of informational diversity, will win their battle. Perhaps corporations will for their own universities and start recruiting kids out of high school, who score well on their standardized test. Perhaps public schools will be divided and sponsored by corporations, which will allow children to choose the type of enrichment material they want to learn, then the corporations will pick the brightest minds, the ones that show the most creativity to educate in their universities, and more than grades will matter. They will truly see who is excelling and genuinely cares about what they learn, even if they do not preform well on tests. That will be a way to diversify education and train people from crib to coffin to be the kind of employee you want. It is significant, for example, that one of the chief results of the student strikes in France was a massive decentralization of the university system. Decentralization makes possible greater regional diversity, local authority to alter curriculum, student regulations and administrative practices. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Many people in America are already demanding that the entire school system be cut up into smaller “community-run” school systems. Some African Americans and other ethnic groups are requesting that their kids are allowed to take history from their culture’s perspective in grade school. Some religious groups want religious based public schools. They want greater parental involvement with the schools than is possible in the present large, bureaucratic and ossified system. It claims, in short, the right to be different. And these might be viable choices. For instance, in the state of Utah, the cities Salt Lake City and Highland may have a large number of Mormons and a public school based on Mormon values may be something that the community wants for their children. Or in Sacramento, California in the Pocket/Greenhaven neighbourhood, history from an Asian American’s perspective might be something that that community desires. Other schools in the Sacramento area may want English classes that have books from African American authors. These types of programs could be a way to build the community, teach the children to appreciate their heritage, increase tax revenue and attendance in certain communities, and improve academic performance. Or children in Rancho Cordova, California may want to attend an architectural high school where the curriculum focuses more calculus and analytic geometry, architectonics, history of architecture, and environments. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Different types of educational and community-based education, in short, claims the right to be different. Of it will require families to be more stable and have an attachment to their community. If they is not always possible for parents, that is were professional parenting may come into play, where people are willing to foster children so they can remain in the community and attend school. Or we may need for organizations in communities like the Ecumenical Institute. Perhaps a corporation can purchase a block of McMansions and they can have professional parents raise children and have the educated and these specialized schools in the community. The essential issue is allowing children to have a safe place, where they can learn, be safe, and have a fair chance at life. Because as it stands, by fixing city-wide standards and curricula, by choosing texts and personnel on a city-wide basis, leaders have imposed considerable uniformity on the schools and if America is going to stay a World Super Power, we need to get each and every student to tune in and work hard. The days of being spoiled and living a leisure life are over. We need students to be interested in their education and they need the help to be successful. We need to generate local variety in public education by turning over control of the schools to community authorities. Otherwise, failure to diversify education within the system will simply lead to the growth of alternative educational opportunities outside the system. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
Thus we have today the suggestions of prominent educators and sociologist, including Kenneth B. Clark and Christopher Jencks, for the creatin of new schools outside of, and competitive with, the official public school systems. Mr. Clark has called for regional and state schools, federal schools, schools run by colleges, trade unions, corporations and even military units. Such competing schools would, he contends, help create the diversity that education desperately needs. Simultaneously, in a less formal way, a variety of “para-schools” are already being established by young, successful parents and other groups who find the mainstream educational system too homogenous. We see here, therefore, a major cultural force in the society—education—being pushed to diversify its output, exactly as the economy is doing. And here, exactly as in the realm of material production, the new technology, rather than fostering standardization, carries us toward super-industrial diversity. Computers, for example, make it easier for large school to schedule more flexibly. They make it easier for the school to cope with independent study, with a wider range of course offerings and more varied extracurricular activities. More important, computer-assisted education, programmed instruction and other such techniques, despite popular misconceptions, radically enhance the possibility of diversity in the classroom. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Computer-assisted education techniques permit each student to advance at one’s own purely personal pace. They permit one to follow a custom-cut path toward knowledge, rather than a rigid syllabus as in the traditional industrial era classroom. Aaliyah Haughton, for instance, went to a performing arts high school, scored well and became a successful actor, model, and singer. Moreover, in the educational World of tomorrow, that relic of mass production, the centralized work place, will also become less important. Just as economic mass production required large numbers of students to be assembled in factories, educational mass production required large numbers of students to be assembled in schools. This itself, with its demands for uniform discipline, regular hours, attendance checks and the like, was a standardizing force. Advanced technology will, in the future, make much of this unnecessary. A good deal of education will take place in the student’s own room at home or in a dorm, at hours of one’s own choosing. With vast libraries of data available to one via computerized information retrieval systems, with one’s own tapes and video units, one’s own language laboratory and one’s own electronically equipped study carrel, one will be freed, for much of the time, of the restrictions and unpleasantness that dogged one in the lockstep classrooms. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
The technology upon which these new freedoms will be based will inevitably spread through the schools in the years ahead—aggressively pushed, no doubt, my major corporations like Cisco, Microsoft, IBM, and Xerox. Within the next 30 years, the educational systems of the United States of America, and several Western European countries as well, will have broken decisively with the mass production pedagogy of the past, and will have advanced into an era of educational diversity based on the liberating power of the new machines. In education, therefore, as in the production of material goods, the society is shifting irresistibly away from, rather than toward, standardization. It is not simply a matter of varies automobiles, detergents, and syrup. The social thrust toward diversity and increased individual choice affects our mental, as well as our material surroundings. One of the functions of intuition is to protect the body against unnecessary sickness by warning the human in it when one is transgressing the laws of its hygiene, or by showing the right road. In this, intuition is pitted against the body’s past habits and animal appetites, the emotional nature’s desires, as well as the mind’s ignorance immaturity and inexperience—a combination of enemies which usually triumphs over it. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
Another of its functions is to protect the human against avoidable calamity or preventable loss, by consciously moving one out of its reach. However, here it has opposed to it the egoistic desires and habits or the emotional impulses and negative feelings which perceive only the immediate and not the impending, the semblance of things and not the actuality. The intuitive life does not always know how or why it acts, for it is often spontaneous and unconscious. However, when it does become at times intellectually self-conscious, its power in the World to affect humans is heightened, not lessened. Like Socrates we possess an inner warning voice which forbids certain course of action but does not recommend better ones. It is negative and not positive. Intuition—which is called the surest road to truth—eradicates hesitancies. When you are in contact with God in solving a problem, you receive a direct command what to do and you then know it is right. The clouds and hesitancies and vacillations which arise when struggling between contrary points of view, melt. Whereas, if you are not in contact with God, but only being carried along through universal law, then you swing back and forth with emotion or opinion. One is indeed fortunate whose intuition shows itself in one impelling thought strong enough to outclass all other conflicting thoughts. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
The uncomfortable feeling that something is wrong may combat the smooth plausible appearance of everything being right. One can depend on one thing alone to show one the right roads and the right master. It is intuition. If one’s reason governs one’s body and one’s intuition governs one’s reason, a human’s life will be less troubled and one’s happiness more secured. If a human acts according to intuitive wisdom, all will go well with one. This is not to say that one will be free from external misfortunes. However, if they come, they will be of the unavoidable kind and therefore less in number than if they included those of one’s own direct making. And even the others will be turned to profit in some way by the search for their underlying meanings, so that although humanity calls them evil, one will nevertheless gain some inner good from them. If one is sensitive enough and can touch the intuitive element within oneself, either deliberately by sheer power of deeply introspective concentration or spontaneously by immediate acceptance of its suggestive messages, one’s decisions will be filled with utter conviction and followed with resolute determination. One may be sure of this, that whatever action God’s leading causes one to take will always be for one’s ultimate good even thought it may be to one’s immediate and apparent detriment. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
There is the feeling of being led, but not the ability to see where, and to what, one is being led. To the degree that the intuitive element can displace all others for the rulership of one’s inner life, to that degree can a healing and guiding calm displace the emotion of moods and commotion of thought. To say what the Absolute is not, to describe it in negatives, is correct so far as it goes but is not so satisfactory. The terms Void or Space, being more positive, are even better. Space is a good metaphor of Mind. In one aspect it is bounded, in another it is infinite. Mind also is static and dynamic, still active, within Universes yet transcending them all. Where is the being who has ever known the unknowable and indescribable Supreme Godhead? For all humans came into existence after it already was there. However, whoever receives knowledge by tradition, investigation, or intuition, by meditation, revelation or even by science leading into metaphysics, by art or poetry or literature, may acquire the tremendous certitude that it is there. More—it must always have been there. That which transcends even the high Worldly authorities, even World-Mind, is unthinkable and unimaginable. Therefore it is without name or form, beyond all contact with the senses, beginningless and endless, neither growing nor diminishing, indestructible, free from any relations or comparisons—this Undefinable Mystery of Mysteries. Let no one seek it, for one cannot find IT. However, one can know that it is there and, through its manifestations, the God, worship IT. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
All human explanation of the nature of Mind, as all human expositions of the working of the World-Mind, are limited forms of language. This cannot be helped. It is outside time in a Now beyond the successive character of human thinking and incomprehensible to it. Yet intellect, though it cannot enter this Grand Mystery, can at its most brilliant perception infer that it is. Try as it might, the finite thinking mind cannot break through this sound-barrier of mystery which surrounds the Unique Being, That which is ever the same. All thoughts simply pile up, leaving the last one unanswered, if not unanswerable, or else ending in an involved labyrinth from which there is no outlet. IT cannot be investigated, but the fact of its necessary existence can be stated more emphatically than any other of the innumerable or observable facts. Both church and state assert standards and values in society; both seek authority; both compete for allegiance. As members of both the religious and the political spheres, the Christian is bound to face conflict. The conflict is particularly apparent in the Judeo-Christian tradition because of the assertion that the God of both the Old and New Testament Scriptures is King. That has been an offense to some of the proud and powerful since the beginning—and the reason many Jewish and Christians alike have been systematically persecuted. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
The tensions between the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms of humans runs like an unbroken thread through the history of the past two thousand years. It began not long after Christ’s birth. In the end one will have to confess, as the English hermit Richard Rolle confessed over six hundred years ago, despite one’s deep mystical experiences, that it is not possible to know what God is but only that He is. When the last words have been uttered, the final sentences written down; when the sermons, books, and articles have exhausted all that human intellect and human intuition can explain, suggest, or hint; when the profoundest mystical experience has yielded all that it could reveal, there will still remain an awed feeling before the Grand Mystery that is God, a tremendous humility before Its unknowableness. Because there is nothing quite like it in human experience and because there is no opposite in the entire cosmos from which it can be differentiated, the Absolute Being remains utterly incomprehensible to human intellect. The mystery of That Which Is baffles not only the comprehension of the ordinary mind but also that of the philosophic mind. There is an abyss which no human can cross, a mystery which remains utterly impenetrable to one. This is the transcendent Godhead. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
We can know as much, and as little, of God as the wave dashing against the Californian coastline can know of the immense ocean stretching so many thousand miles to the Australian shore: such is human insignificance in relation to that activity of God which is directed to thus Universe. However, in relation to that non-activity which is God-in-itself, at rest, we can know absolutely nothing. For here is Being without end, Mind without individualization of any kind, and Life without any bottom or top to it. The Unfathomable Mystery of Mind will always remain. Despite all the absurd claims to the contrary, no one has ever interpreted to us the great Mystery of mysteries, the Godhead behind the God active in the Universe. The more righteous a people become the more they are qualified for loving others and rendering them happy. A wicked human can have but little love for one’s wife; while a righteous human, being filled with the love of God, is sure to manifest this Heavenly attribute in every thought and feeling of one’s heart, and in every word and deed. Love, joy, and innocence will radiate from one’s very countenance, and be expressed in every look. This will beget confidence in the love of one’s heart; for love beget love; happiness imparts happiness; and these Heaven born emotions will continue to increase more and more, until they are perfected and glorified in all the fulness of eternal love itself. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
True love of one human for another always includes the love of God from whom all good things issue. Without a strong commitment to the Lord, an individual is more prone to have a low level of commitment to a spouse. Weak commitments to eternal covenants lead to losses of eternal consequence. If two people are earnestly and faithfully observing all the ordinances and principles of the gospels, there could not arise any cause for divorce. The joy and happiness pertaining to the marriage relationship will grow sweeter, and spouses will become more and more attached to each other as the days go by. Not only will the husband love the wife and the wide the husband, but children born to them will live in an atmosphere of love and harmony. The love of each for the others will not be impaired, and moreover the love of all towards our Eternal Father and His Son Jesus Christ will be more firmly rooted in their soul. The Lord said, “Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 42.22. This kind of love can be shown for your wives in so many ways. First and foremost, nothing except God Himself takes priority over your wife in your life—not work, not recreation, not hobbies. What does it mean to love someone with all you heart? #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
To love someone with all of your heart means to love that individual with all your emotional feelings and with all your devotion. You cannot demean her, criticize her, find fault with her. What does it mean to cleave unto her? It means to stay close to her, to be loyal and faith to her, to communicate with her, and to express your love for her. It does not mean be like Evan Chambers, a young heir to a media conglomerate, from Greek thr TV show. His mother gave him a multi-million dollar trust fund in college, and a $100,000.00 German sports car, but he had to sign a contract stating he could only drive his car on approved trips and could not marry until he was 25. So, Evan took this as a sign that meant he was not supposed to genuinely love anyone, spend lavishly on his friends, and be a suave playboy. However, love means being sensitive to the feelings of the person you are with. Husbands, recognize your wife’s intelligence and her ability to counsel with you. Give her the opportunity to grow intellectually, emotionally, and socially as well as spiritually. Remember, brethren, love can be nurtured and nourished by little tokens. Flowers on special occasions are wonderful, but so is your willingness to help with the dishes, vacuum the carpet, get up with a crying child in the night, or leave the television or the newspaper to help with dinner. Those are the quiet ways we say, “I love you,” with our actions. They bring rich dividends for such little effort. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
If two people love the Lord more than their own lives and then love each other more than their own lives, working together in total harmony with the gospel program as their basic structure, they are sure to have this great happiness. When a husband and wife go together frequently to the holy temple, kneel in prayer together in their home with their family, go hand and hand to their religious meetings, keep their religious meetings, keep their lives wholly chaste—mentally and physically—so that their whole thoughts and desires and loves are all centered in the one being, their companion and both work together for the upbuilding of the kingdom of God then happiness is at its pinnacle. Moroni tells us that this highest of Christian virtues is more accurately labeled, “The pure love of Christ.” And it endures forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well him [and her]. “Wherefore, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he has bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons [and daughters] of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may be purified even as he is pure,” reports Moroni 7.47-48. True charity, the absolutely pure, perfect love of Christ, has really been known only once in this World—in the form of Christ Himself, the living Son of the living God. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
As in everything, Christ is the only one who got it all right, did it all perfectly, loved the way we are all to try to love. However, even though we fall short, that divine standard is there for us. It is a goal toward which we are to keep reaching, keep striving—and, certainly, a goal to keep appreciating. God of justice, may I not complain at what fate has brought to me. Please cleave my night with your lightning-axe, dividing my troubles into ones I can bear. O Lord, please open my lips and my mouth shall declare Thy praise. May my words of you be as sweet and beautiful as honey and more precious than silver and gold, diamonds and rubies. Praised art Thou, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, mighty, revered and exalted God. Thou bestowest lovingkindness and possesses all things. Mindful of the patriarchs’ love for Thee, Thou wilt in Thy love bring a redeemer to their children’s children, and their children’s children for the sake of Thy name. O King, Thou Helper, Redeemer and Shield, be Thou praised, O Lord, Shield of America. Thou, O Lord art mighty forever. Thou callest the dead to immortal life for Thou art mighty in deliverance. Our solutions to life’s problems are always gospel solutions. Not only are answers found in Christ, but so is the power, the gift, the bestowal, the miracle of giving and receiving those answers. In this matter of love no doctrine could be mor encouraging to us than that. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Love, as Defined by the Lord, Elevates, Protects, Respects, and Enriches Another!
