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Life Implies a Constant Interaction Between Organism and Environment!
Too much of a good thing can be wonderful. Once we establish that an object has the properties that it is rational for someone with a rational plan of life to want, then we have shown that it is good for the individual. And if certain sorts of things satisfy this condition for persons generally, then these things are human goods. Eventually we want to be assured that liberty and opportunity, and a sense of our own worth, fall into this category. We tend to move from the first stage to the second whenever it is necessary to take into account the special features of a person’s situation which the definition defines to be relevant. Typically these features are one’s interests, abilities, and circumstances. Although the principles of rational choice have not yet been set out, the everyday notion seems clear enough for the time being. In general, there is a reasonably precise sense in speaking simply of a good object of a certain kind, a sense explained by the first stage, provided that there is enough similarity of interests and circumstances among persons concerned with objects of this kind so that recognized standards can be established. When these conditions are met, saying that something is good conveys useful information. There is sufficient common experience with or knowledge of these things for us to have an understanding of the desires features exemplified by an average or standard object. Often there are conventional criteria founded upon commercial or other practices which define these properties. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
By taking up various examples we could no doubt see how these criteria evolve and the relevant standards determined. The essential point, however, is that these criteria depend upon the nature of the objects in question and upon our experience with them; and therefore we say that certain things are good without further elaboration only when a certain background is presupposed or some particular context is take for granted. The basic value judgments are those made from the standpoint of persons, given their interests, abilities, and circumstances. Only insofar as a similarity of conditions permits can we safely abstract from anyone’s special situation. In cases of any complexity, when the thing to be chosen should be adjusted to specific wants and situations, we move to the second stage of the definition. Our judgments of value are tailored to the agent in question as this stage requires. These remarks may be illustrated by looking at several examples from certain typical categories: artifacts, functional parts of systems, and occupations and roles. Among artifacts, a good watch, say, is one that has the features which it is rational to want in a watch. There are clearly a number of desired features here, in addition to that of keeping accurate time. It must not be excessively heavy, for example. These features must be measured somehow and assigned appropriate weights in the overall assessment. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
It is worth noting, however, that if we take the definition of good in the traditional sense as an analysis, that is, as a statement of concept identity, and if we suppose that by definition a watch is an article used to tell time, and that by definition rationality is taking effective means to achieve one’s ends, then it is analytic that a good watch is one that keeps accurate time. This fact is established solely by virtue of truths of logic and definitions of concepts. However, since I do not wish to take the definition of good in this sense but rather as a rough guideline for constructing substitute expressions that can be used to say what on reflection we want to say, I do not count this statement as analytic. In fact, for our present purposes I shall sidestep this question entirely and simply take certain facts about watches (or whatever) as common knowledge. There is no occasion to ask whether the statements that express them are analytic. On this account, then, it is certainly true that a good watch keeps accurate time and this correspondence wit everyday facts suffices to confirm the propriety of the definition. Again, it is plain that the letter “X” in the phrase “a good X” often has to be replaced by various noun phrases depending on the context. Thus it is usually not enough to speak of good watches, since we frequently need a more fine-grained classification. We are called upon to assess wrist watches, stop watches, and so on; or even wrist watches go with a particular kind of evening suit. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
In all these cases special interests give rise to certain appropriate classifications and standards. These complications are ordinarily gathered from the circumstances and are explicitly mentioned when it seems necessary. With things that are not artifacts some elaboration is usually called for to explain one’s meaning since it is not provided by the reference to the object. Thus, for example, the statement that Wildcat is a good mountain may require that kind of amplification provided by adding that it is a good mountain for skiing. Or the observation that it is a good night may call for the explanation that it is a good night for seeing the stars, since it is a clear and dark night. Some terms suggest the appropriate expansion. Consider an example: if we compare the statement that a body is a good corpse with the statement that it is a good cadaver, the sense of the first is not clear, whereas referring to something as a cadaver conveys its use in the study of anatomy. A good cadaver is presumably a corpse having the properties (whatever they are) which it is rational to want for this purpose. It may be noted in passing that we can understand at least part of what is meant by calling something good even though we do not know what are the desired features of the object being evaluated. There always stands in the background a point of view from which an artifact, functional part, or role is being appraised, although of course this point of view need not be made explicit. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
This perspective is characterized by identifying the persons whose concerns are relevant for making the judgment, and then by describing the interests which they take in the object. For example, in the case of parts of the body (functional parts of systems), we normally take up the point of view of the person in question and presume that one’s interest is the normal one. Thus good eyes and ears are those having the properties that it is rational to want in one’s own eyes and ears when one wishes to see and hear well. Similarly with animals and plants: when we say that they have a good coat, or good roots, we appear to adopt the point of view of the animal or plant. No doubt there is something artificiality in doing this, especially in the case of plants. On the other hand, perhaps there are other perspectives that would explain these judgments more naturally. However, the definition is likely to be more suitable for some cases than others, and this fact need not worry us too much so long as it is satisfactory for the purposes of the theory of justice. Turning to the category of occupations, in some instances anyway while the desired properties are those of persons belonging to the occupation, the persons whose point of view we take up do not belong to it. Thus a good doctor is one who has the skills and abilities that it is rational for one’s patients to want in a doctor. The skills and abilities are the doctor’s, the interest in the restoration of health by which they are assessed are the patients. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
These illustrations show that the point of view varies from case to cause and the definition of goodness contains no general formula for determining it. These matters are explained as the occasion arises or gathered from the context. A further comment is that there is nothing necessarily right, or morally correct, about the point of view from which things are judged to be good or bad. One may say of a person that one is a good spy, or a good assassin, without approving of one’s skills. Applying the definition to this case, we would be interpreted as saying that the individual referred to has the attributes that it is rational to want in a spy, or assassin, given what spies and assassins are expected to do. There is no implication that it is proper to want spies and assassins to do what they do. Normally it is governments and conspirators and the like who employ spies and assassins, sometimes corporations. We are simply evaluating certain proficiencies and talents from the point of view of governments and conspirators. Whether a spy or assassin is a good person is a separate question altogether; to answer it we should have to judge the cause for which one works and one’s motives for doing so. Now this moral neutrality of the definition of good is exactly what we should expect. The concept of rationality be itself is not an adequate basis for the concept of right; and in contract theory the latter is derived in another way. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Moreover, to construct the conception of moral goodness, the principles of right and justice must be introduced. It is easy to see that with many occupations and roles moral principles have an important place in characterizing the desired properties. For example, a good judge has a strong desire to give justice, to decide cases fairly in accordance with what the law requires. One possesses the judicial virtues which one’s position demands: one is impartial, able to assess the evidence fairly, not prejudiced or moved by personal considerations. These attributes may not suffice but they are generally necessary. The characterizations of good father or wife, or friend or associate, and so n indefinitely, rely upon a theory of the virtues and therefore presuppose the principles of right. These matters belong to the full theory. In order for goodness as rationality to hold for the concept of moral worth, it must turn out that the virtues are properties that it is rational for persons to want in one another when they adopt the requisite point of view. To find the Overself is to eliminate fear, establish harmony, and inspire living. The power of the Overself to enlighten, protect, and exalt humans is as actual a fact as the power of electricity to illumine one’s home—or it is nothing. It is quite possible to open doors of inner being without the assistance of a teacher. One’s own higher self will give one all the guidance one needs, provided one has sufficient faith in its existence and its assistance. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Alone and depending on one’s little, personal ego, a human can do the merest fraction of what one can do when one becomes an instrument of the Infinite Power. When the star of a human’s Overself rises into ascendancy, one will no more feel lonely even if one be often alone. A sese of the Universe’s friendliness will surround one, enfold one. One always turns for one’s first defense against the perils and troubles of this World to brief meditation upon the all-wise, all-powerful Overself, and only after that for one’s secondary defenses to the ego’s human resources. From the outside, by means of events, persons, or books; from the inside, by means of intuitions, thought, feelings, and urges—this is how the way is shown one by the Overself. Out of this deep mysterious center within oneself, one will draw the strength to endure distress wit fortitude, the wisdom to manage situations without after-regrets, the insight to keep the great and little values of everyday life in proper perspective. The correct understanding of what humans really are is both self-humbling and self-glorifying. If the consciousness of Gd in one makes one very strong, the consciousness of one’s dependence on it keeps one very humble. Its wisdom is a perfect solvent of human perplexities, its tranquility a perfect balm for human bruises. Because one has access to this inward source, one may live the loneliest of lives but it will not be loveless. The joy and warmth of its ever-presence will abide with one. In very truth the Overself becomes one’s beloved companion, brining an intense satisfaction and profound love which no external friendship could ever bring. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
The ever-presence of the Overself is to one life’s greatest fact. There is nothing to compare with it; one takes one’s stand upon it. One rejoices in it. When the outside World does one injustice or slanders one or hurts one or defraud one, one turns inward, deeper and deeper inward, until one stands in the presence of the Overself. Then one finds absolute serenity, absolute love. Every lesser thing must dissolve away in its divine atmosphere, and when one returns to mundane thought one feels no resentment against the wrong-doers; if anything, one feels pity for them. One has lost nothing, for good name and property are but the accidents of existence, whereas the presence of the Overself is a basic essential, and ne has not lost that reality. So long as It loves one and so long as one loves It there can be no real loss. We do not live self-sufficient and self-sustained lives but depend wholly on the Overself in every way and at every moment. Under great strain and amid grave dangers, the aspirant will find courage and endurance in the talismanic power of remembering the Higher Self. It is always there. It is from this source that one will draw both strength to rise above one’s own temptations and love to rise above other human’s hatred. It is a state where inner resistances are no more, inner conflicts are not known. It is the presence of the Overself in us that creates the germ of our aspiration for a higher life. It is the warm sunshine and cold rain of experience that nurtures the germ. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
It is the influence of spiritual individuals that brings the growth through it varying stages. All nerve tensions are lost in this holy quietude. An exquisite mood of well-being takes their place. One who perpetually feels the presence of the divine soul within oneself, thereby obtains an effortless control of oneself. The doubts and fears, the hesitations and suspicious, the jealousies and bitternesses, the enmities and hatreds of common life can never enter here. The Higher elf is called “the Friend.” There is a sense of perfect safety, a sense which particularly and strongly revels itself at times of danger, crisis, or distress. It is a fact more real than we usually grant that the continuous presence of the Overself makes human’s satisfaction with wholly material living both impermanent and impossible. “Life,” says Dr. Hinkle, “…implies a constant interaction between organism and environment.” When we speak of the change brought about by divorce or a death in the family or a job transfer or even a vacation, we are talking about a major life event. Yet, as everyone knows, life consists of tiny events as well, a constant stream of them flowing into and out of our experience. Any major life change is major only because it forces us to make many little changes as well, and these, in turn, consist of still smaller and smaller changes. To grapple with the meaning of life in the accelerative society, we need to see what happens at the level of these minute, “micro-changes” as well. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
What happens when something in our environment is altered? All of us are constantly bathed in a shower of signals from our environment—visual, auditory, tactile, et cetera. Most of these come in routine, repetitive patterns. When something changes with the range of our senses, the pattern of signals pouring through our sensory channels into our nervous system is modified. The routine, repetitive patters are interrupted—and to this interruption we respond in a particularly acute fashion. Significantly, when some new set of stimuli hits us, both body and brain know almost instantly that they are new. The change may be no more than a flash of colour seen out of the corner of an eye. It may be that a loved one brushing us tenderly with the fingertips momentarily hesitates. Whatever the change, an enormous amount of physical machinery comes into play. When a dog hears a strange noise, one’s ears prick, one’s head turns. And we do much the same. The change in stimuli triggers what experimental psychologists call an “orientation response.” The orientation response or OR is a complex, even massive bodily operation. The pupils of the eyes dilate. Photochemical changes occur in the retina. Our hearing becomes momentarily more acute. We involuntarily use our muscle to direct our sense organs toward the incoming stimuli—we lean toward the sound, for example, or squint our eyes to see better. Our general muscle tone rises. There are changes in our pattern of brain waves. Our fingers and toes grow cold as the veins and arteries in them constrict. Our palms sweat. Blood rushes to the head. Our breathing and heart rate alter. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Under certain circumstances, we may do all of this—and more—in a very obvious fashion, exhibiting what has been called the “startle reaction.” However, even when we are unaware of what is going on, these changes take place every time we perceive novelty in our environment. The reason for this is that we have, apparently built into our brains, a special novelty-detection apparatus that has only recently come to the attention of neurologists. The Soviet scientist E. N. Sokolov, who has put forward the most comprehensive explanation of how the orientation response works, suggests that neural cells in the brain store information about the intensity, duration, quality, and sequence of incoming stimuli. When new stimuli arrive, these are matched against the “neural models” in the cortex. If the stimuli are novel, they do not match any existing neural model, and the OR takes place. If, however, the matching process reveals their similarity to previously stored models, the cortex shoots signals to the reticular activating system, instructing it, in effect, to hold its fire. In this way, the level of novelty in our environment has direct physical consequences. Moreover, it is vital to recognize that the OR is not an unusual affair. It takes place in most of us literally thousands of times in the course of a single say as various changes occur in the environment around us. Again and again the OR fires off, even during sleep. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