Good-bye, good night. Merry Christmas. God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth. What seems to be reasonable conditions for engaging in civil disobedience, and can we connect these conditions more systematically with the place of civil disobedience in a state of near justice? Of course, the conditions enumerated should be taken as presumptions; no doubt there will be situations when they do not hold, and other arguments could be given for civil disobedience. The first point concerns the kinds of wrongs that are appropriate objects of civil disobedience. Now if one views such disobedience as a political act addressed to the sense of justice of the community, then it seems reasonable, other things equal, to limit it to instances of substantial and clear injustice, and preferably to those which obstruct the path to removing other injustices. For this reason there is a presumption in favour of restricting civil disobedience to serious infringements of the first principle of justice, the principle of equal liberty, and to blatant violations of the second part of second principle, the principle of fair equality of opportunity. Of course, it is not always easy to tell whether these principles are satisfied. Still, if we think of them as guaranteeing the basic liberties, it is often clear that these freedoms are not being honoured. After all, they impose certain strict requirements that must be visibly expressed in institutions. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Thus when certain marginalized members of the population are denied the right to vote or to hold office, or to own property and to move from place to place, or when certain religious groups are repressed and others denied various opportunities, these injustices may be obvious to all. They are publicly incorporated into the recognized practice if not the letter, of social arrangements. The establishment of these wrongs does not presuppose an informed examination of institutional effects. By contrast infractions of the difference principle are more difficult to ascertain. There is usually a wide range of conflicting yet rational opinion as to whether this principle is satisfied. The reason for this is that is applied primarily to economic and social institutions and policies. A choice among these depends upon theoretical and speculative beliefs as well as upon a wealth of statistical and other information, all of this seasoned with shrewd judgement and speculative beliefs as well as upon a wealth of statistical and other information, all of this seasoned with shrewd judgment and plain hunch. In view of the complexities of these questions, it is difficult to check the influence of self-interest and prejudice; and even if we can do this in our own case, it is another matter to convince others of our good faith. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
Thus unless tax laws, for example, are clearly designed to attack or to abridge a basic equal liberty, they should not normally be protested by civil disobedience. The appeal to the public’s conception of justice is not sufficiently clear. The resolution of these issues is best left to the political process provided that the requisite equal liberties are secure. In this case a reasonable compromise can presumably be reached. The violation of the principle of equal liberty is, then, the more appropriate object of civil disobedience. This principle defines the common status of equal citizenship in a constitutional regime and lies at the basis of the political order. When it is fully honoured the presumption is that other injustices, while possibly persistent and significant, will not get out of hand. A further condition for civil disobedience is the following. We may suppose that the normal appeals to the political majority have already been made in good faith and that they have failed. The legal means of redress have proved of no avail. Thus, for example, the existing political parties have shown themselves indifferent to the claims of the minority or have proved unwilling to accommodate them. Attempts to have the laws repealed have been ignored and legal protests and demonstrations have had no success. Since civil disobedience is a last resort, we should be sure that it is necessary. Note that it has been said, however, tat legal means have been exhausted. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
At any rate, further normal appeals can be repeated; free speech is always possible. However, if past actions have shown the majority immovable or apathetic, further attempts may reasonably be thought fruitless, and a second condition for justified civil disobedience is met. This condition is, however, a presumption. Some cases may be so extreme tat there may be no duty to use first only legal means of political opposition. If, for example, the legislature were to enact some outrageous violations of equal liberty, say by forbidding the religion of a weak and defenseless minority, we surely could not expect that sect to oppose the law by normal political procedures. Indeed, even civil disobedience might be much too mild, the majority having already convicted itself of wantonly unjust and overtly hostile aims. The third and last condition being considered is rather complicated. It arises from the fact that while the two preceding conditions are often sufficient to justify civil disobedience, this is not always the case. In certain circumstances the natural duty of justice may require a certain restraint. We can see this as follows. If a certain minority is justified in engaging in civil disobedience, then any other minority is relevantly similar circumstances is likewise justified. Using the two previous conditions as the criteria of relevantly similar circumstances, we can say that, other things equal, two minorities are similarly justified in resorting to civil disobedience if they have suffered for the same length of time for the same degree of injustice and if their equally sincere and normal political appeals have likewise been to no avail. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
It is conceivable, however, even if it is unlikely, that there should be many groups with an equally sound case (in the sense just defined) for being civilly disobedient; but that, if they were all to act in this way, serious disorder would follow which might well undermine the efficacy of the just constitution. I assume here that there is a limit in the extent to which civil disobedience can be engaged in without leading to a breakdown in the respect for law and the constitution, thereby setting in motion consequences unfortunate for all. There is also an upper bound on the ability of the public forum to handle such forms of dissent; the appeal that civilly disobedient groups wish to make can be distorted and their intention to appeal to the sense of justice of the majority lost sight of. For one or both of these reasons, the effectiveness of civil disobedience as a form of protest declines beyond a certain point; and those contemplating it must consider these constraints. The ideal solution from a theoretical point of view calls for cooperative political alliance of the minorities to regulate the overall level of dissent. For consider the nature of the situation: there are many groups each equally entitled to engage in civil disobedience. Moreover they all wish to exercise this right, equally strong in each case; but if they all do so, lasting injury may result to the just constitution to which they each recognize a natural duty of justice. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
Now when there are many equally strong claims which if taken together exceed what can be granted, some fair plan should be adopted so that all are equitably considered. In simple cases of claims to goods that are indivisible and fixed in number, some rotation or lottery scheme may be the fair solution when the number of equally valid claims is too great. However, this sort of device is completely unrealistic here. What seems called for is a political understanding among the minorities suffering from injustice. They can meet their duty to democratic institutions by coordinating their actions so that while each has an opportunity to exercise its right, the limits on the degree of civil disobedience are not exceeded. To be sure, an alliance of this sort is difficult to arrange; but with perceptive leadership, it does not appeal impossible. Certainly the situation envisaged is a special one, and it is quite possible that these sorts of consideration will not be a bar to justified civil disobedience. There are not likely to be many groups similarly entitled to engage in this form of dissent while at the same time recognizing a duty to a just constitution. One should not, however, that an injured minority is tempted to believe its claims as strong as those of any other; and therefore even if the reasons that different groups have for engaging in civil disobedience are not equally compelling, it is often wise to presume that their claims are indistinguishable. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Adopting this maxim, the circumstances imagined seems more likely to happen. This kind of case is also instructive in showing that the exercise of the right to dissent, like the exercise of rights generally, is sometimes limited by others having the very same right. Everyone’s exercising this right would have deleterious consequences for all, and se equitable plan is called for. Suppose that in the light of the three conditions, one has a right to appeal one’s case by civil disobedience. Thus injustice one protests is a clear violation of the liberties of equal citizenship, or of equality of opportunity, this violation having been more or less deliberate over an extended period of time in the face of normal political opposition, and any complications raised by the question of fairness are met. These conditions are not exhaustive; some allowance still has to be made for the possibility of injury to third parties, to the innocent, so to speak. However, I assume that they cover the main points. There is still, of course, the question whether it is wise or prudent to exercise this right. Having established the right, one is now free, as one is not before, to let these matters decide the issue. If our conduct only serves to provoke the harsh retaliation of the majority, we may be acting within our rights but nevertheless unwisely. To be sure, in a state of near justice, vindictive repression of legitimate dissent is unlikely, but it is important that the action be properly designed to make an effective appeal to the wider community. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Since civil disobedience is a mode of address taking place in the public forum, care must be taken to see that it is understood. Thus the exercise of the right to civil disobedience should, like any other right, be rationally framed to advance one’s ends or the ends of those one wishes to assist. The theory of justice has nothing specific to say about these practical considerations. In any event questions of strategy and tactics depend upon the circumstances of each case. However, the theory of justice should say at what point these matters are properly raised. Now in this account of the justification of civil disobedience I have not mentioned the principle of fairness. The natural duty of justice is the primary basis of our political ties to a constitutional regime. As we noted before only the more favoured members of society are likely to have a clear political obligation as opposed to a political duty. They are better situated to win public office and find it easier to take advantage of the political system. And having done so, they have acquired an obligation owed to citizens generally to uphold the just constitution. However, members of subjected minorities, say, who have a strong case for civil disobedience will not generally have a political obligation of this sort. This does not mean, however, that the principle of fairness will not give rise to important obligations in their case. For not only do many of the requirements of private life derive from this principle, but it comes into force wen persons or groups come together for common political purposes. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Just as we acquire obligations to others with whom we have joined in various private associations, those who engage in political action assume obligatory ties to one another. Thus while the political obligation of dissenters to citizens generally is problematical, bonds of loyalty and fidelity still develop between them as they seek to advance their cause. In general, free association under a just constitution give rise to obligations provided that the ends of the group are legitimate and its arrangements fair. This is as true of political as it is of other associations. These obligations are of immense significance and they constrain in many ways what individuals can do. However, they are distinct from an obligation to comply with a just constitution. My discussion of civil disobedience is in terms of the duty of justice alone; a fuller view would note the place of these other requirements. When religion is allowed to invade public life, things have come to a pretty pass when. Slavery, for instance, was a very unjust institution. People were packed into a dark bottom of a ship, barely able to breathe because of the stench of human waste and vomit, as they lay chest to back, legs drawn into a fetal position, feet resting on the heads of those in the next row. Some were taken prisoner during tribal wars. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Others were jailed as petty criminals; and many had been unsuspecting dinner guests of Englishmen visiting their country. However, all had been forcibly enslaved and held in a stockade on the African coast until sold to the highest bidder. That bidder was the captain in the cabin above. Once purchased they had been branded and rowed to the schooner waiting offshore, their screams and cries ignored by the seamen who hoisted them abroad and chained them in the stinking hold. For the women, however, there was a further torture. The crew, diseases and ill-treated themselves, claimed the one sordid privilege of their trade—the pick of the slave women. Once under way, the ship had become half bedlam, half brothel. Now, several weeks into the voyage, sixty slaves had already died. Fever had taken some. Others, driven insane by the horror of their lot, had been killed by the crew. Each morning when the lower decks were opened, several dead or near-dead bodies were thrown to the sharks trailing the ship. The captain cursed as the bodies hit the choppy water. Each body overboard meant lost profits. For those who survived the hellish three-month journey, an equally gruesome future awaited. They would be auctioned naked in the marketplace to planter who would work them to death on their Caribbean plantations. Never again would these African men and women see their homeland. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
Thousands of miles to the north, in a country that profited richly from this human misery, another man sat at his desk. He too gazed into darkness still filled his second-floor library at Number 4 Old Palace Yard, London. Only his piercing blue eyes reflected the turmoil of his thoughts as he eyed the jumble of pamphlets on his cluttered desk. He ran his hand through his wavy hair and opened his Bible to begin the day, as was his custom, with Scripture reading and prayer. However, his thoughts kept returning to the pamphlets, grisly accounts of human flesh sold like mutton for the profit of his countrymen. No matter how be tried, William Wilberforce could not wipe these scenes from his mind. William Wilberforce was the only son of prosperous merchant parents. High society revolved around romantic intrigue and adulterous affairs. An upper-class couple might not be seen together in public for weeks during the social season, for no popular hostess would invite a husband and wife to the same event. The poor, of course, had no such opportunity to escape from one another. Crammed together in shabby dwellings, they were cogs grinding out a living in the Empire’s emerging industrial machines. Pale children worked eighteen hours a day in cotton mills or coal mines to bring homes a few shillings a month to parents who often wasted in on inexpensive gin. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
London was a city where unchecked passions and desires ran their course. Few raised their voice in opposition. So it is not surprising that few argued against one of the nation’s most bountiful sources of wealth—the slave trade. In fact, the trade was both a successful business and a national policy. Political alliances revolved around commitments to it. It became known euphemistically as “the institution,” the “pillar and support of British plantation industry in the West Indies.” In a celebrated case in England’s high court only four years earlier, slaves had been seemed “goods and chattels.” Corruption in government was so widespread that few members of Parliament thought twice about accepting bribes for their votes. Planters and other gentlemen involved in the slave trade paid three to five thousand pounds to “buy” boroughs, which sent their representatives to the House of Commons. The same attitude reigned in the House of Lords. Their political influence in Parliament grew until a large bloc was controlled by the vested influence of the slave trade. The horrors of the trade were remote and unseen, the cotton and sugar profits they yielded very tangible. So most consciences were not troubled about the Black men and women suffering far away on the high sea or on remote plantations. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Many people say that some used Christianity and the Bible to incorrectly justify slavery, but that was not always the case. John Newton, son of a sailor, had been impressed into the Royal Navy when he was eleven. He deserted, was caught in West Africa, flogged, and placed into service on a slave ship. Eventually he became involved in the slave trade and in 1750 was given command of his own ship. On one especially stormy passage to West Indies, however, Mr. Newton was converted to faith in Jesus Christ. He renounced slaving and expressed his wonder at the gift of salvation in his famous hymn, “Amazing Grace.” Some people become so absorbed in politics that they never give themselves time for due reflection on religion. God wants to being compassion to the oppressed as well as oppose the oppressors. Almighty God has set before His people even today, two great objectives. The abolition of the slave trade and the reformation of manners. Slaver is so enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable, and an iniquity such as this, because it still happens today, must be abolished. We still live in a time, even in American, where the country’s economic strength depends on slavery at home and abroad. There are different forms from forced labour to human trafficking. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
An estimated 25 million victims are trapped in modern-day slavery. Of these, 16 million (64 percent) were exploited for labour, and approximately 5 million (19 percent) were exploited for pleasures of the flesh, 4 million (17 percent) were exploited in state-imposed forced labour. Forced labour takes place in many different industries. Therefore, private faith that does not act in the face of oppression is no faith at all. Slavery is a subject, in which the interest, not of this country, nor of Europe alone, but of the whole World, and of posterity, are involved. It is impossible for me not to feel both terrified and concerned at our leader’s inadequacy to abolish slavery in their communities before taking hold of state, nation, or international positions. However, as a race—the human race—as a nation, and as citizens of God’s Kingdom, we must fight for the total abolition of the slave trade. This is bigger than climate change, bigger than COVID-19, and much bigger than any jobs report because without human life, we have nothing. I mean not to accuse anyone for having suffered this horrid trade to be carried on under their authority. We are all guilty—we ought all to plead guilty, and not to exculpate ourselves by throwing the blame on others. This evidence cannot be ignored. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Never, never will we desist till we extinguish every trace of this bloody traffic, which our posterity, looking back to the history of these enlightened ties, will scarce believe that it has been suffered to exist so long a disgrace and dishonour to this country. The courts, law enforcement, and your employers have a duty to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America! For instance Amendment IV of the Constitution states people have a right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probably cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the person or things to be seized. Our sister, Breonna Taylor, an innocent young lady in the prime of her life was murdered in her own home, on 13 March 2020, while she lay in bed resting, so she could return to her job as a nurse in the morning, and because the police killed her by accident, no one is being held responsible for the crime, but so many are fighting to keep our boarders open and floor the streets with illegal immigrants, when we will not even protect our own citizens. How humane is that? Amendment VIII states the excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishment inflicted. However, our brother George Perry Floyd was killed by the police on 25 March 2020, while telling the officer he could not breath because the officer had his knee on the man’s neck. How cruel and unusual is that! #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Amendment XVI states that all persons born or naturalized in the United States of America, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, but innocent 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was gunned down after buying some candy because someone did not like the way he looked. There are just a few laws that ought to be observed and we must never take our freedom for granted, nor allow criminals to roam the streets without answering for their crimes. That is why Amendment VI of the United States Constitution states in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against one; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in one’s favour, and to have the assistance of counsel for one’s defense. We do not want chaos on our streets, we do not want people becoming law enforcement agents to get away with murder, and we do not want people taken into custody without being read their Miranda rights or being allowed to have a trial. It should not be easier for those in public office or law enforcement to break the laws than it is to enforce it. The laws and law enforcement are there to protect us, not facilitate and help crime to fester. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Just remember, slavery is still a reality and in was not long ago, in the year 1788 in a ship destined for the slave trade, out of 650 persons on board, 155 died. In another, 405 were on board, out of whom were lost 200. In another there were on board 402, out of whom 73 died. When Captain Charles Wilson was asked the causes of this mortality, he replied that the slaves had a fixed melancholy and dejection; that they wished to die; that they refused sustenance, till they were beaten in order to compel them to eat; and that when they had been so beaten, they looked in the faces of their captures and said, piteously, “Soon we will be no more.” Now, I am sure you know someone who was happy and full of life who has suffered some adverse circumstances and is emotionally, physically, or born so worn down that they no longer want to live, and you know that is not them talking, but the endless pain and torment they so badly want to escape from and cannot. Often times, it is much harder for victims to get help than people know. It is not that they do not want to be saved, it is however, that the system is set up to make victims of those they want to harm. How else did Larry Nassar go on abusing hundreds of girls from 1992 until 2015? How did Jerry Sandusky go on abusing young boys from 1994 until 2011? Because people in positions of authority liked him and protected him, until they could not. Nonetheless, countless lives were ruined while these innocent children were enslaved. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
Even the vested economic interests of the West Indian bloc could not gloss over the appalling facts nor ignore the public support the abolitionists were gaining. However, in modern times, the force of the people has to be involved in stopping slavery. We cannot allow radicals to continue to fan the flames of this reign of terror. Unless the Divine power has raised you up to be as Athanasius contra mundum, I see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise in opposing that execrable villainy, which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of humans and devils, but if God be for you who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? Oh, be not weary of well-doing. Go on in the name of God, and in the power of His might, till even modern American slavery, the vilest thing currently under the Sun, shall vanish away before it. That God that has guided you from your youth up may continue to strengthen in this and all things, is my prayer. Be not weary of well-doing. We must issue a proclamation at the deluge of every kind of vice which, to the scandal of our holy religion, and to the evil example of our loving subject, have broken upon this nation. The only wat to reform morals is to ruin purses. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
Make them pay. How can you sleep while the fate of men, women, and children are in the hand of abusers should be rushing to your minds, and the guilt of our wicked land. If one really loves another, one would rather die for that person than to injure the individual. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nor height, nor depth, not any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord,” reports Romans 8.35, 39. If we would truly seek to be more like our Saviour and Master, learning to love as He loves should be our highest goal. Love is the foundation of marriage, but love itself is a product of law and lives by law. True love is law-abiding, for the highest satisfaction come to a law-abiding life. To those who are sealed to each other for all existence, love is ever warm, more hopeful, believing, courageous, and fearless. Such people live the richer, more joyful life. To them happiness and the making of it have no end. Above physical charm, love is begotten by qualities, often subtle, of mind and spirit. The beautiful face may hide an empty mind; the sweet voice may utter coarse words; the lovely form may be ill-mannered; the person of radiant beauty and the ne of kingly form may be intolerable bores on nearer acquaintanceship. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
The person who looks attractive may really have no faults, may excel us in knowledge and courtesy, yet one is not of our kind, one’s ways are not ours. Under either condition, love wilts in its first stage. “Falling in love” is always from within, rather than from without. That is, if true love is to be born and have long life, physical attractiveness must be reinforced with mental and spiritual harmony. There must be common ideals and standards. There must be a great devotion and companionship. Love is cleanliness and progress and sacrifice and selflessness. This kind of love never tires nor wanes, but lives through sickness and sorrow, poverty and privation, accomplishment and disappointment, time and eternity. Love cannot be forced, it comes out of Heaven, unasked and unsought. This respect comes of recognition that each of us is a son or daughter of God, endowed with something of one’s divine nature that each is an individual entitled to expression and cultivation of individual talents and deserving of forbearance, of patience, of understanding, of courtesy, of thoughtful consideration. True love is not so much a matter of romance as it is a matter of anxious concern for the well being of one’s companion. The World is filled with too many of us who are inclined to indicate our love with an announcement or declaration. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
True love is a process. True love requires personal action. Love must be continuing to be real. Love takes time. Too often expediency, infatuation, simulation, persuasion, or lust are mistaken for love. If our love is no deeper than the arousal of momentary feeling or the expression in words of what is more lasting than the time it takes to speak them, how hollow, how empty. We must at regular and appropriate intervals speak and reassure others of our love and the long time it takes to prove it by our actions. Real love does take time. The Great Shepherd had the same thoughts in mind when he taught, “If ye love me, keep my commandments,” reports Jon 14.15. If you love me, feed my sheep,” reports John 21.16. If it is to be continuing, love demands action. Love is a process, not a declaration. Love is not an announcement. Love is not a passing fancy. Love is not an expediency. Love is not convenience. God-given proclamations should remind us we can often best show our love through the process of feeling and keeping. Love of God takes time. Love of family takes time. Love of country takes tie. Love of neighbour takes time. Love of companion takes time. Love in courtship takes time. Love of self takes time. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
One who loves has and feels responsibility. If we look at love between two who are preparing for a temple marriage, we see the elements of sacrifice and of serving each other’s best interest, not a shortsighted “me” interest. True love and happiness in courtship and marriage are based upon honesty, self-respect, sacrifice, consideration, courtesy, kindness, and placing “we” ahead of “me.” Perfect love is perfectly patient. Unlike our love, Jesus’ love consists of active restraint as well as pressing encouragement. His perfect love of each and all spares Him the need to accept us as we now are for He knows perfectly what we have the possibility to become. Love, as defined by the Lord, elevates, protect, respects, and enriches another. It motivates one to make sacrifices for another. At the hour of sin, pure love is pushed out of one door while lust sneaks in the other. Affection has then been replaced with desire of the flesh and uncontrolled passion. Accepted has been the doctrine which the devil is so eager to establish, that illicit relations in pleasures of the flesh that are justified. Dear Lord in Heaven, with your quick-sent lightning and penetrating rain, please make the Earth fertile, storm-rider, hammer-wielder. Please wield the lightening on my side, Thunderer, and I will ensure that my cause is just. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Wilder of the hammer, red-bearded one, God, protector, to you I call. I stand in the midst of a storm, and ask your protection. You who bear the flaming hammer, to you I pray: please fight on my side against all my opponents. For with you on my side, who can stand before me? Please remember my devotion to you, Lord of Thunder. As I work to your honour, may you work also to mine. Thou didst thus make Thy greatness and holiness known in Thy World, and didst bring great deliverance to America. Then Thy children came into Thy dwelling place, cleansed the Temple, purified the Sanctuary, kindled lights in Thy sacred courts, and they designated these days for giving thanks and praise unto Thy great name. For all this, Thy name, O our King, shall be blessed and exalted for ever and ever. O, please inscribe all the children of Thy covenant for a happy life. May all the living do home unto Thee forever and praise Thy name in truth, O God, who art our salvation and our help. Please blessed be Thou, O Lord, Beneficent One, unto whom our thanks are due. Our God and God of our fathers, please bless us with threefold blessing written in the Torah of Moses, Thy servant, and spoken by Aaron and his sons, Thy consecrated priests: May the Lord bless thee and keep thee; so may it be His will. May the Lord make His countenance to shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee; so may it be His will. May the Lord turn His countenance unto thee and give thee peace. So may it be His will. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
MILLS STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH
Rancho Cordova, CA |
Now Selling!
Mills Station at Cresleigh Ranch is Rancho Cordova’s newest home community! This charming neighborhood offers an array of home types with eye catching architecture styles such as Mission, Mid-Century Modern, California Modern, and Contemporary Farmhouse. Homes range in size from approximately 2,000 to 3,000 square feet.
Located off Douglas Road and Rancho Cordova Parkway, the residents of Cresleigh Ranch will enjoy, being just minutes from shopping, dining, and entertainment, and quick access to Highway 50 and Grant Line Road providing a direct route into Folsom. Residents here also benefit from no HOA fees, two community parks and the benefits of being a part of the highly-rated Elk Grove Unified School District.
Sit Down and I Will Tell You a Story, Stand Up and We Will Play a Game!
Some people try to find things in this game that do not exist. Football is two things. It is blocking and tackling. One important class of experiential products will be based on simulated environments that offer the customer a taste of adventure, excitement, titillation or other pleasure without risk to one’s real life or reputation. Thus computer experts, roboteers, designers, historians, architects, automotive engineers, and museum specialists will join to create experiential enclaves that reproduce, as skillfully as sophisticated technology will permit, the splendor of ancient Rome, the pomp of Queen Elizabeth’s court, the traditional arts, ceremonies, calligraphy and flower arranging of Japan, the economic prosperity and rapid development and advancement of China, the rich culture and mysterious of Africa, the superior engineering of Germany, the liveness and flavour of Latin culture, the intelligence of the Middle East, and the hardworking and orderly conduct of America. Customers entering these pleasure domes will leave their everyday clothes (and cares) behind, don costumes, and run through a planned sequence of activities intended to provide them with a first-hand taste of what the original—id est, unstimulated—reality must have felt like. They will be invited, in effect, to live in the past or perhaps even in the future. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Production of such experiences is closer than one might think. It is clearly foreshadowed in the participatory techniques now being pioneered in the arts. Thus “happenings” in which the members of the audience take part may be regarded as a first stumbling step toward these simulations of the future. The same is true of more formal works as well. When Dionysus in 69 was performed in New York, a critic summed up the theories of its playwright, Richard Schechner, in the following words. “Theater has traditionally said to an audience, ‘Sit down and I will tell you a story.’ Why cannot it also say, ‘Stand up and we will play a game?’” Mr. Schechner’s work, based loosely on Euripides, says precisely this, and that audience is literally invited to join in dancing to celebrate the rites of Dionysus. Artists also have begun to create whole “environments”—works of art into which the audience may actually walk, and inside which things happens. For instance, BMW believes that design should always be a reflection of your identity, and so they make cars with a strong personality. When designing the BMW Concept i4, the goal was to make it organic, and less industrial. In its captivating dynamic, engineers wanted to add more nature-inspired elements. More handworked wood, intelligent fabrics—designs for all the sense so one feels like the cabin of the car is a living room. The artists who produce these are really “experiential engineers.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Knowledge gained for research on creating experiences will permit the construction of fantastic simulations. However, it will also lead to complex live environments that subject the customer to significant risks and rewards. The African safari today is a colourless example. Future experience designers will, for example, create gambling casinos in which the customer plays not for money, but for experiential payoffs. Certain American television programs, such as Survivor and The Bachelor, already pay players off in experiential rewards. In the future, simulated and non-simulated experiences will also be combined in ways that will sharply challenge human’s grasp of reality. In Ray Bradbury’s vivid novel, Fahrenheit 451, suburban couples desperately save their money to enable them to buy three-wall or four-wall video sets that permit them to enter into a kind of televised psycho-drama. They become actor-participants in soap operas that continue for weeks or months. Their participation in these stories is highly involving. We are, in fact, beginning to move toward the actual development of such “interactive” films with the help of advanced communications technology. The combination of simulation and “reals” will vastly multiply the number and variety of experiential products. However, the great psych-corps of tomorrow will not only sell individual, discrete experiences. They will offer sequences of experiences so organized that their very juxtaposition with other another will contribute colour, harmony or contrast to lives that lack these qualities. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Beauty, excitement, suspense or delicious sensuality will be programmed to enhance one another. By offering such experiential chains or sequences, the psych-corps (working closely, no doubt, with community mental health centers) will provide partial frameworks for those whose lives are otherwise too chaotic and unstructured. In effect, they will say: “Let us plan (part of) your life for you.” In the transient, change-filled World of tomorrow, that proposition will find many eager takers. Many architects are now designing homes to feel like luxury hotels. These places are all about lifestyles—inviting the community to become part of the property. Adding unique vantage points, creating indoor/outdoor experiences, and making homes larger, function, bright and comfortable is what is making architecture exciting these days. People are always looking for a home that is special, affluent home buyers are seeking homes that are destinations with purpose and meaning, where lifelong memories can be created because luxury is the absence of worry. Home buyers want to know they are in good hands with gorgeous detail abound. Creative space segmentation is necessary, providing both intimae and social zones, as well as furniture delivering comfort and functionality. More extravagant entrance features are emerging, which include large green walls, indoor waterfalls, large chandeliers and multimedia stations. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
No longer is the classic bed-table-closet combo enough to make a guest bedroom or primary bedroom feel inviting. Home buyers are looking for creative offices for those who are business travelers, interesting looking TV panels and an extra sofa or accent chairs next to the king-sized bed are just some of the key ingredients for a trendy guest bedroom or primary bedroom. We have also seen colourful walls and eclectic décor mixes, which can definitely appeal to guests or the home’s primary occupant wanting to experience unique accommodation. Bathrooms stopped being perceived as auxiliary rooms, spaces to be minimized, in order to expand living areas. The modern individual expects more than one got in the past. A resort bathroom with spa-like features is an open invite to relaxation and a sure-proof method of alluring potential buyers through the promise of ephemeral luxury. Think en-suite bedrooms, water fall showers, over-sized bathtubs, dual sinks, giant towels, beauty items and plenty of space. Fewer home builder base the appeal of the kitchen strictly on practicability. Cooking is an art and so should be the exhibition space. We have seen more and more home builders come up with exciting designs and turn the kitchen design into a memorable space. Theme are highly recommended, pushing creativity to new heights. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Sensory experiences go a log way. Beside open concept, the blurring of indoor-outdoor boundaries is well integrated in the array of services offered by modern homes builders, who strive to keep their indoor-outdoor transition as ethereal as possible. Not only are the offering more windows, larger windows, walls of glass, but also expanding the patio spaces so nature is brought inside in every possible way. Wood paneling, stone decorations, lush greenery, vibrant lawns, indoor waterfalls—these are just some of the elements employed to release the tension of residents. Sustainability is a delicate issue for home owners as they are doing their best to minimize short term costs. However, being ahead of the game is important, which leads to innovative ideas. Over-sized windows for natural lighting, solar panels to conserve electricity, luxury vinyl wood plank floors, and energy efficient appliances are just a few of the trends for staying green. It is a fact that a home will stay in a buyer’s mind for a long time if the accommodation is unique. With this in mind, home builders are offering individual personalized spaces as never before. With home hubs, butler’s pantries, build-in furniture, card rooms, super family rooms, and workspaces in the house. And more than anything, homes should provide comfort, that feeling of being home away from home, in your own home. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