“The OR is big!” says research psychologist Ardie Lubin, an expert on sleep mechanisms. “The whole body is involved. And when you increase novelty in the environment—which is what a lot of change means—you get continua ORs with it. This is probably very stressful for the body. It is a helluva load to put on the body. If you overload an environment with novelty, you get the equivalent of anxiety neurotics—people who have their systems continually flooded with adrenalin, continual heart pumping, cold hands, increased muscle tone and tremours—all the usual OR characteristics.” The orientation response is no accident. It is nature’s gift to humans, one of one’s key adaptive mechanism. The OR has the effect of sensitizing one to take in more information—to see or hear better, for instance. It readies one’s muscles for sudden exertion, if necessary. It prepares one for fight or flight. Yet each OR, as Dr. Lubin underscores, takes its toll in wear and tear on the body, for it requires energy to sustain it. Thus one result of the OR is to send a surge of anticipatory energy through the body. Stored energy exists in such sites as the muscles and the sweat glands. As neural system pulses in response to novelty, its synaptic vesicles discharge small amounts of adrenalin and nor-adrenalin. These, in turn, trigger a partial release of the stored energy. Each OR draws not only upon the body’s limited supply of quick energy, but on its even more limited supply of energy-releasers. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
In needs to be emphasized, moreover, that the OR occurs not merely in response to simple sensory inputs. It happens when we come across novel ideas or information as well as novel sights or sounds. A fresh bit of office gossip, a unifying concept, even a new joke or an original turn of phrase can trigger it. When a novel event or fact challenges one’s whole preconceived World view, the OR is particularly stressing. Given an elaborate ideology, Catholicism, Marxism, or whatever, we quickly recognize (or think we recognize) familiar elements in otherwise novel stimuli, and this puts us at ease. Indeed, ideologies may be regarded as large mental filing cabinets with vacant drawers or slots waiting to accept new data. For this reason, ideologies serve to reduce the intensity and frequency of the OR. It is only when a new fact fails to fit, when it resists filing, that the OR occurs. A classical example is that of the religious person who is brought up to believe in the goodness of God and who is suddenly faced by what strikes one as a case of overwhelming, senseless evil. Until the new fact can be reconciled or one’s World view altered, one suffers acute agitation and anxiety. The OR is so inherently stressing that we enjoy a vast sense of relief when it is over. At the level of ideas or cognition, this is the “a-hah!” reaction we experience at a moment of revelation, when we finally understand something that has been puzzling us. We may be aware of the “a-hah’s” are continually occurring just below the level of consciousness. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Novelty, therefore—any perceptible novelty—touches off explosive activity within the body, and especially the nervous system. OR’s fire off like flashbulbs within us, at a rate determined by what is happening outside us. Humans and environment are in constant, quivering interplay. While novelty in the environment raises or lowers the rate at which OR’s occur, some novel condition call fort even more powerful responses. We are driving along a monotonous turnpike, listening to the radio and beginning to daydream. Suddenly, a car speeds by, forcing us to swerve out of our lane. We react automatically, almost instantaneously, and the OR is very pronounced. We can feel our heart pumping and our hands shaking. It takes a while before the tension subsides. However, what if it does not subside? What happens when we are placed in a situation that demands a complex set of physical and psychological reactions and in which the pressure is sustained? What happens if, for example, the boss breathes hotly down our collar day after day? What happens when someone is constant acting like they are about to pull a gun on us? What happens when everyday your child crosses the street a car almost runs one over? What happens when one of our children is seriously ill? Or when, on the other hand, we look forward eagerly to a “big date” or to closing an important business deal? #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Such situation cannot be handled by the quick spurt of energy provided by the OR, and for these we have what might be termed the “adaptive reaction.” This is closely related to the OR. Indeed, the two processes are so intertwined that the OR can be regarded as part of, or the initial phase of, the larger, more encompassing adaptive reaction. However, while the OR is primarily based on the nervous system, the adaptive reaction is heavily dependent upon the endocrine glands and the hormones they shoot into the bloodstream. The first line of defense is neural; the second is hormonal. When individuals are forced to make repeated adaptations to novelty, and especially when they are compelled to adapt to certain situation involving conflict and uncertainty, a pea-sized gland called the pituitary pumps out a number of substances. One of these, Adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), goes out to the adrenal. This cases them, in turn, to manufacture certain chemicals called corticosteroids. Cortisol is made by the adrenal glands, two small glands located above the kidneys, and plays an important role in helping you to: Respond to stress, fight infection, regulate blood sugar, maintain blood pressure, regulate metabolism (the process of how your body uses food and energy). Too much or too little cortisol can cause serious health problems. In addition to the reactions already listed, when considered more thoroughly, as corticosteroids are released, we observe that they speed up body metabolism. They raise blood pressure. They send anti-inflammatory substances through the blood to fight infection at wound sites, if any. And they begin turning fat and protein into dispersible energy, thus tapping into the body’s reserve tank of energy. The adaptive reaction provides a much more potent and sustained flush of energy than the OR. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Like the orientation response, the adaptive reaction is no rarity. It takes longer to arouse and it lasts longer, but it happens countless times even within the course of a single day, responding to changes in our physical and social environment. The adaptive reaction, sometimes known by the more dramatic term “stress,” can be touched off by shifts and changes in the psychology climate around us. Worry, upset, conflict, uncertainty, even happy anticipation, hilarity and joy, all set the ACTH factory working. The very anticipation of change can trigger the adaptive reaction. The need to alter one’s way of life, to trade an old job for a new one, social pressures status shifts, life style modifications, in fact, anything that forces us to confront the unknow, can switch on the adaptive reaction. Dr. Lennart Levi, director of the Clinical Stress Laboratory at the Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm, Germany has shown, for example, that even quite small changes in the emotional climate or in interpersonal relationships can produce marked changes in body chemistry. Stress is frequently measured by the amounts of corticosteroids and catecholamines (adrenalin and nor-adrenalin, for example) found in the blood and urine. In one series of experiments Dr. Levi used films to generate emotions and plotted the resultant chemical changes. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