No mater how luxurious, technology friendly and well-themed the home, coziness is a major factor to consider. Wood additions, inspired decorating items, carpets, a fireplace, build-in tables, uniquely shaped kitchen islands all add up to a memorable home. In the World outside of the home, agriculture and the manufacture of goods will become economic backwaters, employing fewer and fewer people. Highly automated, the making and growing of goods will be relatively simple. The design of new goods and the process of coating them with stronger, brighter, more emotion-packed psychological connotations, however, will challenge the ingenuity of tomorrow’s best and most resourceful entrepreneurs. The service sector, as defined today, will be vastly enlarged, and once more the design of psychological rewards will occupy a growing percentage of corporate time, energy, and money. Investment services, such as mutual funds, for example, may introduce elements of experiential gambling to provide both additional excitement and non-economic payoffs to their shareholders. Insurance companies may offer not merely to pay death benefits, but to care for the window or widower for several months after bereavement, providing nurses, psychological counseling and other assistance. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Based on banks of detail data about their customers, they may offer a computerized mating service to help the survivor locate a new life partner. Services, in short, will be greatly elaborated. Attention will be paid to the psychological overtones of every step or component of the product. Finally, we shall watch the irresistible growth of companies already in the experiential field, and the formation of entirely new enterprises, both profit and non-profit, to design, package and distribute planned or programmed experiences. The arts will expand, becoming as Ruskin or Morris might have said, the handmaiden of the industry. Psych-corps and other businesses will employ actors, directors, musicians, and designers in large numbers. Recreational industries will grow, as the whole nature of leisure is redefined in experimental terms. Education, already exploding in size, will become one of the key experiences industries as it is beginning to employ experiential techniques to convey both knowledge and values to the students. The communication and computer industries will find in experiential production a major market for their machines and for their software as well. With COVID-19 and more people working from home and going to school at home, I would expect Cisco TelePresence IX5000 Series to become more people. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
This system allows immersive collaboration beyond the boardroom. Cisco TelePresence IX5000 Series offers a triples screen, high-fidelity audio and video, and rich collaboration tools, and more bandwidth of existing products. The IX5000 Series brings people together to make decisions faster with high-definition video and theater-quality audio. The immersive, lifelike experience increases engagement, which helps teams build relationships and trust. Participants can share multiple content sources on three 70-inche LCD screens. The 4K cameras allow flexible whiteboard placement and the series features industry-first support for H.265 video on a triple-screen product. This product allows people to work from home, teach from home, attend class from home and interact with others as if they are in the same room. In short, those industries that in one way or another associate themselves with behavioural technology, those industries that transcend the production of tangible goods and traditional services, will expand most rapidly. Eventually, the experience-makers will form a basic—if not the basic—sector of the economy. The process of psychologization will be complete. With more people working from home, spending less on transportation, they will be able to afford larger homes with real offices or even classrooms. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
The essence of tomorrow’s economy is an emphasis upon the inner as well as the material need for individuals and groups. This new emphasis will arise not merely from the demands of the consumer, but from the very need of the economy to survive. In a nation where all essential material needs can be filled by perhaps no more than three-fourth or even half of the productive capacity, a basic adjustment is required to keep the economy healthy. It is this convergence of pressures—from the consumer and from those who wish to keep the economy growing—that will propel the techno-societies toward the experiential production of the future. The movement in this direction can be delayed. The poverty-stricken masses of the World may not stand idly by as the World’s favoured few traverse the path toward psychological self-indulgence. There is something morally repellent about one group seeking to gratify itself psychologically, pursuing novel and rarified pleasures, while the majority of humankind lives in wretchedness or starvation. The techno-societies could maintain a more conventional production, shifting resources to environmental quality control, and then launching absolutely massive anti-poverty and foreign assistance programs. By creaming off “excess” productivity and, in effect, giving it away, the factories can be kept running, the agricultural surpluses used up, and the society can continue to focus on the satisfaction of material wants. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
A fifty-year campaign to erase hunger from the World and family planning methods, for example, would not only make excellent moral sense, but would buy the techno-societies badly needed time for an easier transition to the economy of the future. Such a pause might give us tine to contemplate the philosophical and psychological impact of experiential production. If consumers can no longer distinguish clearly between the real and the simulated, if whole stretches of one’s life may be commercially programmed, we enter into a set of psycho-economic problems of breathtaking complexity. These problems challenge our most fundamental beliefs, not merely about democracy or economics, but about the very nature of rationality and sanity. One of the great unasked questions of our time has to do with the balance between vicarious and non-vicarious experience in our lives. No previous generation has been exposed to one-tenth the amount of vicarious experiences that we lavish on ourselves and our children today, and no one, anywhere, has any real idea about the impact of this monumental shift on personality. Our children mature physically more rapidly than we did. The age of first menstruation continues to drop four to six month every decade. The population grows taller sooner. It is clear that many of our young people, products of television and instance accesses to oceans of information, also become precocious intellectually. However, what happens to emotion development as the ratio of vicarious experience to “real” experience rises? Does the step-up of vicariousness contribute to emotional maturity? Or does it, in fact, make it as slow as molasses on a Winter’s day? #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
And what, then, happens when an economy in search of a new purpose, seriously begins to enter into the production of experience for their own sake, experience that blur the distinction between the vicarious and the non-vicarious, the simulated and the real? One of the definitions of sanity, itself, is the ability to tell real from unreal. Shall we need a new definition? We must begin to reflect on these problems, for unless we do—and perhaps even if we do—service will in the end triumph over manufacture, and experiential production over service. The growth of the experiential sector might just be an inevitable consequence of affluence. For the satisfaction of human’s elemental material needs opens the way for new, more sophisticated gratifications. We are moving from a “gut” economy to a “psyche” economy because there is only so much gut to be satisfied. Beyond this, we are also moving swiftly in the direction of a society in which objects, things, physical constructs, are increasingly transient. Not merely human’s relationships with them, but the very things themselves. It may be that experiences are the only products which, once brought by the consumer, cannot be taken away from one, cannot be disposed of like non-returnable soda pop bottles or nicked razor blades. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
For the ancient Japanese nobility every flower, every serving bowl or obi, was freighted with surplus meaning; each carried a heavy load of coded symbolism and ritual significance. The movement toward the psychologization of manufactured goods takes us in this direction; but it collides with the powerful thrust toward transience that makes the objects themselves so perishable. Thus we shall find it easier to adorn our services with symbolic significance than our products. And, in the end, we shall pass beyond the service economy, beyond the imagination of today’s economists; we shall become the first culture in history to employ high technology to manufacture than most transient, yet lasting of products: the human experience. The flood of novelty about to crash down upon us will spread from universities and research centers to factories and offices, from the marketplace and mass media into our social relationships, from the community into the home. Penetrating deep into our private lives, it will place absolutely unprecedented strains on the family itself. The family has been called the “giant shock absorber” of society—the place to which the bruised and battered individual returns after doing battle with the World, the one stable point in an increasingly flux-filled environment. As the super-age of information revolution unfolds, this “shock absorber” will come in for some of its own shocks. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Social critics have a field day speculating about the family. The family is “near the point of complete extinction,” says Ferdinand Lundberg, author of The Coming World Transformation. “The family is dead except for the first year or two of child raising,” according to psychoanalyst William Wolf. “This will be its only function.” Pessimists tell us what will take place. Family optimists, in contrast, contend that the family, having existed all this time, will continue to exist. Some go so far as to argue that the family is in for a Golden Age. As leisure spreads, they theorize, families will spend more time together and will derive great satisfaction from joint activity. “The family that play together, stays together,” et cetera. A more sophisticated view hold that the very turbulence of tomorrow will drive people deeper into their families. “People will marry for stable structure,” says Dr. Irwin M. Greenberg, Professor of psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. According to this view, the family serves as one’s “portable root,” anchoring one against the storm of change. In short, the more transient and novel the environment, the more important the family will become. It may be that both ideas in this debate are wrong. For the future is more open than it might appear. #RandolphHrris 14 of 21
The family may neither vanish nor enter upon new Golden Age. It may—and this far more likely—break up, shatter, only to come together again in weird and novel ways. If tribulation is a necessary element in redemption, we must anticipate that it will never cease till Go sees the World to be either redeemed or no further redeemable. A Christian cannot, therefore, believe any of those who promise that if only some reform in our economic, political, or hygienic system were made, a Heaven on Earth would follow. This might seem to have a discouraging effect on the social worker, but it is not found in practice to discourage one. On the contrary, a strong sense of our common miseries, simply as humans, is at last as good a spur to the removal of all the miseries we can, as any of those wild hopes which tempt humans to seek their realization by breaking the moral law and prove such dust and ashes when they are realized. If applied to individual life, the doctrine that an imagined Heaven on Earth is necessary for vigorous attempts to remove present evil, would at once reveal is absurdity. Hungry human seeks food and sick humans healing none the less because they know that after the meal of the cure the ordinary ups and downs of life still await them. I am not, of course, discussing whether very drastic changes in our social system are, or are not, desirable; I am only reminder the reader that a particular medicine is not to be mistake for the elixir of life. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Since political issues have here crossed our path, it is clear that the Christian doctrine of self-surrender and obedience is a purely theological, and not in the least a political, doctrine. Of forms of government, of civil authority and civil obedience, I have nothing to say. The kind and degree of obedience which a creatures owes to its Creator is unique because the relation between creature and Creator is unique: no inference can be drawn from it to any political proposition whatsoever. The Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I believe, a very curious fact about the World we live in. The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the World: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in the World and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with out friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home. We must never mistake the problem of pain worse than it is by vague talk about the “unimaginable sum of human misery.” When a human hesitates too long over taking a course which intuition tells one, he or she should take, and in which one’s higher life is concerned, it may be that destiny will intervene and make one suddenly realize that this is the way, and that all doubts should be thrown out. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
An intuition may be sudden and unexpected, quite contrary to the line of previous thought about the matter. This is certainly true of many appearances but it is not true of other ones. An intuition may come into the mind apparently by hazard, unsummoned, experience. Every thought which comes down to us from that serene height comes with a divine authority and penetrating force which are absent from all other thoughts. We receive the visitant with eagerness and obey it with confidence. There is no such thing as a sum of suffering, for no one suffers it. When we have reached he maximum that a single person can suffer, we have, no doubt, reached something horrible, but we have reached all the suffering there ever can be in the Universe. The addition of a million sufferers adds no more pain. Intuition is not the equal but rather the superior of all other human faculties. It delivers the gentlest of whispers, commands from the Overself, whereas the other faculties merely carry them out. It is the master, they are the servants. The intellect things, the will works, and the emotion drives towards the fulfilment of intuitively felt guidance in the properly developed spiritually erect human. Of all evils, pain only is sterilized or disinfected evil. Intellectual evil, or error, may recur because the cause of the first error (such as fatigue or bad handwriting) continues to operate; but quite apart from that, error in its own right breeds error—if the first step in an argument is wrong, everything that follows will be wrong. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Sin may recur because the original temptation continues: but quite apart from that, sin of its very nature breeds sin by strengthening sinful habit and weakening the conscience. Now pain, like the other evils, may of course recur because the cause of the first pain (disease, or an enemy) is still operative: but pain has no tendency, in its own right, to proliferate. When it is over, it is over, and the natural sequel is joy. This distinction may be put the other way round. After an error you need not only to remove the causes (the fatigue or bad writing) but also to correct the error itself: after a sin you must not only, if possible, remove the temptation, you must also go back and repent the sin itself. In each case an “undoing” is required. Pain requires no such undoing. You may need to heal the disease which caused it, but the pain, once over is sterile—whereas every uncorrected error and unrepented sin is, in its own right, a fountain of fresh error and fresh sin flowing on to the end of time. Again, when I err, my error infects every one who believes me When I sin publicly, every spectator either condones it, thus sharing my guilt, or condemns it with imminent danger to one’s charity and humility. However, suffering naturally produces in the spectators (unless they are unusually depraved) no bad effect, but a good one—piety. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Thus that evil which God chiefly uses to produce the “complex good” is most markedly disinfected, or deprived of that proliferous tendency which is the worst characteristic of evil in general. The Real is forever and unalterably the same, whether it be the unmanifest Void or the manifested World. It has never been born and consequently can never die. It cannot divide itself into different “realities” with different space-time levels or multiply itself beyond its own primal oneness. It cannot evolve or diminish, improve or deteriorate. Whereas everything else exists in dependence upon Mind and exists for a limited time, however prolonged, and therefore has only a relative existence, Mind is the absolute, the unique, the ultimate reality because with all its innumerable manifestations in the Universe it has never at any moment ceased to be itself. Only its appearances suffers change because they are in time and space, never itself, which is out of time and space. The divisions of time into past, present, and future are meaningless here; we may speak only of its “everness.” The truth about it is timeless, as no scientific truth could ever be, in the sense that whatever fate the Universe undergoes its own ultimate significance remains unchanged. If the Absolute appears to us as the first in the time-series, as the First Cause of the Universe, this is only true from our limited standpoint. It is in fact only our human idea. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
The human mind can take itself the truth of transcendental being only by taking out of itself the screens of time, space, and person. For being eternally self-existence, reality is utterly timeless. Space divisions are equally unmeaning in its “Be-ness.” The Absolute is both everywhere and nowhere. It cannot be considered in spatial terms. Even the word “infinite” is really such a term. If it is used here because no other is available, let me be clearly understood, then, that it is used merely as a suggestive metaphor. If the infinite did not include the finite then it would be less than infinite. It is erroneous to make them both mutually exclusive. The finite alone must exclude the infinite from its experience but not vice versa. In the same way the infinite Duration does not exclude finite time. Hence, corruption and defects in natural things are said to be contrary to some particular nature; yet they are in keeping with the plan of universal nature; inasmuch as the defect in one thing yields to the good of another, or even to the universal good: for the corruption of ne is the generation of another, and through this it is that a species is kept in existence. Since God, then, provides universally for all being, it belongs to His providence to permit certain defects in particular effects, that the perfect good of the Universe may not be hindered, for if all evil were prevented, much god would be absent from the Universe. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
A lion would cease to life, if there were no slaying of animals; and there would be no patience of martyrs if there were no tyrannical persecution. Thus Augustine says (Enchiridion 2): “Almighty God would in wo wise permit evil to exist in His works, unless He were so almighty and so good as to produce good even from evil.” It would appear that is was on account of these two arguments to which we have just replied, that some were persuaded to consider corruptible things—exempli gratia, casual evil things—as removed from the care of divine providence. Dear Lord in Heaven, your bow’s swift arrows: are they blessing or destruction? Please show your blasting face to those who need it. Please show your blessing face to those who deserve it. Whether beating down mercilessly or shining benevolently, please bring what is right to each, God. Whether by fighting off enemies or singing them to peace, please be my protector, and I will always speak sweety of You. Our God and God of our fathers, please accept our rest. Please Sanctify us through Thy commandments, and please grant our portion in Thy Torah. Please give us abundantly of Thy goodness and please make us rejoice in Thy salvation. Please purify our hearts to serve Thee in truth. In Thy loving favour, O Lord our God, please grant that Thy holy Sabbath be our joyous heritage, and may America who sanctifies Thy name, rest thereon. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hallowest the Sabbath. O Lord our God, please be gracious unto Thy people of America and accept their prayer. Please restore the worship to Thy sanctuary and receive in love and favour the supplication of America. May the worships of Thy people be ever acceptable unto Thee. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Cresleigh Homes
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For Thou Shall Hear this Secret–Mathematics Possesses Not Only Truth, but Supreme Beauty!
United States policy on the World scene is viewed as being neutral toward our enemy, friendly toward the neutrals, and unfriendly toward our friends. Geography of super industrial society can be expected to become increasingly kinetic, filled with turbulence and change. The more rapidly the environment changes, the shorter the life span of organization forms. In administrative structure, just as in architectural structure, we are moving from long-enduring to temporary forms. From permanence to transience. We are moving from bureaucracy to Ad-hocracy. In this way, the accelerative thrust translates itself into organization. Permanence, one of the identifying characteristics of bureaucracy, one of the identifying characteristics of bureaucracy, is undermined, and we are driven to a relentless conclusion: human’s ties with the invisible geography of organization turn over more and more rapidly, exactly as do one’s relationships with things, places, and the human beings who people these ever-changing organizational structures. Just as the new nomads migrate from place to place, humans increasingly migrate from organizational structure to organizational structure. Something else is happening, too: a revolutionary shift in power relationships. Not only are large organizations forced to create temporary units, but they are also finding it increasingly difficult to maintain their traditional chains-of-command. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
It would be pollyannish to suggest that workers in industry or government today truly “participate” in the management of their enterprises—either in capitalist or, for that matter, in socialist and communist countries. Yet there is evidence that bureaucratic hierarchies, separating those who “make decisions” from those who merely carry them out, are being altered, side-stepped or broken. This process is noticeable in industry where irresistible pressures are battering hierarchical arrangements. The central, crucial and important business of organizations is increasingly shifting from up and down to sideways. What is involved in such a shift is a virtual revolution in organizational structure—and human relations. For people communicating in sideways—id est, to others at approximately the same level of organization—behave differently, operate under very different pressures, than those who must communicate up and down a hierarchy. To illustrate, let us look at a typical work setting in which a traditional bureaucratic hierarchy operates. While still a young man, I worked for a couple of years as a millwright’s helper in a foundry. Here, in a great dark cavern of a building, thousands of men laboured to produce automobile crankcase castings. The scene was Dantesque—smoke and soot smeared our faces, soot covered the floors and filled the air, the pungent, choking smell of sulphur and burnt sand seared our nostrils. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Overhead a creaking conveyor carried red hot castings and dripped hot sand on the men blow. There were flashes of molten iron, the yellow flares of fires, and a lunatic cacophony of noises: men shouting, chains rattling, pug mills hammering, compressed air shrieking. To a stranger the scene appeared chaotic. However, those inside knew that everything was carefully organized. Bureaucratic order prevailed. Men did the same job over and over again. Rules governed every situation. And each man knew exactly where he stood in a vertical hierarchy that reached from the lowest-paid core paster up to the unseen “they” who populated the executive suits in another building. In the immense shed where we worked, something was always going wrong. A bearing would burn out, a belt snap or a gear break. Whenever this happened in a section, work would screech to a halt, and frantic messages would begin to flow up and down the hierarchy. The worker nearest the breakdown would notify his foreman. He, in turn, would tell the production supervisor. The production supervisor would send the word to the maintenance supervisor. The maintenance supervisor would dispatch a crew to repair the damage. Information in this system is passed by the worker “upward” through the foreman to the production supervisor. The production supervisor carries it sideways to a man occupying a niche at approximately the same level in the hierarchy (the maintenance supervisor), who, in turn, passes it downward to the millwrights who actually get things going again. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
The information thus must move a total of four steps up and down the vertical ladder plus one step sideways before repairs can begin. The process is a lot like taking a tour through the Winchester mansion. This system is premised on the unspoken assumption that the dirty, sweaty men down below cannot make sound decisions. Only those higher in the hierarchy are to be trusted with judgment or discretion. Officials at the top make the decisions; men at the bottom carry them out. One group represents the brains of the organization; the other, the hands. This typically bureaucratic arrangement is ideally suited to solving routine problems at a moderate pace. However, when things speed up, or the problems cease to be routine, chaos often breaks loose. It is easy to see why. First, the acceleration of the pace of life (and especially the speed-up of production brought about by automation) means that every minute of down time cost more in lost output than ever before. Delay is increasingly costly. Information must flow faster than ever before. At the same time, rapid change, by increasing the number of novel, unexpected problems increases the amount of information needed. It takes more information to cope with a noel problem than one we have solved a dozen or a hundred times before. It is this combined demand for more information at faster speeds that is now undermining the great vertical hierarchies so typical of bureaucracy. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
A radical speed-up could have been effected in the foundry described above simply by allowing the worker to report the breakdown directly to the maintenance supervisor or even to a maintenance crew, instead of passing the news along through his foreman and production supervisor. At least one and perhaps two steps could have been cut from the four-step communication process in this way—a saving of from 25 to 50 percent. Significantly, the steps that might be eliminated are the up-and-down steps, the vertical ones. Today such savings are feverishly sought by managers fighting to keep up with change. Shortcuts that by-pass the hierarchy are increasingly employed in thousands of factories, offices, laboratories, even in the military. The cumulative result of such small changes is a massive shift from vertical to lateral communication systems. The intended result is speedier communication. This leveling process, however, represents a major blow to the once-sacred bureaucratic hierarchy, and it punches a jagged hole in the brain and hand analogy. For as he vertical chain of command is increasingly by-passed, we find “hands” beginning to make decisions, too. When the worker by-passes his foreman or supervisor and calls in a repair team, he makes a decision that in the past was reserved for these higher ups. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
This silent but significant deterioration of hierarchy, now occurring in the executive suite as well as at the ground level of the factory floor, is intensified by the arrival on the scene of hordes of experts—specialists in vital fields so narrow that often the men on top have difficulty understanding them. Increasingly, managers have to rely on the judgment of these experts. Solid state physicists, computer programmers, systems designers, operation researchers, engineering specialists—such humans are assuming new decision-making function. At one time, they merely consulted with executives who reserved unto themselves the right to make managerial decisions. Today, the managers are losing their monopoly on decision-making. The specialists do not fit neatly together into a chain-of-command system and cannot wait for their expert advice to be approved at a higher level. With no time for decisions to wend their leisurely way up and down the hierarchy, advisors stop merely advising and begin to make decisions themselves. Often they do this in direct consultation with the workers and ground-level technicians. As a result, you no longer have the strict allegiance to hierarchy. You may have five or six different levels of the hierarchy represented in one meeting. You try to forget about salary level and hierarchy, and organize to get the job done. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Such facts represent a staggering change in thinking, action, and decision-making in organizations. Quite possibly, the only truly effective methods for preventing, or coping with, problems of coordination and communication in our changing technology will be found in the new arrangements of people and tasks, in arrangements which sharply break with the bureaucratic tradition. It will be a log time before the last bureaucratic hierarchy is obliterated. For bureaucracies are well suited to task that require masses of moderately educated humans to perform routine operations, and, no doubt, some such operations will continue to be performed by humans in the future. It is clear that in super-industrial society many such tasks will be performed by great self-regulating systems of machines, doing away with the need for bureaucracy on civilization more tightly than before, automation leads to its overthrow. As machines take over routine tasks and the accelerative thrust increases the amount of novelty in the environment, more and more of the energy of society (and its organizations) must turn toward the solution of non-routine problems. This requires a degree of imagination and creativity that bureaucracy, with its human-on-a-slot organization, its permanent structures, and its hierarchies, is not well equipped to provide. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Thus it is not surprising to find that wherever organizations today are caught up in the stream of technological or social change, wherever research and development is important, wherever humans must cope with first-time problems, the decline of bureaucratic forms is most pronounced. In these frontier organizations a new system of human relations is springing up. To live, organizations must cast off those bureaucratic practices that immobilize them, making them less sensitive and less rapidly responsive to change. We are moving toward a working society of technical co-equals in which the line of demarcation between the leader and the led has become fuzzy. Super-industrial Humans, rather than occupying a permanent, cleanly-defined slot and performing mindless routine tasks in response to orders from above, finds increasingly that one must assume decision-making responsibility—and must do so within a kaleidoscopically changing organization structure built upon highly transient human relationships. Whatever else might be said, that is not the old, familiar Weberian bureaucracy at which so many of our novelists and social critics are still, belatedly, hurling their rusty javelins. The sum of transfers and benefits from essential public goods should be arranged so as to enhance the expectations of the least favoured consistent with the required saving and the maintenance of equal liberties. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
When the basic structure takes this form the distribution that results will be just (or at least not unjust) whatever it is. Each receives that total income (earnings plus transfers) to which one is entitled under the public system of rules upon which one’s legitimate expectations are founded. A central feature of this conception of distributive justice is that it contains a large element of pure procedural justice. If the notion of pure procedural justice is to succeed, it is necessary to set up and to administer impartially a just system of surrounding institutions. The reliance on pure procedural justice presupposes that the basic structure satisfies the two principles. The first principle of justice is that: Each person has the same indefeasible claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same arrangement of liberties for all; the second principle of justice is: Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions—they are to be attached to offices and position open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society (the difference principle). This account of distributive shares is simply an elaboration of the familiar idea that income and wages will be just once a (workably) competitive price system is properly organized and embedded in a just structure. These conditions are sufficient. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
The distribution that results is a case of background justice on the analogy with the outcome of a fair game. However, we need to consider whether this conception fits our intuitive ideas of what is just and unjust. Consider the case of wages in a perfectly competitive economy surrounded by a just basic structure. Assume that each firm (whether publicly or privately owned) must adjust its rates of pay to the long-run forces of supply and demand. The rates of pay cannot be so high that they cannot afford paying those rates or so low that a sufficient number will not offer their skills in view of the other opportunities available. In equilibrium the relative attractiveness of different jobs will be equal, all things considered. It is easy, then, to see how the various precepts of justice arise. They simply identify features of jobs that are significant on either the demand or the supply side of the market, or both. A firm’s demand for workers is determined by the marginal productivity of labour, that is, by the net value of the contribution of a unit of labour measured by the sale price of the commodities that it produces. The worth of this contribution to the firm rests eventually on market conditions, on what households are willing to pay for various goods. Experience and training, natural ability and special know-how, tend to earn a premium. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Firms are willing to pay more to those with special skills, knowledge, talent and ability because these characteristics mean their productivity is greater. This fact explains and gives weight to the precept to each according to one’s contribution, and as special cases, we have the norms to each according to one’s training, or one’s experience, and the like. However, also, viewed from the supply side, a premium must be paid if those who may later offer their services are to be persuaded to undertake the costs of training and postponement. Similarly jobs which involve uncertain or unstable employment, or which are performed under hazardous and unpleasantly strenuous conditions, tend to receive more pay. Otherwise humans cannot be found to fill them. From this circumstance arise such precepts as to each according to one’s effort, or the risk one bears, and so on. Even when individuals are assumed to be of the same natural ability, these normal will still arise from the requirement of economic activity. Given the aims of productive units and of those seeking work, certain characteristics are singled out as relevant. At any time the wage practices of firms tend to recognize these precepts and, allowing time for adjustment, assign them the weights called for by market conditions. All of this seems reasonably clear. At the height of the energy crisis in 1977, the governor of Virginia ordered energy use restricted in non-essential buildings. No one seemed particularly surprised that churches headed his list. In the eyes of the World, as well as many church-goers, the church is only a building, and an expensive, under-used one at that. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
The only time the church is used is usually on Saturday or Sunday, for a few hours, and an occasional mid-week service or function, the temple of God sits empty. SO why use scarce resources to heat it? These same people consider the church just another institution with its own bureaucracy, run by ministers and priests who, like lawyers and doctors, are members of a profession (though not so well-paid). And while this parochial institution fulfills a worthwhile social and inspirational function, rather like an arts society or civic club, most people could get along fine without it. In many ways, of course, the church has allowed itself to become what the World says it is. (This seems to be a common human bent—to become what others consider us to be.) However, that sad fact has not dulled or changed God’s definition of, and intention for, His church. For biblically the church is an organism not an organization—a movement, not a monument. It is not a part of the community; it is a whole new community. It is not an orderly gathering; it is a new order with new values, often in sharp conflict with the values of the surrounding society. The church does nor draw people in; it sends them out. It does not settle into a comfortable niche, taking its place alongside the Rotary, the Elks, and the Hilton country club. Rather, the church is to make society uncomfortable. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Like yeast, the temple of God unsettles the masses around it, changing it from within. Like salt, it flavours and preserves that into which it vanishes. However, as yeast is made up of many particles and salt composed of multiplied grains, so the church is many individual believers. For God has given us each other; we do not live the Christian life alone. We do not love God alone. To believe Jesus means we follow Hum and join what He called the “kingdom of God” which He said was “at hand.” This is a new commitment…a new companionship, new community established by conversion. The young church, made up of believers of every country, race, and language of the World as a Holy Nation. Being part of the Holy Nation requires an understanding and practice of certain truths. When I came first to the University, I fell among a set of young men and women, who believed in chastity, truthfulness, self-sacrifice. We were sufficiently close in intellect and imagination, which allowed us to secure immediate intimacy and they taught me to obey the moral law. God’s goodness differs from ours; but one needs have no fear that, as one approached it, one will be asked simply to reverse one’s moral standards. Christ calls humans to repent—a call which would be meaningless if God’s standards were sheerly different from that which they already knew and failed to practise #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
God appeals to our existing moral judgments. By the goodness of God we mean nowadays almost exclusively His lovingness; and in this we may be right. And by Love, in this context, most of us mean kindness—the desire to see others than the self happy; not happy in this way or in that, but just happy. Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness. There is kindness in Love: but Love and kindness are not coterminous, and when kindness (in the sense given above) is separated from the other elements of Love, it involves a certain fundamental indifference to its object, and even something like contempt of it. Kindness consents very readily to the removal of its object—we have all met people whose kindness to animals is constantly leading them to give animals homes so they do not suffer. Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering. It is for people whom we care nothing about that we demand happiness on any terms: with our friends, our relationships, our children, we are exacting and would rather see them suffer much than be happy in contemptible and estranging modes. If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, God has never regarded us with contempt. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
God has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense. The relation between Creator and creature is, of course, unique, and cannot be paralleled by any relations between one creature and another. God is both further from us, and nearer to us, than any other being. He is further from us because the sheer difference between that which has Its principle of being in Itself and that to which being is communicated, is one compared with which the difference between an archangel and a worm is quite insignificant. God makes, we are made: God is original, we derivative. However, as the same time, and for the same reason, the intimacy between God and even the meanest creature is closer than any that creatures can attain with one another. Our life is, at every moment, supplied by God: our tiny, miraculous power of free will only operates on bodies which God’s continual energy keeps in existence—our very power to think in His power communicated to us. Such a unique relation can be apprehended only by analogies: from the various types of love known among creatures we reach an inadequate, but useful, conception of God’s love for humans. MIND is the Real, Energy is tis appearance. Matter is the form taken by radiation or energy. It is not that the truth lies between two extremes but that it lies above both. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
It is not a miracle that physical objects, minerals like coal and oil, can be turned into heat and light and power, that is, into energies, as humans are doing today?—that matter can be transmuted into electrical energy, which can be turned into sounds, pictures, sounds, and words as it is thrown across the World? However, what is the essence of this energy, whence does it come ultimately? Where else but from the Great Mind which activated the Universe? Physics derives the World of continents and creatures from energies; these in turn derive from a mysterious No-thing. There is no room here for materialism. For if nothing material can be found at that deep level, mathematical evidence points to Mind. The substance of matter has shifted from the visible World to an invisible one but precise, if difficult, mathematical formulas tell us that it is there, while exploding atomic bombs demonstrate its power. At this point matter disappears; its substance becomes its source. All things and all energies come from this source. It is the ONE, unique. It is life for us all and death for us all. Mind has its own energy, which mysteriously constructs forms in space and time, forms of planets, sun galaxies, the cosmos. Energy is expression in movement of the unseen substance. Matter is its apparent form. All things are made from it. We are a part of it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
At the very end of all their explorations of the atom, what do the scientists find? Empty space, no thing-in-itself, a gap out of which pour flashes of energy. The World-Mind acts by its own power, underived from any other source. This entire Universe is a tremendous manifestation—the One turned into the Many—of a single Energy, which in its turn is an aspect of a single Mind. Whatever its nature, every other force derives from this Energy, as every other form of consciousness derives from this Mind. The statement “Light is God” is meant in two sense: first, as the poetical and a physical fact that, in the present condition of the human being, one’s spiritual ignorance is equivalent to darkness and one’s discovery of God is equivalent to light; second, as the scientific fact that has verified in light, and since God has made the Universe out of His own substance, the light-waves are ultimately divine. The Light is World-Mind’s active and creative force. The Light of the World-Mind is the Source of the physical Universe; the Love of the World-Mind is its structural basis. All the forces of the physical World are derived from a single source—the solar energy. This energy which is within the cosmos, from which it is drawn by humans, this Life-Force, may be called “bio-electric” for its shows itself on one level as light, on another as the whole spectrum of colours. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Biology does not know or explain Life-Power, only its manifestations. What the scientist formerly called “radiant light” became the stuff of which Worlds are made; what the mystic visionary called “the body of God” and actually saw a mysterious light, is still present in the World in hence in all terrestrial life forms. If we seek an origin for the consciousness, however small finite and limited it may be, that a human possesses, none other can be found except the universal consciousness which informs the entire Universe and guides its development. All the different kinds of consciousness come from this Universal Mind. All the highest ideals and virtues of human consciousness come from it too. Even the simple religious faith indirectly has its rise there. It is the mysterious essence of all things and of nothing, the infinite presence that is everywhere and yet nowhere. Above all, it is at the very root of human’s inward being. Our roots are in the World-Mind. In that sense, our whole life is born and grows from it—physical and non-physical alike. There is our true Parent. Without this constant listening for intuitive guidance, and submission to it, we waste much time putting right the mistakes made or curing the sickness which could have been prevented or bemoaning the calamity which willpower could have averted. None of these are God’s will, but our own causation. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Being guided intuitively does not mean that every problem will be solved instantly as soon as it appears. Some solutions will not come into consciousness until almost the very last minute before they are actually needed. One learns to be patient, to let the higher power take its own course. We can thank intuition for many of the inventions that surround us every day. I know that intuition has invariably set me on the right track. My hunches come to me most frequently in bed, in a plane, or while staring out of a pullman window. When a problem really has me stumped I am apt to write down all the details as far as I can go, then put it aside to cool for forty-eight hours. At the end of that time I often find it’s solved itself….In any case, the most interesting sensations are the elation that accompanies the hunch and the feeling of certainty it inspires that the solution which has been glimpsed is right. Learn to relax. Intuition cannot operate when your conscious mind is tied up in knots. Among the best ways to relax are hobbies, provided they are not taken too seriously. These intrusions from a realm beyond conscious thinking may be Heavenly ones. If so, to resist them would be to lose much and to accept them would be to fain much. However, they have to be caught on the wing. Their delicate beginnings must be recognized for what they are—precious guides. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
The more one follows this intuitive leading the more one not only learns to trust it but also develops future response to it. Truth consists in the equation of mind and things. Now the mind, that is the cause of the thing, is related to it as its rule and measure; whereas the converse is the case with the mind that receives its knowledge from things. When therefore things are the measure and rule of the mind, truth consists in the equation of the mind to the thing, as happens in ourselves. For according as a thing is, or is not, our thoughts or our words about it are true or false. However, when the mind is the rule or measure of things, truth consists in the equation of the thing to the mind; just as the work of an artist is said to be true, when it is in accordance with one’s art. Now as work of art are related to art, so are works of justice related to the law with which they accord. Therefore God’s justice, which establishes things in the order conformable to the rule of His wisdom, which is the law of His justice, is suitably called truth. Thus we also in human affairs speak of the truth of justice. Justice, as to the law that governs, resides in the reason or intellect; but as to the command whereby our actions are governed according to the law, it resides in the will. Virtue whereby a human shows oneself in word and deed such as one really is. Thus it consists in the conformity of the sign with the thing signified; and not in that of the effect with its cause and rule: as has been said regarding the truth of justice. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
God Almighty, Lord, sitter in the doorway, God of equilibrium, lovingkindness, and mercy: Thy who hold the opposites apart, Thy in whom all opposites unite, my prayer goes to Thy to open the passage, to clear the threshold, to make the way clear. Please, with the next turn on the wheel of, Fortuna, bring me luck. “I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the Earth will bring their splendour into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honour of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life,” reports Revelation 21.22-27. It is the duty of all creatures towards Thee, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, to give thanks unto Thee, to laud, adore and praise Thee, even beyond all the words of song and praise uttered by David, the son of Jesse, Thine anointed servant. Praise by Thy name forever, O our King, Thou God and King, great and holy, in Heaven on Earth. For unto Thee, O Lord our God and God of our father, it is fitting to render song and praise, hymn and psalm, ascribing unto Thee power and dominion, victory and glory, holiness and sovereignty. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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Genius Does What it Must—Cannot Make a Gentleman the Prince of Darkness!