A group of Swedish male medical students were shown film clips depicting murders, fights, torture, execution and cruelty to animals. The adrenalin component of their urine rose an average 70 percent as measured before and after. Nor-adrenalin rose an average 35 percent. Next a group of young female office workers were shown four different films on successive nights. The first was a bland travelog. They reported feelings of calmness and equanimity, and their output of catecholamines fell. The second night they watched Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory and reported feeling intense excitement and anger. Adrenalin output shot upward. The third night they viewed Charley’s Aunt, and roared with laughter at the comedy. Despite the pleasant feelings and the absence of any scenes of aggression or violence, their catecholamines rose significantly again. The fourth night they saw The Devil’s Mask, a thriller during which they actually screamed with fright. Not unexpectedly, catecholamine output sored. Emotional response, almost without regard for its character, is accompanied by (or, indeed, reflect) adrenal activity. Similar findings have been demonstrated again and again in the case of men and women—not to speak of rodents, dogs, deer, and other experimental animals—involved in “real” as distinct from “vicarious” experiences. Sailors in underwater demolition training, men stationed in lonely outpost in Antarctica, astronauts, factory workers, executives have all show similar chemical responsiveness to change in the external environment. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
The implications of this have hardly begun to register, yet there is an increasing evidence that repeated simulation of the adaptive reaction can be seriously damaging, that excessive activation of the endocrine system leads to irreversible “wear and tear.” Thus, we are warned by Dr. Rene Dubos, author of Man Adapting, that such changeful circumstances are as “competitive situations, operation within a crowded environment, change in a very profound manner the secretion of hormones. One can type-read that in the blood or the urine. Just a mere contact with the complex human situation almost automatically brings this about, this stimulation of the whole endocrine system.” What of it? “There is,” Dr. Dubos declares, “absolutely no question that one can overshoot the stimulation of the endocrine system and that this has physiological consequences that last throughout the whole lifetime of the organs.” Dr. Hans Selye, a pioneer investigator of the body’s adaptive responses reported that when dealing with intense and prolonged stress “Clinical studies confirm in women the monthly cycles become irregular or stop altogether, and during lactation milk secretions may become insufficient in for the baby. In men both the sexual urge and sperm-cell formation are diminished.” Since than population experts and ecologists have compiled impressive evidence that heavily stressed populations of rodents, deer—and people—show lower fertility levels than less stressed control groups. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
Crowding, for example, a condition that involves a constant high level of interpersonal interaction and compels the individual to make extremely frequent adaptive reactions has been shown, at least in animals, to enlarge the adrenals and cause a noticeable drop in fertility. The repeated firing of the OR and the adaptive reaction, by overloading the neural and endocrine systems, is linked to other diseases and physical problems as well. Rapid change in the environment makes repeated calls on the energy supply of the body. This leads to a speedup of fat metabolism. In turn, this creates grave difficulties for certain diabetics. Even the common cold has been shown to be affected by the rate of change in the environment. In studies reported by Dr. Hinkle it was found that the frequency of colds in a sample of New York working women correlated with “changes in the mood and pattern of activity of the woman, in response to changing relationships to the people around her and the event that she encountered.” If we understand the chain of biological events touched off by our efforts to adapt to change and novelty, we can begin to understand why health and change seem to be inextricably linked to one another. The findings of Drs. Holmes, Rahe, Arthur, and others now engaged in life change research in entirely compatible with on-going research in endocrinology and experimental psychology. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
It is quite clearly impossible to accelerate the rate of change in society, or to raise the novelty ratio in society, without triggering significant changes in the body chemistry of the population. By stepping up the pace of scientific, technological and social change, we are tampering with the chemistry and biological stability of the human race. This, one must immediately add, is not necessarily bad. “There are worse things than illness,” Dr. Homes wryly reminds us. “No one can live without experiencing some degree of stress all the time,” Dr. Selye has written. To eliminate ORs and adaptive reactions would be to eliminate all change, including growth, self-development, maturation. It presupposes complete stasis Change is not merely necessary to life; it is life. By the same token, life is adaptation. There are, however, limits on adaptability. When we alter our life style, when we make and break relationships with things, places, or people, when we move restlessly through the organizational geography of society, when we learn new information and ideas, we adapt; we live. Yet there are finite boundaries; we are not infinitely resilient. Each orientation response, each adaptive reaction exacts a price, wearing down the body’s machinery bit by minute bit, until perceptible tissues damage results. Thus humans remain in the end what one started as in the beginning: a biosystem with a limited capacity for change. When this capacity is overwhelmed, the consequence is future shock. #RanolphHarris 21 of 23
The extent of the peace and strength, the confidence and beneficence which lie stretched out beneath the little ego’s troubled life is like unto the oceans: no other simile will suit. If only we could find our way to them or lese bring gushes from them to the surface, mysterious pools of wisdom and goodness are underneath the personality. In this higher part of one’s being one feels completed within oneself, at-oned with Nature and as self-sufficient as Nature. The Overself is present as the supreme Fact in one’s, and all, existence even as it is present as an emotional necessity in the religious human’s existence. All one’s finest emotions, one’s deepest wisdom, one’s creative faculties, one’s truth-discriminating intuitions come into being because of the Overself’s central if hidden presence. Many will dispute this possibility, but it is certainly possible for your higher self to guide and instruct you directly—through and within yourself. It is not an existence far apart from yourself. We should become so involved in acquiring good quality traits and participating in character-building activities that there is no time to engage in anything worthless or harmful. Our habits should be those that make us susceptible to faith and testimony. One of the best habits to cultivate is that of reading the scriptures so one can become knowledgeable of one’s responsibilities. By learning God’s commandments and keeping them, we develop the ways of righteousness that are an expression of our faith. With good habits we prepare ourselves for excellence. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
We need to ask ourselves, “Are my usual thoughts and present actions worthy of eternal life? Am I setting my sights on eternal goals and working to obtain them?” Anything short of our best is not good enough, especially in the service of the Lord. The Lord has counseled us to repent and walk uprightly before Him. Uprightly implies a strict adherence to moral principles and honesty of purpose. We are instructed to make our home an abode of righteousness and honour. Honour is almost an old-fashioned word in today’s World. It encompasses duty, responsibility, and respect for the eternal values. It also suggests a firm holding to codes of right behaviour and the guidance of a high sense of stewardship. Who is like unto the Lord our God, enthroned so high, that looketh down below upon Heaven and Earth? He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the needy from the dunghill, to seat one together with princes, together with the prince of His people. He maketh the childless woman to dwell in her house as a joyful mother of children. Hallelujah. Tremble, thou Earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of Jacob, who turned the rock into a pool, the flint into a fountain of waters. If in your divinest being you are the Overself and if the rest of you is both path and goal, the way and the truth, what do you need a guru for, why step outside yourself. However, people do not care for such questions. They look for teacher in the fake news media or in the streets, and thus look always outside themselves, outside the Overself. In your soul, this gentle divine atmosphere, God lives and moves and has His spirit, and this is one reason we have to follow Shakespeare’s counsel and be true to ourselves. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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One Lives in the Gratifying Consciousness that One is Supported by the Divine Will!