The city room is an outhouse. You can get black lung by working on the rewrite desk for a week. They should pass a law against vaping, cigarettes, and the joint. There is need of a different kind, rooted exclusively in the human situation—the need for the development of a character structure. This need has to do with the phenomenon that was dealt with before, the decreasing significance of instinctive equipment in humans Effective behaviour presupposed that one can act immediately—that is, without being delayed by too much doubt and in a relatively integrated manner. It seems plausible to speculate that human beings, being still less determined by instinct than other terrestrial beings, would have been a biological failure if one had not developed a substitute for the instincts one lacked. This substitute also had to have the function of instincts: enabling one to act as if one were motivated by instincts. This substitute is the human character. Character is the specific structure in which human energy is organized in the pursuit of human’s goals; it motivates behaviour according to its dominate goals: a person acts “instinctively,” we say, in accordance with one’s character. Character is a human’s fate. The miser does not ponder whether one should save or spend; one is driven to save and to hoard; the exploitative-sadistic character is driven by the passion to exploit. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
The sadistic character is driven by the passion to control; the loving-productive character cannot help striving for love and sharing. These character-conditioned drives and strivings are so strong and unquestionable for the respective persons that they feel that theirs is simply a “natural” reaction, and find it difficult to really believe that there are other people whose nature is quite different. When they cannot help becoming aware of it, they prefer to think that these others suffer from some kind of deformation and are deviants from human nature. Anybody who has some sensitivity in judging other people (it is of course much more difficult with regard to oneself) sense whether a person has a sadistic or a destructive or a loving character; one sees enduring traits behind the overt behaviour and will be capable of sensing the insincerity of a destructive character who behaves as if one were a loving person. Sudden outburst of violence may be caused by brain disease, such as tumors, and such have, of course, nothing to do with depressive-bored states. Human groups from the very beginning have lived under very diverse environmental circumstances, regards different areas in the World and as regards fundamental changes of climate and vegetation within the same area. Since the emergence of Homo developed the less was a result of genetic changes, and the last forty thousand years such change is nil. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Yet these different environmental situations made is necessary for each group to adapt its behaviour to these respective situations, not only by learning but also by developing a “social character.” The concept of social character is based on the consideration that each form of society (or social class) needs to use human energy in the specific manner necessary for the functioning of that particular society. Its members want to do what they have to do if the society is to function properly. This process of transforming general psychic energy into specific psychosocial energy is mediated by the social character. The means by which social character is formed are essentially cultural. Through the agency of the parents, society transmits to the young its values, prescriptions, commands, et cetera. In more than a rudimentary sense, character is a human phenomenon; as far as we know human were able to create a substitute for their lost instinctive adaptation. The acquisition of character was a very important and necessary element in the process of human survival, but it has also many disadvantages and even dangers. Inasmuch as character is formed by traditions and motivates humans without appealing to one’s reason, it is often not adapted to or is sometimes even direct contradiction to new conditions. For example, concepts like the absolute sovereignty of the state are rooted in an older type of social character and are dangerous for the survival of humans in the atomic age. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
The concept of character is crucial for the understanding of the manifestations of malignant aggression. The destructive and sadistic passions in a person are usually organized in one’s character system. In a sadistic person, for instance, the sadistic drive is a dominant part of one’s character structure and motivates ne to behave sadistically, limited only by one’s concern for self-preservation. In a person with a sadistic character, a sadistic impulse is constantly active, waiting only for a proper situation and a fitting renationalization to be acted out. Such a person corresponds almost completely to Lorenz’s hydraulic model inasmuch as character-rooted sadism is a spontaneously flowing impulse, seeking for occasions to be expressed and creating such occasions where they are not readily at hand by “appetitive behaviour.” The decisive difference is that the source of the sadistic passion lies in the character and not in a phylogenetically programmed neural area; hence it is not common to all humans, but only to those who share the same character. Human’s existential needs can be satisfied in different ways. The need for an object of devotion can be answered by devotion to God, love, and truth—or by idolatry of destructive idols. The need for relatedness can be answered by love and kindness—or by dependence, sadism, masochism, destructiveness, and narcissism. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
The need for unity and rootedness can be answered by the passions for solidarity, brotherliness, love, and mystical experience—or by drunkenness, addition to harmful and intoxicating substances, depersonalization. The need for effectiveness can be answered by love, productive work—or by sadism and destructiveness. The need for stimulation and excitation can be answered by productive interest in humans, nature, art, ideas—or by a greedy pursuit of ever-changing pleasures. What are the conditions for the development of character—rooted passions? We consider first that these passions do not appear as single units but as syndromes. Love, solidarity, justice, reason are interrelated; they are all manifestations of the same productive orientation that I shall call the “life-furthering syndrome.” On the other hand, sadomasochism, destructiveness, greed, narcissism, incestuousness also belong together and are rooted in the same basic orientation: “life-thwarting syndrome.” Where one element of the syndrome is to be found, the other also exist in various degrees, but this does not mean that someone is ruled either by the one or by the other syndrome. In fact, people in whom this is the case are the exceptions: the average person is a blend of both syndromes; what matters for the behaviour of the person and the possibility of change is precisely the respective strength of each syndrome. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
As to the neurophysiological conditions for the development of the two respective kinds of passions, we must start out from the fact that humans are unfinished and “uncompleted.” Not only is the human brain not fully developed at birth, but the state of disequilibrium in which one finds oneself leaves one as an open-ended process to which there is no final solution. However, are humans—being deprived of the help of instincts and equipped only with the “weak reed” of reason by which one deceives oneself so easily—left without any help from one’s neurophysiological equipment? It seems that this assumption would miss an important point. One’s brain, so superior to that of the primate not only in size but also in the quality and structure of its neurons, has the capacity to recognize what kinds of goals are conducive to human’s health and growth, physically as well as psychically. It can set goals leading to the realization of human’s real, rational needs, and humans can organize one’s society in ways conducive to this realization. Humans are not only unfinished, incomplete, burdened by contradictions; one also can be defined as a being in active search of one’s optimal development, even though this search must often fail because external conditions are too unfavourable. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
The assumption that humans are a being in active search of their optimal development is not without support from neurophysiological data. Human’s capacity for intelligently directed self-development confers upon one the ability to determine the pattern of one’s culture and so to shape the course of human evolution in directions of one’s own choice. This ability, which no other terrestrial beings that we know of have, is human’s most distinctive characteristic, and it is perhaps the most significant fact known to since. It is now established beyond peradventure of doubt that various levels of nervous system organization are interdependently interrelated with one another. Somehow, by means that are still mysterious, purposive behaviour organized at each of these different levels of integrative function becomes expressed by a linked sequence of over-all purposes representing some kind of final judicious reckoning among contending functions. The purpose of the whole organism are clearly manifested and continuously served according to some integrated internal point of view. Some goal-seeking systems at the molecular level can be identified by physical-chemical techniques. Other goal-seeking systems at the level of the brain circuitry can be identified by neurophysiological techniques. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
At each level, parts of these systems are concerned with the appetites and satisfactions that govern behaviour. All of these goal-seeking systems originate in and are intrinsic to protoplasmic materials. Many such systems are peculiarly specialized and are located in particular nervous and endocrine systems. Evolutionarily elaborate organisms possess appetites and satisfactions, not only to fulfill vegetative needs; not simply for the obligate cooperations required for unions in pleasures of the flesh, the rearing of young, and the safeguarding of food, family and territory; not just for the adaptive behaviours essential to meet successfully the vicissitudes of environmental change; but also for extra energies, strivings, and outreaching—the extravagance that go beyond mere survival. The brain is a product of evolution, just as are teeth and claws; but we can expect much more of the brain because of its capacities for constructive adaptation. Neuroscientists can take as their long-range objective the understanding of the fullest potentialities of humankind in order to help humanity become more fully self-aware and to illuminate human’s nobler options. Above all, it is the human brain, with its capacities for memory, learning, communication, imagination, creativity, and the powers of self-awareness, that distinguishes humanity. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Cooperation, faith, mutual trust, and altruism are built into the fabric of the nervous system and propelled by internal satisfactions attached to them. Mammal and many other forms of life could not survive a single generation without built-in cooperative behaviour. A baby cannot exist alone, but is essentially part of a relationship. However complex the psychology of the sense of self and of the establishment of an identity eventually becomes as the baby grows, no sense of self emerges expect on the basis of this relation in the sense of BEING. This sense of being is something that antedates the idea of being-at-one with, because there has not yet been anything except identity. Two separate people can feel at one, but hereat the place that I am examining, the baby and the object are one. Many of my patients have suffered disturbances in the process of self-formation, and therapy can help them in specific ways to repair that early damage. I have become convinced that, to some extent at least, a properly conducted analysis of patients suffering from a disturbance in the formation of the self creates a psychological matrix that encourages the re-activation of the original development tendency. The nuclear self of the patient is consolidated, the talents and skills of the analysand that are correlated to the nuclear self are revitalized, while other aspects of the self are discarded or recede. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
In the state of primary narcissism, there is as yet no differentiation of self and object (usually an attachment figure like a parent, or may a house). Without this differentiation there can be no object-representation, and this makes it possible for the wonderful feelings of goodness, rightness, safety and omnipotence which belongs to that stage for the lucky ones. Yes, babies often feel like they are omnipotent because of a sense that is traced to what is called “oceanic feeling,” and it persists int adult life, or at least the longing for it persists. It is basically a narcissistic feeling of well-being, in conjunction with a feeling of union with some an all-powerful force—obviously the home-loving feelings. To my mind, narcissistic feelings come from the memory—traces of what it was like in the days of oceanic feelings and harmonious interpenetrating mix-up when the self and a beneficent and powerful (m)other were sill merged in the infant’s experience. This must have felt good. The baby’s self-esteem is determined by the gratification of its (instinctual) needs. The first supply of satisfaction from the external World is simultaneously the first regulator of self-esteem. When being gratified, the baby feels wonderful, indeed omnipotent. When the baby has a need which is not being satisfied, it fees irritated, frustrated, deprived, and it longs for what will remove the disturbing displeasure. The motivation comes from the wish to restore equilibrium. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
The longing for the return of omnipotence and the longing for the removal of instinctual tension are not yet differentiated from each other. If one succeeds in getting rid of an unpleasant stimulus, one’s self-esteem is again restored. The individual’s experiences connected with omnipotence lead to a most significant need of the human mind. The longing for the oceanic feeling of primary narcissism can be called the “narcissistic need.” “Self-esteem” is awareness of how close the individual is to the original omnipotence. Its (instinctual) needs make the child dependent on the parent. However, the child actually renounces its own instinctual satisfaction. The tendency to participate in the parent’s omnipotence, after renunciation of one’s own, differentiates itself from the desire for instinctual satisfaction. Thereafter every token of love from the powerful adult has the same effect as the satisfaction of instinctual needs. The nature of the child’s dependence is thus changed. When the baby loses love, the small child loses self-esteem, and when one regains love the self-esteem also returns. This is what makes children so educable. They need supplies of affection so badly that they are ready to renounce other satisfactions if rewards of affection are promised or if withdrawal of affection is threatened. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
The promise of necessary narcissistic supplies of affection under the condition of obedience and the threat of withdrawal of these supplies if the conditions are not fulfilled are the weapons of any authority. Some people behave as though any flaw, any difference of opinion, any lack in total harmony between them and an attachment figure or authority figure or even a peer is quite intolerable. When this occurs, they feel great distress and outrage, that their perhaps not yet even spoken thoughts and feeling had not been responded to by those people who are crafting their futures, and they require the full attention of these individuals so they can mirror their every move in an attempt to figure out what behaviours are proper decent. The individual is back in a development phase where one need a totally accurate and absolutely competent self-object. This way of relating is called “mirror-transference” and it is basically a revival of the “purified pleasure-ego,” in which the individual attempts to save the original all-embracing narcissism by concentrating perfection and power upon the self—here called the grandiose self—and by turning disdainfully aware from an outside to which all imperfections have been assigned. When children or mature people behave as though they are entitled to everyone’s deference and subservience, in ordinary life, we call them cheeky or demanding or pompous, and we respond by setting limits, through noncompliance, ridicule, scolding, or whatever. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
The self-object state of mind exists exactly to the extent that the mother is prompt to bring to the baby what it needs precisely at the moment the baby needs it. This confirms the illusion, so necessary at that stage, of harmony, security, and invulnerable power. For the self-object is the baby’s experience of its own competence, of its own power to have whatever it needs. We can get a glimpse of what this experience may feel like, in a sentence such as “To get what you want makes you feel grand, wonderful.” This sentence can mean both “makes you feel grand, wonderfully satisfied” and “makes you feel you are a grand, wonderful person.” This distinction between “I feel grand” and “I feel that I am grand” is more sophisticated than infants (and many adults) are capable of making. So the parents or care givers who are to prompt to cater to one’s baby keeps the baby feeling grand and confirms that baby’s sense of goodness and well-being. This promptness and accuracy of response is called “mirroring”: there is a symmetry between the baby’s phantasy-image of what it needs and the care giver’s intelligent caring supply of that need. I will often call it confirming, because it also confirms the baby’s sense of its own rightness: its right to exist, to have these needs, to have these gratifications. The confirming/mirroring process has important implications for the development of the infant’s sense of self. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
As if it has formed itself, the human environment reacts to even the smallest baby to confirm this idea. When, within the matrix of mutual empathy between the infant and its self-object, the baby’s innate potentialities and the self-object’s expectations converge, is it permissible to consider this juncture the point of origin of the infant’s primal rudimentary self? Accurate empathy is the first step in mirroring—knowing what the baby feels. Doing something about whatever is troubling the bay is the second step—but only the second. Except in extreme situations, the first is more important. The first requirement is not that something be done for the child; the first requirement is to understand and absorb what the child is experiencing and to communicate back some recognition and acceptance of its experience. In short, do not just shovel the silver spoon in, confirm the child’s right to hunger and satisfaction. When that happens in the right way, the child’s sense of itself is strengthened. The child then experiences hunger (or whatever), but not to such an extent that it becomes oppressed, humiliatingly dependent, or hurt—certainly not to the explosive extreme extent which would disrupt the emerging organization of self-structures. Gratifications also relate to beneficial satisfactions springing from buoyant health, vigorous and rested; delight accompanying both genetically endowed and socially acquired values; joys, solitary and shared feelings of pleasant excitement, engendered by exposure to novelty and during the quest for novelty. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