Careful what you write. The Mafia may come along and spray garlic in your lawn. It is difficult to form a correct estimate of the significance of contemporary events, and the danger that our judgment will remain caught in subjectivity is great. So I am fully aware of the risk I am taking in proposing to communicate my views concerning certain contemporary events, which seem to me important, to those who are patient enough to hear me. I refer to those reports reaching us from all corners of the Earth, rumours of round objects that flash through the troposphere and stratosphere and go by the name of Flying Saucers, soucopues, disks, and “Ufos” (Unidentified Flying Objects). These rumours, or the possible physical existence of such objects, seem to me so significant that I feel myself compelled, as once before when events of fateful consequence were brewing for Europe, to sound a note of warning. I know that, just as before, my voice is much too weak to reach the ear of the multitude. It is not presumption that drives me, but my conscious as a psychiatrist that bids me fulfil my duty and prepare those few who will hear me from coming events which are in accord with the end of an era. As we know from ancient Egyptian history, they are manifestations of psychic changes which always appear at the end of one Platonic moth and at the beginning of another. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Apparently they are changes in the constellation of psychic dominants, of the archetypes, or “gods” as they used to be called, which bring about, or accompany, long-lasting transformations of the collective psyche. This transformation started in the historical era and left its traces first in the passing of the aeon of Taurus into that of Ares, and then of Ares into Pisces, whose beginning coincides with the rise of Christianity. We are now nearing that great change which may be expected wen the spring-point enters Aquarius. It would be frivolous of me to try to conceal from the reader that such reflections are not only exceedingly unpopular but even come perilously close to those turbid fantasies which becloud the minds of World-reformers and other interpreters of “signs and portents.” However, even if it means putting my hard-won reputation for truthfulness, reliability, and capacity for scientific judgment in jeopardy, I must take this risk. I cand assure my reader that I do not do this with a light heart. I am, to be quite frank, concerned for all those who are caught unprepared by the events in question and disconcerted by their incomprehensible nature. Since, so far as I know, no one has yet felt moved to examine and set forth the possible psychic consequences of this foreseeable astrological change, I deem it my duty to do what I can in this respect. I undertake this thankless task in the expectation that my chisel will make no impression on the hard stone it encounters. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The symbolic history of the Christ’s life shows, as the essential teleological tendency, the crucifixion, viz. the union of Christ with the symbol of the tree. It is no longer a matter of an impossible reconciliation of Good and Evil, but of man with his vegetative (=unconscious) life. In the case of the Christian symbol the tree however is dead and man upon the Cross is going to die, id est, the solution of the problem takes place after death. That is so far as Christian truth goes. However, it is possible that the Christian symbolism expresses man’s mental condition in the aeon of Pisces, as the ram and the bull gods do for the ages of Aries and Taurus. In this case the post-mortal solution would be symbolic of an entirely new psychological status, viz. that of Aquarius, which is certainly a oneness, presumably that of the Anthropos, the realization of Christ’s allusion: “Dii estis” (Ye are gods). This is a formidable secret and difficult to understand, because it means that man will be essentially God and God man. The sighs pointing in this direction consist in the fact that the cosmic power of self-destruction is given into the hands of man and that man inherits the dual nature of the Father. He will [mis]understand it and he will be tempted to ruin the universal life of the Earth by radioactivity. Materialism and atheism, the negation of God one becomes deified, id est, god-almighty-like, and then one knows what is good for humankind. That is how destruction begins. The intellectual schoolmasters in the Kremlin are a classic example. The danger of following the same path is very great indeed. It begins with the lie, id est, the projection of the shadow. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
There is need of people knowing about their shadow, because there must be somebody who does not project. They ought to be in a visible position where they would be expected to project and unexpectedly they do not project! They can thus set a visible example which would not be seen if they were invisible. The divine being is present in every person but only dim echoes may succeed in emerging from the hinterland of consciousness. The absence of the ego is the presence of the Overself. However, this is only a surface impression in the person’s thought, for the Overself is always present. We may have the intuitive assurance that this higher power does exist even when we have no person experience of it and no direct knowledge of its nature. Amid all the perplexities and oscillations of life, the witnessing and understanding Overself waits with infinite patience. No one is ever left out. This is the only God we can hope to know, the true Teacher for all. Those who yearn to unite with it should plead persistently for its Grace. The Overself’s power to alter circumstances, create opportunities, and uphold persons is available to anyone who fulfils the requisite conditions. These include some amount of mental preparation and more purification some clear perception of the fact that the Overself is present here and now, an instant and constant remembrance of this fact, and finally a willingness to trust completely to its providential help, supply, and support no matter how undesirable or intolerable a situation seems to be. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Well, I did not need to go far. Bianca visits at the home of Mr. Baxter the wholesaler. Here I found not only her but also a person who for me appeared just as opportunely. Edward, the son of the house, is head over heel in love with her—it takes but half an eye to see it when one looks into his eyes. He is in the business, in his father’s office, a good-looking fellow, very pleasant, a bit shy, and I believe this last trait does not damage him in her eyes. Poor Edward! He does not have the slightest idea how to procced with his love. When he knows she is going to be there in the evening, he dressed for her sake alone, puts on his new black suit for her sake alone, his fancy cuffs for her alone—and thus cuts an almost ludicrous figure among the other daily company in the drawing room. His bashfulness verges on the unbelievable. If it were a guise, then Edward would be a dangerous rival to me. It takes great art to use bashfulness, but one does achieve a great deal with it. How often I have used bashfulness to trick a little miss! Ordinarily, young ladies speak very harshly about bashful men, but secretly the like them. A little bashfulness flatters a young lady’s vanity, makes her feel superior; it is her earnest money. When they are lulled to sleep, then at the very time they believe you are about to perish from bashfulness, you show them that you are so far from it that you are quite self-reliant. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Bashfulness makes man lose his masculine significance, and therefore it is a relatively good means for neutralizing intimacy. Therefore, when they perceive that it was only a guise, they become so abashed that they blush inwardly, feel very strongly that in a way they have overstepped their limits; it is just as if they continued to treat a young man as a child for too long. So now we are friends, Edward and I. There is between us a true friendship, a beautiful relationship, such as has not existed since the most beautiful days of Greece. We were on intimate terms at once when, after having involved him in a multiplicity of observations about Bianca, I managed to make him confess his secret. Of course, when all the secrets come out together, than this one can come along. Poor fella, he has been pining for a long time already. He spruces himself up every time she comes, then escorts her home in the evening; his heart pounds at the thought of her arm resting on his. They walk home, looking at the starts. He rings her doorbell; she disappears; he despairs—but has hopes for the next time. As yet he had not had the courage to step across her threshold, he who has such a superb opportunity. Although I cannot refrain from secretly deriding Edward, there is nevertheless something beautiful in his innocence. Although I ordinarily fancy myself to be fairly conversant with the whole sum and substance of the erotic, I have never noticed this state in myself, this anxiety and trembling of infatuation, that is, to the degree that it deprives me of my composure, for at other times I know it is all right, but with me it is such that it makes me stronger instead. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Perhaps someone would say that I have never really been in love—maybe so. I have taken Edward to task; I have encouraged him to depend on my friendship. Tomorrow he will take a decisive step, go in person to her and invite her. I managed to lead him to the preposterous idea of inviting me to go along; I promised him to do so. He takes it as an extraordinary show of friendship. The situation is just as I want it; it amounts to bursting unexpectedly through the door into the room. Should he have the remotest doubt about the significance of my appearance, my appearance will in turn confuse everything. In every grade of life’s manifestation, from every quality of human character, the divine is always present and never absent. There are resources within human’s grasp that could redeem one’s character and transform one’s life, yet they lie untouched and undeveloped. The silent secret part of the self is forever there, forever asking a little surrender of attention. However, few give it. All the time it is silently asking: “Will you not turn toward Me, accept Me, for I am your other self?” In one sense, we have never left the divine Source, never lost our divine identity. The Presence is inseparable from human existence, even though so many human beings may find the statement incredible, imaginative, or merely tied to a religious faith. If it would only announce itself more loudly! However, humankind has to accept its ways on its own terms. Those who wish may learn what they are. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
There is something godlike in every person. By finding it in ourselves, we rise above the common human life as that in turn rises above the other terrestrial beings. And you will perceive that the Overself is always there, albeit you will have repeatedly to raise your eyes from Earth and your mind from ego to come into realization of this truth. Because we draw our very life from the spiritual principle within us, we can only ignore the truth that this principle exists but can never lose its reality. Retreat into one’s mystical home is every open to one, withdrawal into the blissful privacy of the Overself is one’s blessed right. God is both outside and inside us, is everywhere around and deep within. It is there but waits to be recovered by the individual consciousness. Where can one find this peace or practice this presence expect in oneself? This done, one can go about one’s daily business anywhere and everywhere. Jesus spoke in simple crisp sentences about this great fact that Heaven—the state of real happiness—is within humans here and now. Deep within human beings there is Something which waits for one’s discovery, something which reveals itself when one has penetrated far enough or when grace grants it or universal law favours it. This divine soul never withdraws from human’s life, is never absent from human’s fate. For the very purpose of these last two is to draw one to seek and find the soul. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
The truth is that never for a moment are we really separate from our inner self. It is simply asking humans to accept themselves for what they are. A single train would still be too large to carry all the humans in American who are living in the awareness of the Overself. There is a center in every one’s Self which is divine and radiant. The same Overself is behind us all, contains us all. This divine element whose continuing presence in humans confers a guarantee of eventual salvation. In all of us there is this resplendent being dwelling in the deepest concealment, linking us with the Supreme Being. In this link lies range. Messages from the (inner and outer) environment are received, evaluated, and so on, and attached strongly (or less strongly) to self-regions and thus they become less (or more) a part of the World of other people and things. And, of course, the soul different in what it creates and what it experiences as impingement. One soul may create food and find company imposed on it, another will create company and find food imposed of it. Different vulnerabilities of faults will be consequent on such differences as to what feels “other.” Suppose I have a phantasy of whatever will make me feel good, and then what makes me feel good comes about and I feel good. Then this experience is almost wholly one of “me” and hardly at all of “not me.” I get a sense of strength and well-being. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Suppose, however, that I have a phantasy of whatever makes me feel good, but the event does not come about just then and there. After a brief and quite painless delay, whatever makes me feel good does happen, and I feel good. I do not have the experience that I made it happen (created it). However, I do have an experience of a nice not-self that appears at more or les the right time and makes me feel good. This, I imagine, happens after a relatively short delay. The effects of a relatively long delay are even less likely to make me feel that I am powerful and that everything is under my control; the delay may make me feel that the World is quite a difficult place to handle. In all these instances, however, my phantasy of something good is confirmed. Good things are there for me: they are mine or somebody’s who is willing to share them. And my phantasy of what makes me feel good does materialize and make me feel good. However, if the delay is too long, my phantasy of what makes me feel good is not confirmed, the good thing does not come, though some other thing (not necessarily bad) does—this disturbs me and makes me feel impinged on. We have a clue here about how different experiences may variously contribute to people’s self0imagery or their imagery of the World. Beginning with our experience of much or little impingement, we organize other people and things not just as good or bad objects, but as self, or other, according to the amount of their impingement and otherness that has been experienced in their connection. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Look where you will, go where you will, the higher power is there, whether in silence of in action. The Overself can become very real to one when feeling its ever-presence in all one’s experience, when awake to is now-ness. The revelation of truth may come directly from within oneself because of the presence of the divine spark within oneself. Since the higher individuality is a stable thing, it is not to be achieved by any efforts but is to be discovered as present. The doorway to truth stands wide open throughout the day. If humans would, or could, believe that with every breath they are acting in concert with the cosmic rhythm, that in clinging to the self they are actually sharing the divine presence! It is a presence which can be felt directly in daily active life, although not so vividly as when removed from the World and concentrated upon in solitary meditation. The Overself appears to all alike, regardless of colour or race, when they have made themselves ready for It. Anybody who as so misunderstood the message in the essay as to believe differently, is mistaken. A fortunate person gets one’s pleasures the very moment one begins to think of them and begins to look for them. The looking is a kind of anticipatory experience based on memories of having one’s needs met soon after one has begun to want. This is important. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
If the phase of dependence on spirituality goes badly, the individual is left with memories of helpless and frustrating dependence on God, for the good things are experiences as not coming at one’s behest but at the whim of an uncontrollable other. If the phase of dependence goes well, the individua retains memories of a state pretty close to omnipotence—“I get what I want, all I have to do is want it.” What a source of self-esteem! However, how we build faith is by recounting the examples of faith that have happened in our history and in our heritage and with our people. That is the value of history. It contains accounts of faith of our own blood and ancestry and of our own people and our children. If we do this, we cannot go one generation without losing faith. And to rear a generation of faith foe what we must do in these days, you and I simply must develop and increase faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. “And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation,” reports Romans 5.4. We sow our thoughts, and we reap our habits; we sow our habits, and we reap our character; we sow our characters, and we reap our destiny. We must live a life motivated by good thoughts, expressed in good works, and sustained by inner peace and determination of righteous doing. The destiny we desire is an inheritance in the celestial mansions prepared by our Saviour for the faithful of God’s children. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Repeated experience of finding whatever one wished for, at the very moment when that thing was first thought of as desirable, helps one build up a sense that the World is a good place, that it is able to take care of itself, is safe, strong, competent, and skilled—a sense that starts as omnipotence becomes ego-strength. This is also called basic trust, an inner population of remembered and anticipated sensations which are firmly correlated with the outer population of familiar and predictable things and people. We can put this in the language of Being and Doing. Because all this has take place at a time when self and the Spirit had strong connection, and this was really fortunate for our experience because it gave us a feeling of being “grand”; and this self-region of “being-grand” becomes established when God gives us the privilege and opportunity of choosing which way of life we will follow—which habits we will form. Generally, when we practice good happens, we notice a reflection in the Universe that good things happen to us. So God wants us to use our agency and choose to do good with our free will so we will see more blessings. However, just because a person’s actions are bad does not mean that the Lord will not bless them. God loves all of his children and gives them all his grace. Yet, if you know better than being wicked, God expects you to obey His laws and be good and you will more likely see more blessing. Nonetheless, we still live in a human World and others also have free will so bad things may still happen, but use those moments to build your faith in God and keep being righteous. When we are righteous, our good fortune stands out more clearly than one who has prematurely developed ego-functions and do not realize everything is a blessing from God. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