If anyone has a clear intuition about a matter, it would be foolish of one to trust intellect alone in the same matter. Gratifications result from satisfaction of curiosity and the pleasure of inquiry, from the acquisition of widening degrees of individual and collective freedom. Beneficial features of satisfaction enable humans to sustain unbelievable privations and yet to cling to life and, beyond that, to attach importance to beliefs tat may surpass the values of life itself. We do not have to speculate on which special area of the brain generates higher strivings, such as those for solidarity, altruism, mutual trust, and truth, but we must look at the brain system as a whole from the standpoint of its evolution in the service of survival. Empathy and love are qualities inherent in the brain system. How is it possible for two people to communicate, since language presupposed shared experience? Since the environment does not exist for humans by themselves but in their relationship to the human observer, communication presupposed that we find the like representation of environment in the two elements whoa re separated by their skins, but alike in their structure. When they realize and utilize this insight then A knows what A knows, because A identifies oneself with A and we have the equality I-Thou. Clearly, identification is the strongest coalition—and its mist subtle manifestation is love. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
The intellect is one medium of understanding, the intuition is another. The intuition should give orders which the intellect should carry out. The reasoning and particularity needed to do so and to attend to their details will then be provided by the intellect itself. However, the original function of giving direction and the authority of giving command will be vested in the intuition alone. Intuition reaches a conclusion directly, without the working of any process of reasoned thinking. What the thinking in one cannot receive, the mystical intuition can. The secret has yielded itself again and again, but not to human’s logical thinking; it has yielded itself only to human’s subtle intuition. After long thought and observation I became aware of a second brain or gland, locked in the region of the heart, which commanded with authority. I discovered that most of the difficulties of life were the result of the head-brain attempting to do the work of the heart-brain. It was like a skilled labourer trying to assume the place of a high-powered engineer. The point which appears in space is a point of light. It spreads and spreads and spreads and becomes the World-Mind. God has emerged out of Godhead. And out of the World-Mind the World itself emerges—not all at once, but in various stages. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
From that great light come all other and lesser lights, come the suns and the planets, the galaxies, the Universes, and all the mighty hosts of creatures small and great, of being just beginning to sense and other fully conscious, aware, wise. And the World appear the opposite, the dual principle which can be detected everywhere in Nature, the equilibrium. The Lord is just, and hath loved justice. There are two kinds of justice. The one consists in mutual giving and receiving, as in buying and selling, and other kinds of intercourse and exchange. This the Philosopher calls commutative justice, that directs exchange and intercourse in business. This does not belong to God, since, as the Apostle says: “Who hath first given to Him, and recompense shall be made one?” (Romans 11.35). The other consists in distribution, and is called distributive justice; whereby a ruler or a steward gives to each what one’s rank deserves. As then the proper order displayed in a ruling family or any kind of multitude evinces justice of this kind in the ruler, so the order of the Universe, which is seen both in effects of nature and in effects of will, shows forth the justice of God. Hence Dionysius says (Div. Nim. Viii, 4): “We must needs see that God is truly just, in seeing how He gives to all existing things what is proper to the condition of each; and preserves the nature of each in the order and with the power that properly belong to it.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Certain of the moral virtues are concerned with the passions, as temperance wit concupiscence, fortitude with fear and daring, meekness with anger. Such virtues as these can only metaphorically be attributed to God; since, as stated above, in God there are no passions; nr a sensitive appetite, which is, as the Philosopher says, the subject of those virtues. On the other hand, certain moral virtues are concerned with works of giving and expending; such as justice, liberality, and magnificence; and these reside not in the sensitive faculty, but in the will. Hence, there is nothing to prevent out attributing these virtues to God; although not in civil matters, but in such acts as are not unbecoming to Him. For, as the Philosopher says, it would be absurd to praise God for His political virtues. Since good as perceived by intellect is the object of the will, it is impossible for God to will anything but what His wisdom approves. This is, as it were, is law of justice, in accordance with which His will is right and just. Hence, what He does according to His will He does justly: as we do justly what we do according to the law. However, whereas law comes to us from some higher power, God is a law unto Himself. Now is the time to be children of the light. That is where we now stand in our World. That is the situation we now have to deal with. We are beyond the point where mere talk—no matter how sound—can make an impression. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Demonstration is required. We must live what we talk, even in places where we cannot talk what we live. We stand again in the World of the first century, when children of light first entered it. The test is reality. If the bewildering array of spiritualities and ideologies that throng our times really can do what apprenticeship to Christ can do, what more is there to say? There is no effectual response to our current situation expect for the children of light to be who and what they were called to be by Christ their head. Mere “reason” and “fact” cannot effectively respond, because they are now under that same sway of public spirit and institutions as are the arts and public life generally—and indeed as much of the “church visible” as well. Only when those who really do know that Jesus Christ is the light of the World take up their stand with him, and fulfill their calling from him to be children of light where they are, will there by any realistic hope of stemming the tide of evil and showing the way out of that tide for those who really want out. The call of Christ today is the same as it was when he left us here to serve him “even to the end of the age,” reports Matthew 28.20. We have not yet come to the “end of the age.” That call is to be his apprentices, alive in the power of God, learning to do all he said to do, leading others into apprenticeship to him, and also teaching them how to do everything he said. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
If we follow that call today in our Christian groups to become the children of the light, the morbid and difficult moments can be replaced by hope and light offered through the gospel of Jesus Christ, as it did in past time. Also, the most important thing happening in our communities will be what is happening in our churches. “Let your light so shine before humans, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father in Heaven,” reports Matthew 5.14-16. And now that we know, from our studies here, what it takes to become mature children of the light, how could we possibly be excused from not taking that open path and leading others to it. We will then, once again, see among us the presence of God who answers by fire. As Moses said to the Lord long ago: “Is it not by Thy going with us, that we, I and Thy people, may be distinguished from all the other people who are upon the face of the Earth?” (Exodus 33.16). As coins pouring from your lap, please rain down your gifts and blessings on me, Prosperous One. As plants turning green in the spring, please bring prosperity into my life, Lord of Fertility. As Ultimate Driving Machines being brought from the factory to the dealership, please send riches into my life, Great Ultimate Driving Machine. Please walk beside me, Lord of Strength, as I undergo trial. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Controller of the riches beneath the Earth, fertilizer of all life upon it, distributor of the wealth that arises from it: Lord of the Earth, Lord of Wealth, when sharing out your bounty, please do not forget me, who am faithful in your service. The breath of every living being shall bless Thy name, O Lord our God, and the spirit of all flesh shall ever glorify and extol Thee, O our King. From everlasting to everlasting Thou art God. However, for Thee we have no King, Deliverer and Saviour to rescue, redeem and give sustenance and to show mercy in all times of trouble and distress; yea, we have no Sovereign but Thee. Thou wert God from the beginning even as Thou wilt be God until the end. Thou art God of all that lives, Lord of all generations, extolled in manifold praises. Thou guidest Thy World with loving kindness and Thy creatures with tender compassion. Thou dost not slumber nor sleep; Thou arousest those that sleep, and awakenest those that slumber. Thou causest the uneducated to speak, loosest the bound, supportest the falling and raisest up those that are bowed down. To Thee alone d we give thanks. Were our mouth filled with song as the sea, our tongues with joyful praise as the multitude of its waves, our lips with adoration as the spacious firmament. Father, please help me, I am calling to you! My need is great, but your power is greater. I know you will prevail over the troubles that beset me. You who created all things, please give birth to what I desire; bring it to pass. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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The Sun Had Risen, but the Glimmer Barely Penetrated the Thick Darkness!
he real superstar is a man or a woman raising kids on $150 a week. The question is not at what age I want to retire, it is at what income. Each generation must not only preserve the gains of culture and civilization, and maintain intact those just institutions that have been established, but it must also put aside in each period of time a suitable amount of real capital accumulation. This saving may take various forms from net investment in leaning and education. Assuming for the moment that a just savings principle is available which tells us how great investment should be, the level of the social minimum is determined. Suppose for simplicity that the minimum is adjusted by transfer paid for by proportional expenditure (or income) taxes. In this case raising the minimum entails increasing the proportion by which consumption (or income) is taxed. Presumably as this fraction becomes larger there comes a point beyond which one of two things happens. Either the appropriate savings cannot be made or the greater taxes interfere so much with economic efficiency that the prospects of the least advantaged in the present generation are no longer improved but begin to decline. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
That human-thing relationship is growing more and more temporary may be illustrated by examining the culture surrounding the little girl or boy who trades in one’s Barbie doll. This child soon learns that Barbie dolls are by no means the only physical objects that pass into and out of one’s young life at a rapid clip. Pampers, bibs, paper napkins, Kleenex, towels, non-returnable soda bottles—all are used up quickly in one’s home and ruthlessly eliminated. Corn muffins come in baking tins that are thrown away after one use. Spinach is encased in plastic sacks that can be dropped into a pan of boiling water for heating, and then thrown away. TV dinners are cooked and often served on throw-away trays. One’s homes is a large processing machine through which objects flow, entering and leaving, at a faster and faster rate of speed. From birth on, one is inextricably embedded in a throw-away culture. The idea of using a product once or for a brief period and then replacing it, runs counter to the grain of societies or individuals steeped in a heritage of poverty. However, some people are not used to disposable products. They like to keep their things, even old things, rather than throw them away. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
We represented one company that wanted to introduce a kind of plastic throw-away curtain. We did a marketing study for them and found the resistance too strong. This resistance, however, is dying all over the developed World. From cardboard milk containers to the rockets that power space vehicles, products created for short-term or one-time use are becoming more numerous and crucial to our way of life. The recent introduction of paper and quasi-paper clothing carried the trend toward disposability a step further. Fashion boutiques and working-class clothing stores have sprouted whole departments devoted to gaily coloured and imaginatively designed paper apparel. Fashion magazines display breathtakingly sumptuous gowns, coats, pajamas, even wedding dresses made of paper. The bride pictured in one of these wears a long white train of lace-like paper that, the caption writer notes, will make “great kitchen curtains” after the ceremony. Like the reverse of what happened in the film The Sound of Music. Paper clothes are particularly suitable for children. Writes one fashion expert: “Little girls and boys will soon be able to spill ice cream, draw pictures and make cutouts on their clothes while their mothers smile benignly at their creativity.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
And for the adults who want to express their own creativity, there is even a “paint-yourself-dress or suit” complete with brushes. Price: $20.00. Price, of course, is a critical factor behind the paper explosion. Thus a department store features simple A-line dresses and men’s breathable underwear, made of what it calls “devil-may-care cellulose fiber and nylon.” The dresses start off at about $50.00 dollars and the men’s underwear about $55.00 a pair. It is almost more cost effective for the consumer to buy and discard a new one than to send an ordinary dress to the cleaners. Soon it will be. However, more than economics is involved, for the extension of the throw-away culture has important psychological consequences. We develop a throw-away mentality to match our throw-away products. This mentality produces, among other things, a set of radically altered values with respect to property. However, the spread of disposability through the society also implies decreased durations in human-thing relationships. Instead of being linked with a single object over a relatively long span of time, we are linked for brief periods with the succession of objects that supplant it. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
Thus it seems evident, for example, that the classical principle of utility leads in the wrong direction for questions of justice between generations. For if one takes the size of the population as variable, and postulates a high marginal productivity of capital and a very distant time horizon, maximizing total utility may lead to an excessive rate of disposal (at least in the near future). However, since from a moral point of view there are no grounds for discounting future well-being on the basis of pure time preference, the conclusion is all the more likely that the greater advantages of future generations will be sufficiently large to compensate for present sacrifices. This may prove true if only because with more capital and better technology it will be possible to support a sufficiently large population. Thus the utilitarian doctrine may direct us to demand heavy sacrifices of the less affluent generations for the sake of greater advantages, which balance the losses of some against the benefits to others, appears even less justified in the case of generations than among contemporaries. Even if we cannot define a precise just savings principle, we should be able to avoid this sort of extreme. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
When people are poor and saving is difficult, a lower rate of saving should be required; whereas in a wealthier society greater saving may reasonably be expected since the real burden is less. Eventually once just institutions are firmly established, the net accumulation required falls to zero. At this point a society meets its duty of justice by maintaining just institutions and preserving their material base. Each passes on to the next a fair equivalent in real capital as defined by a just saving principle. (It should be kept in mind there that capital is not only factories and machines, and so on, but also the knowledge and culture, as well as the techniques and skills, that make possible just institutions and the fair value of liberty.) This equivalent is in return for what is received from previous generations that enables the later ones to enjoy a better life in a more just society. Only those in the first generation do not benefit, let us say, for while they begin the whole process, they do not share in the fruits of their provision. Nevertheless, since it is assumed that a generation cares for its immediate descendants, as fathers say care for their sons, a just savings principle, or more accurately, certain limits on such principles, would be acknowledged. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
It is also characteristic of the contract doctrine to define a just state of society at which the entire course of accumulation aims. The ethical problem is that of agreeing on a path over time which treats all generations justly during the whole course of human history. What seems fair to persons in the original position defines justice in this instance as in others. Thus imagining themselves to be fathers, say, people are to ascertain how much they should set aside for their sons by noting what they would believe themselves entitled to claim of their fathers. When they arrive at an estimate that seems fair from both side, with due allowance made for the improvement in their circumstances, then the fair rate (or range of saving rates) for that stage is specified. Now once this is done for all stages, we have defined the just saving principle. When this principle is followed, adjacent generations cannot complain of one another; and in fact no generation can find fault with any other no matter how far removed in time. Justice does not require that early generations save so that later ones are simply more wealthy. Saving is demanded as a condition of brining about the full realization of just institutions and the fair value of liberty. If additional accumulation is to be undertaken, it is for other reason. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