When one’s actions are righteous, there is less of a feeling of guilt, so this confirms our belief in being good with a sense of association of being competent, able, skilled strong, and we feel comfortable in these expressions of our personality. To be satisfied with anything less than this egoless Self is to worship at the shrine of an idol. The Overself is neither a cold metaphysical concept nor a passing wave of emotion. It is a Presence—sublime, sacred, and beneficent—which grips your heart, thought, and body by its own mysterious power, making you regard life from a nobler standpoint. The divine soul is the real essence of each person. If we do not come into the full experience of its existence, all our religion is a mere surface emotionalism, all our metaphysics a mocking intellectualism. Once you are clearly aware of the presence of the Overself, you will find that it will spontaneously provide you with a rule of conduct and a standard of ethics at all times and under all circumstances. Consequently you will never be at a loss to know what to do in difficult moral situations, nor how to behave in challenging ones. And with this knowledge will also come the power to implement it. When this contact with the Overself is established, its power will work for you: you will no longer go through the struggles of life alone. This is not to say that the spiritual contact will remove all difficulties and perplexities from your inner life, but that it will give you added power to deal with them. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
From this seeming nothingness deep within one draws a peace of mind, an emotional freedom, a sense of God’s living presence that the World’s harshness cannot dislodge. The appearance of the sacred presence automatically extinguishes the lower desires. The holding on to that presence wherever one goes and whatever one does as if it were one’s real identity, will help to establish that release as a lasting fact. As one becomes more sensitive to the Overself’s presence, one knows that one has only to turn to it to receive divine strength and nourishment. When all other sources of help have been tried, there is no other source left to humans than the divine Overself, by whatever name one calls it or under whatever symbol one pictures it. Once the Overself is felt in the heart as a living presence, it raises the consciousness out of the grip of the egoistic-desire parts of our being, frees it from the ups and downs of mood and emotion which they involve. It provides a sense of inner satisfaction that is complete in itself and irrespective of outside circumstances. The extraordinary thing is not that one will feel the divine self is with one but that it has always been with one. How quiet it is! Yet is can transform all things. The stillness has magical powers. It sooths, restores, heals, instructs, guides, and replaces chaos and tumult by orderliness and harmony. You mould your character and future by good thoughts and acts. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
The good habits of a child’s early training form the foundation for one’s future and sustain one in one’s later life. Parents, remember the Lord by revelation has given assurance that little children are incapable of committing sin, that they are alive in Christ, and that the devil has no power over them until they reach the age of accountability. The first eight years of a child’s life are golden yeas the Lord has given parents to teach and train their children to form good habits and develop noble character. We do not always know what lies ahead, but there is strength and safety in righteous conduct. We need to organize our lives according to gospel principles and chart a right course as we journey toward eternal life. In the conduct of our lives we learn that good character-building habits mean everything. It is by such behaviour that we harvest the real substance and value of life. The way we live outweighs any words we profess to follow. This life has a destined purpose, and that purpose is to conquer all habits, to overcome the evil in one and to restore good to its rightful place. The ways of life acceptable to the people of the World are not always acceptable to God. His standards, however, are for all people. They do not change but resolutely and continually point to the true way of life for His children. Bad habits are a reflection of our thoughts and personalities, our behaviour and conduct. They are degrading to the choice qualities which are our God-given spiritual endowments of faith honesty, integrity and uprightness. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
When a person boasts of one’s bad habits, you may rest assure they are the best one has. “Humans are instructed sufficiently that they know good from evil,” reports 2 Nephi 2.5. In this mortal life we have two choices: the good, which is the desire of our Heavenly Father; or the evil, which is Satan’s plan and constant persuasion. Evil tendencies destroy character and ruin lives. When first yielding to sin, one’s resistance, self-control, and character are weakened and further transgressions usually result. With violation of spiritual laws and rejection of spiritual qualities, our powers of resistance are reduced. Eventually we seem to lose complete control of our ability to resist evil. Imagine the great misery suffered by a person who has practiced a vice for so long that one curses it, yet at the same time holds on to it. Our great challenge is to learn how to control ourselves. We must learn for ourselves and act for ourselves, being careful not to follow those who are divinely led. We have a responsibility to thwart the work of the evil one—not to assist or perpetuation his cause by yielding to his enticements to sin. Habits are subject to change and improvement, for the Lord has said, “For the power is in them [meaning people], wherein they are agents unto themselves,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 58.28. One cannot truthfully say one is confirmed in one’s bad habits, sins, or weaknesses to the point that they cannot be thrown off and repented. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
The human will is naturally inclined toward the right. We are spirit children of God and have born within us the power to overcome all evil practices. There is much confusion of understanding about what happens to the ego when it attains the ultimate goal. Some believe that a cosmic consciousness develops, with an all-knowing intelligence and an “all-overish” feeling. They regard it as unity with the whole Universe. Other asset that there is a complete loss of the ego, an utter destruction of the personal self. No—these are confused notions of what actually occurs. The Overself is not a collective entity as though it were composed of a number of particles. One’s embrace of other human beings through it is not in union with them but only in sympathy, not in psychic identification with them but in psychic harmony. One has enlarged the area of one’s vision and sees oneself as a part of humankind. However, this does not mean that one has become conscious of all humankind as though they were oneself. The true unity is with one’s own higher indestructible self. It is still with a higher individuality, not a cosmic one, and it is still with one’s own self, not with the rest of humankind. Unity with them is neither mystically nor practically possible. What we discover is discovered by a deepening of consciousness, not by a widening of it. Hence it is not so much wider as a deeper self that one has first to find. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
With the rectification of this error, we may find the correct answer to the question: “What is the practical meaning of the injunction laid by all the great spiritual teachers upon their followers, to give up the ego, to renounce the self?” It does not ask for a foolish sentimentality, in the sense that we are to be as putty in the hands of all other humans. It does not ask for an utter impossibility, in the sense that we are to be as putty in the hands of all other humans. It does not ask for an utter impossibility, in the sense that we are never to attend to our own affairs at all. It does not ask for unless absurdity, in the sense that we are to become oblivious of our very existence. On the contrary, it asks for what is wise, practicable, and worthwhile—that we give up our lower personality to our higher individuality. Thus is it not that the aspirant is asked to abandon all thought of one’s particular self (as if one could) or to lose consciousness of it, but that one is asked to perceive its imperfection, its unsatisfactoriness, its faultiness, it baseness and its sinfulness and, in consequence of this perception, to give it up in favour of one’s higher self, with its perfection, blessedness, goodness, nobility, and wisdom. For in the lower ego one will never know peace where in the diviner one one will always know it. What this harmony means is that the hidden center of consciousness within the other person will be alike to the center within oneself. Through one’s higher self, a human can attain the highest good. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
The concept of the Overself is foundational. It provides meaning for life. That humans are verily ignorant who does not know that what the Overself can give one is immeasurably greater than what one can gain from any other source. For on the one side there is infinite power, on the other only limited capacity. Lots of words are not needed to communicate what the Overself has to say. From its presence the truth, the power, and the virtue can make themselves felt. In that benign atmosphere, negative thoughts cannot exist. One who has discovered how to live with one’s higher self has discovered a serenity which defines circumstance and environment, a goodness which is too deep for the World’s understanding, a wisdom which transcends thought. Even in the midst of Worldly distresses, one will feel the Overself’s support to such an extent and in such a way that they will seem to be someone else’s, with oneself as a merely continuous spectator of them. One lives in the gratifying consciousness that one is supported by the divine will, the divine power. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast sanctified us by Thy precepts and hast enjoined upon us the reading of the Hallel. Hallelujah. Praise, O ye servants of the Lord, praise the name of the Lord. Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forever. From the rising of the sun unto its going down, the Lord’s name is to be praised. The Lord is supreme above all nations; His glory is about the shining Heavens. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
Welcome to Cresleigh Ranch, at Brighton Station, by Cresleigh Homes. Here, you will enjoy the relaxed atmosphere of upscale living with superior schools, excellent dining and shopping, and a wide choice of cultural events close to home. Homes offer personalization options and the latest design features to ensure your new home fits your lifestyle.