It is a mistake to believe that a just and good society must wait upon a high material standard of life. When humans want is meaningful work in free association with others, these associations regulating their relations to one another within a framework to just basic institutions. To achieve this state of things great wealth is not necessary. In fact, if not a temptation to indulge and emptiness, beyond some point it is more likely to be an absolute hindrance, a meaningless distraction. The shift toward transience is even manifest in architecture—precisely that part of the physical environment that in the past contributed mostly heavily to human’s sense of permanence. The child who trades in his or her Barbie doll cannot but also recognize the transience of buildings and other large structures that surround one. We raze landmarks. We tear down whole streets and cities and put new ones up at a mind-numbing rate. The average age of dwellings has steadily declined from being virtually infinite in the days of caves to approximately a hundred years for houses built in the United States of America’s colonial days, to about forty years at present. The American made one’s World yesterday, and one knows exactly how fragile, how shifting it is. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Buildings in New York, New York USA literally disappear overnight, and the face of a city can change completely in a way. The horror of living in New York is living in a city without a history. All eight of my great-great grand-parents lived in the city, and only one of the houses they lined in is still standing. That is what I mean by the vanishing past. Less patrician New Yorkers, whose ancestors landed n America more recently, arriving there from the barrios of Puerto Rico, the villages of Eastern Europe or the plantations of the South, might voice their feelings quite differently. Yet the vanishing past is a real phenomenon, and it is likely to become far more widespread, with Trump Tower being stripped of its name, engulfing many of the history-drenched cities of Europe. New York and even now California is a continual evolutionary process of evacuations, demolitions, removals, temporarily vacant lots, new installations and repeat. This process is identical in principle to the annual rotation of crops in farm acreage-plowing, planting the new seed, harvesting, plowing under, and putting in another type of crop. Most people look upon the building operations blocking New York’s streets as temporary annoyances, soon to disappear in a static peace. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Many people still think of permanence as normal, a hangover from the Newtonian view of the Universe. However, those who have lived in and with New York since the end of the century have literally experienced living with Einsteinian relativity. That children, in fact, internalize this “Einsteinian relativity” was brought home to me forcibly by a personal experience. Some time ago my wife sent my son, age twelve, to 725 5th Avenue to get the 5th Avenue Filet Mignon, steak fires, sauteed spinach, cobb salad without avocado, Trump’s Ice Cream. It is just five blocks from our 50-story apartment on the Upper East Side. Our little boy had been there at least six or seven times before. An hour and a half later he returned perplexed. “It must have been torn down,” he said, “I could not find it.” It had not been. New to the neighbourhood, Rickey had merely looked on the wrong block. But he is a child of the Age of Transience, and his immediate assumption—that the building had been razed and replaced—was a natural one for a twelve-year-old growing up in the United States at this time. Such an idea would probably never have occurred to a child faced with a similar predicament even a century ago. The physical environment was far more durable, our links with it less transient. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
It is a natural fact that generations are spread out in time and actual exchanges between them take place only in one direction. We can do something for posterity but it can do nothing for us. What is just or unjust is how institutions deal with natural limitations and the way they are set up to take advantage of historical possibilities. Obviously if all generations are to gain (except perhaps the first), they must choose a just savings principle if followed brings it about that each receives from its predecessors and does its fair share for those which come later. It is now clear why the difference principle does not apply to the saving problem. There is no way for later generations to improve the situation of the least fortunate first generation. Either earlier generations have saved or they have not; there is nothing the parties can do to affect it. It seems best to preserve the present time of entry interpretation and therefore to adjust the motivation condition. We can now see that persons in different generations have duties and obligations to one another just as contemporaries do. The present generation cannot do as it pleases but is bound by the principles that would be chosen in the original position to define justice between persons at different moments of time. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
In addition, humans have a natural duty to uphold and to further just institutions and for this the improvement of civilization up to a certain level is required. An examination of the history of humanity suggested that humans in our epoch are so different from humans in previous ties that it seems unrealistic to assume that humans in every age have had in common something that can be called “human nature.” It seems simple to know when a human individual comes into existence, but in fact it is not quite as simple as it seems. The answer might be: at the time of conception, when the fetus has assumed definite human form, in the act of birth, at the end of weaning; or one might even claim that most humans have not yet been fully born by the time they die. We would best decline to fix a day or an hour for “the birth” of an individual, and speak rather of a process in the course of which a person comes into existence. Indeed, if we look at human’s individual development in terms of historical tie, we might say that human proper was born only a few minutes ago. Or we might even think one is still in the process of birth, that the umbilical cord has not yet been served, and that complications have arisen that make it appear doubtful whether humans will ever be born or whether they are to be stillborn. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Does the extraordinary development of the human’s brain make up for one’s instinct deficit? To some degree it does. Humans are guided by their intellect to make right choices. However, we know also how weak and unreliable this instrument is. It is easily influenced by human’s desires and passions and surrenders to their influence. Human’s brain is insufficient not only as a substitute for the weakened instincts, but it complicates the task of living tremendously. By this I do not refer to instrumental intelligence, the use of thought as an instrument for the manipulations of objects in order to satisfy one’s needs. Human’s thinking has acquired an entirely new quality, that of self-awareness. Gifted with self-awareness and reason, humans are aware of oneself as a being separate from nature and from others; one is aware of one’s powerlessness, of one’s ignorance; one is aware of one’s end: death. Self-awareness, reason, and imagination have giving the terrestrial being a different kind of existence. Their emergence has made humans into an anomaly, the deviation of the Universe. They are part of nature, subject to her physical laws and unable to change them, yet they transcend nature. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
Humans are set apart while being a part; they are homeless, yet not chined to the home they share with all creatures. Cast into this World at an accidental place and time they are forced out of it accidentally and against their will. Being aware of oneself, one realizes one’s powerlessness and the limitations of one’s existence. One is never free from the dichotomy of one’s existence: one cannot rid oneself of one’s mind, even if ne would one to; one cannot rid oneself of one’s body as long as one is alive—and one’s body makes one want to be alive. Human’s live cannot be lived by repeating the pattern of their species; one must live. Humans are the only beings that do not feel at home in nature, who can feel evicted from paradise, the only terrestrial being for whom one’s own existence is a problem that one has to solve and from which one cannot escape. One cannot go back to the prehuman state of harmony with nature, and one does not know where one will arrive if one goes forward. So many people are worried about climate change, but what is more worrisome about the future is corruption. If the Constitution of the United States of America is not enforced and human right are ignored, no matter what the climate is like, it will not be a safe place your future generations. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Human’s existential contradiction results in a state of constant disequilibrium. This disequilibrium distinguishes one from the animal, which lives, as it were, in harmony with nature. This does not mean, of course, that the animal necessarily lives a peaceful and happy life, but that it has its specific ecological niche to which its physical and mental qualities have been adapted by the process of evolution. Human’s existential, and hence unavoidable disequilibrium can be relatively stable when one has found, with the support of one’s culture, a more or less adequate way of coping with one’s existential problems. However, this relative stability does not imply that the dichotomy has disappeared; it is merely dormant and becomes manifest as soon as the conditions for this relative stability change. Indeed, in the process of human’s self-creation this relative stability is upset again and again. Humans, in their history, change their environment, and in this process one changes oneself. One’s knowledge increases, but so does one’s awareness of one’s developing state; one experiences oneself as an individual, and not only as a member of one’s tribe, and with this one’s sense of separateness and isolation grows. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Humans create larger and more efficient social units, led by powerful leaders—and one becomes frightened and submissive. One attains a certain amount of freedom—and becomes afraid of this very freedom. One’s capacity for material production grows, but in the process one becomes greedy and egotistical, a slave of the things one created. Every new state of disequilibrium forces humans to seek for new equilibrium. Indeed, what has often been considered human’s innate drive for progress is one’s attempt to find a new if possible better equilibrium. The new forms of equilibrium by no means constitute a straight line of human improvement. Something more painful than fire often times consumes the human body and it begins to burn within one’s soul. One starts to understand that no matter what one has done or not done, no matter what the circumstances, no punishment comes to us in this life on Earth which is undeserved. We are all guilty of putting Jesus Christ to death because of our fallen nature and our need of the atonement His death made. We either recognize our sinful selves, or our sentence of death, and our deserving of that sentence, which leads us to repent and believe—or we curse God and die. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Sin is within us. For if there is anything worse than our sin, it is our infinite capacity to rationalize it away. The evil deep within all of us is sometimes thrust before us by the conviction of the Holy Spirit, forcefully and painfully. And it makes us feel unclean. We become the helpless thief nailed to that cross, and what we see within us is so ugly that we can do nothing but cry out to God for help. Without the conviction of the Holy Spirit and the repentance that must follow, there is no way out of our predicament. We have the capacity to change anything about our lives—careers, jobs, homes, cars, Barbie dolls, even spouses—but we cannot change our own sinful nature. There must be an answer to the dilemma of evil within, because I have seen lives changed among the Christian inmates. However, for the rest of us and all the freedom we have, what a desperate plight. Trapped in and by our own sin. Thankfully, there is an answer to the wrenching dilemma. Loving God. When we see the reality of our sin, when we come to face to face with it and look into the raging fires of hell itself, and when we then repent and believe and are delivered from that plight, our entire being is filled with unspeakable gratitude to the God who sent His Son to that cross for us. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
We must express that gratitude. But how? Simply stated: by living the way God commands us. By obedience. That is what the Scriptures mean by holiness or sanctification—believers are set apart for holy living. Therefore, holiness is the only possible response to God’s grace. Holy living is loving God. However, everyone who has tried to live a holy life knows, holiness is the toughest, most demanding, vocation in the World. Our progress in holiness depends on God and ourselves—on God’s grace and on our will to be holy. God loves the human nature assumed by the Word of God in the person of Christ more than He loves all the Angels; for that nature is better, especially on the ground of the union with the Godhead. However, of speaking of human nature in general, and comparing it with the angelic, the two are found equal, in the order of grace and of glory; since according to Revelation 21.17 the measure of a human and of an Angel is the same. Yet so that, in this respect, some Angels are found nobler than some humans, and some human nobler than some Angels. However, as to natural condition an Angel is better than a human. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
God therefore did not assume human nature because He loved humans, absolutely speaking, more; but because the needs of humans were greater; just as the master of a house may give some costly delicacy to a sick servant, that one does not give to one’s own son in sound health. And now we can begin to speak of “sanctification,” as a condition of the human soul established in imparted (not just imputed) righteousness. It is the condition of soul in the mature children of light. What are we to make of it? Especially, is it to be taken as a goal for every apprentice of Jesus? Is sanctification sensible, or is it magical? What exactly is sanctification anyway? This is a matter that used to be much better understood than it is now. The work of Jesus Christ in the World is twofold. It is a work accomplished for us, destined to effect reconciliation between God and humans; it is work accomplished in us, with the object of effecting our sanctification. By the one a right relation is established between God and us; by the other, the fruit of the reestablished order is secured. By the former, the condemned sinner is received order is secured. By the former, the condemned sinner is received into the state of grace; by the latter the pardoned sinner is associated with the life of God. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
How many express themselves as if, when forgiveness with the peace which it procures has been once obtained, all is finished and the work of salvation is complete! They seem to have no suspicion that salvation consists in the health of the soul, and that the health of the soul consists in holiness. Forgiveness is not the reestablishment of health; it is the crisis of convalescence. If God thinks fit to declare the sinner righteous, it is in order that one may by that means restore oneself to holiness. Christ designs to make us both safe and sound. Justification gives the first—safety; sanctification gives the second—soundness. Sanctification does not mean perfection reached, but the progress of the divine life toward perfection. Sanctification is the Christianizing of the Christian. Any human who thinks oneself is a Christian, and that one has accepted Christ for justification, when one did not at the same time accept one for sanctification, is miserably deluded in that very experience. Not culture, but crucifixion, is what the Holy Spirit prescribes for the natural human. Sanctification is not a matter of course, which will go on whatever we do, or o not do. It requires a direct superintendence and surgery on the one hand, and, on the other hand a practical hatred of evil on our part that cooperates with the husbandry of God. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
The Holy Spirit enables the Christian, through increasing faith, more fully and consciously to appropriate Christ, and this progressively to make conquest of the remaining sinfulness of one’s nature. These comments fill out the meaning of the definition of sanctification as that continuous operation of the Holy Spirit, by which the holy disposition imparted in regeneration is maintained and strengthened. The intuition should be accorded the highest place among human’s faculties. It should always lead or direct them. Knowledge of the facts concerning humans and their nature, their general destiny and spiritual evolution, can be gained by the intuition; but information concerning the details of one’s personal history must be gleaned, if at all, by the physical faculty. The intuition appears indirectly in aesthetic ecstasy and intellectual creativity, in the pricking of conscience, in the longing for relief from anxieties, or peace of mind. It appears directly only in mystical realization. The intuition comes from, and leads to, God. It is the strength or feebleness of our intuition which determines the grace of our spiritual evolution. What begins as a gentle surrender to intuition for a few minutes, one day resolves into a complete surrender of the ego to God for all time. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
The intuitive method should not be asked to solve problems which can easily solved by the reason; otherwise it may fail to respond. On the other hand, when intuition is working, intellect should retire. No human idea can account for its own existence without testifying to the prior existence of a human mind. The World as idea can only account for its own existence by pointing to a World-Mind. And it is equally a fact that the highest kind of existence discoverable to us in the Universe is mental existence. In using the name “Mind” for God, I but follow some of the highest examples from antiquity, such as Aristotle in Greece, Hermes Trismegistus in Egypt, Asvaghosha in India, and the Patriarch Hui Neng in China. For us who are philosophically minded, the World-Mind truly exists. For us it is God, and for us there is a relationship with it—the relationship of devotion and aspiration, of communion and meditation. All the abstract talk about nonduality may go on, but in the end the talkers must humble themselves before the infinite Being until they are nothing and until they are lost in the stillness—Its stillness. Blessed one, please come near to me and hear my prayer. You who have, since ancient times, listened to my people’s words, please hear my prayer now. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Great is your power, and perfectly is it applied, with artful skill, with respect for beauty. My own might is little indeed; yours is beyond imagining. Please use your power in my interests: please grant me my wishes, please accomplish my objectives. Let us praise the name of God for the Lord takes delight in His people; He adorns the humble with salvation. Let the faithful exult in glory; let them sing for joy ere they go to sleep. Praises of God are on their lips, and a two-edged sword in their hand; to bring judgment upon the wicked nations, and chastisement upon the peoples; to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; to execute upon them the prescribed judgment; He is the glory of all His faithful. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Praise God in His sanctuary; praise Him in the firmament of His power. Praise Him for His mighty deeds; praise Him according to His abundant greatness. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Hallelujah Blessed be the Lord forevermore. Amen, Amen. Blessed be the Lord out of America, one who dwells in the United States. Hallelujah. Blessed be the Lord God, the God of America who alone does wondrous things. Blessed by His glorious name forever; and let the whole Earth be filled with His glory. Amen, Amen. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 