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When entering this expansive home, take note of the two story ceiling height at the entry. There is a bedroom on the first floor, located off the entry, with its own bathroom making it ideal for a guest suite or multigenerational living. The formal dining room provides ample space for entertaining and has convenient access to the kitchen via Butler’s Pantry. The kitchen comes fully equipped with a large eat-in island, stainless steel appliances, and quartz counters and opens onto the spacious great room.
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One Lesson Already Seems Vividly Clear: Change Carries a Physiological Price Tag!
Our ability to speak is just one aspect of the evolutionary drive to create a more accurate World in our Heads. Eons ago the shrinking seas cast millions of unwilling aquatic creatures onto the newly created beaches. Deprived of their familiar environment, they died, gasping and clawing for each additional instant of eternity. Only a fortunate few, better suited to amphibian existence, survived the shock of change. Today, says sociologist Lawrence Suhm of the University of Wisconsin, “We are going through a period as traumatic as the evolution of man’s predecessors from sea creatures to land creatures. Those who can adapt will; those who cannot will either go on surviving somehow at a lower level of development or will perish—washed up on the shores.” To assert that humans must adapt seems superfluous. They have already shown themselves to be among the most adaptable of life forms. They have survived Equatorial summers and Antarctic winters. Humans have survived Dachau and Vorkuta. They have walked the lunar surface and travel to Mars. They have invented vaccines overnight. Such accomplishments give rise to the glib notion that their adaptive capabilities are “infinite.” Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Afterall, as hard as humans work, they have not even evented a silent leaf blower to stop disturbing the peace with the sound of its engine that seems to be having an extremely loud, painful and agonizing death, which is probably the most annoying sound in the World. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
For despite all their heroism and stamina, humans remain a biological organism, a “biosystem,” and all such systems operate within inexorable limits. Temperature, pressure, caloric intake, oxygen and carbon dioxide levels, all set absolute boundaries beyond which humans, as presently constituted, cannot venture. Thus when we hurl a human into outer space, we surround one with an exquisitely designed microenvironment that maintains all these factors within livable limits. How strange, therefore, that when we hurl a human into the future, we take few pains to protect them from the shock of change. It is as though NASA had short Armstrong and Aldrin naked int the cosmos. There are discoverable limits to the amount of change that the human organism can absorb, and by endlessly accelerating change without first determining these limits, we may submit masses of humans to demands they simply cannot tolerate. We may define future shock in different ways. Its symptoms also vary according to the stage and intensity of the disease. These symptoms range all the way from anxiety, hostility to helpful authority, and seemingly senseless violence, to physical illness, depression and apathy. Its victims often manifest erratic swings in interest and life style, followed by an effort to “crawl into their shells” through social, intellectual and emotional withdrawal. They feel continually “bugged” or harassed, and want desperately to reduce the number of decisions that must make. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
As to the conditions that contribute to the develop of future shock and necrophilia, our knowledge is still developing in this field of research and as we expand our understanding, we will throw more light on the problem. We may safely assume that a very unalive, necrophilous family environment will often be a contributing factor in the formation of necrophilia and future shock (as well as in the formation of schizophrenia). Lack of enlivening stimulation, the absence of hope, and a destructive spirit of the society as a whole are certainly of real significance for fostering these conditions. That genetic factors play a role in the formation of necrophilia is, in my opinion, very likely. These people tend to be very jealous—they must keep their unique position—and they are simultaneously insecure and anxious whenever they have to perform a real task; while they might not fail, their performance can never really equal their narcissistic conviction of superiority over any human (while having at the same time a nagging, unconscious feeling of inferiority to all), so one can see how dealing with necrophiles can produce future shock in other individuals. It is hardly necessary to stress that severely necrophilous persons are very dangerous. They are the haters, the racists, those in favour of war, bloodshed, and destruction. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Necrophilous persons are dangerous not only if they are political leaders, but also as the potential cohorts for a dictatorial leader. They become the executioners, terrorists, torturers; without them no terror system could be set up. However, the less intense necrophiles are also politically important; while they may not be among its first adherents, they are necessary for the existence of a terror regime because they form a solid basis, although not necessarily a majority, for it to gain and hold power. It is the efforts of Eros to combine organic substance and disintegrate living structure. The relationship of the death instinct with necrophilia hardly needs any further explanation. In order to elucidate the relation between life instinct and biophilia, however, a short explanation of the latter is necessary. Biophilia is the passionate love of life and of all that is alive; it is the wish to further growth, whether in a person, a plant, and idea, or a social group. The biophilous person prefers to construct rather than to retain. One is capable of wondering, and one prefers to see something new rather than to find confirmation of the old. One loves adventure of living more than one does certainty. One sees the whole rather than only the parts, structures rather than summations. One wants to mold and to influence by love, reason, and example; not by force, by cutting things apart, by the bureaucratic manner of administering people as if they were things. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Because one enjoys life and all its manifestations, the biophilous person is not a passionate consumer of newly packaged “excitement.” Biophilic ethics have their own principle of good and evil. Good is all that serves life; evil is all that serves death. Good is reverence for life, all that enhances life, growth, unfolding. Evil is all that stifles life, narrows it down, cuts it into pieces. Biophilia is understood to refer to a biologically normal impulse, while necrophilia is understood as a psychopathological phenomenon. The latter necessarily emerges as the result of stunted growth, of physical “crippledness.” It is the outcome of unlived life, of the failure to arrive at a certain stage beyond narcissism and indifference. Destructiveness is not parallel to, but the alternative to biophilia. Love of life or love of the dead is the fundamental alternative that confronts every human being. Necrophilia grows as the development of biophilia is stunted. Humans are biologically endowed with the capacity for biophilia, but psychologically they have the potential for necrophilia as an alternative solution. Considering these facts, would it now be of great social and political significance to know what percentage of the population can be considered to be predominantly necrophilous or predominantly biophilous? The las of history will eventually bring justice to the oppressed and wipe away every tear. It is a system that an atheist can put one’s faith in. Lenin, Stalin, and Rakosi recognized that a renewed and purified Christianity was the only force that could move the masses as powerfully as the Marxist ideal could. They attacked it as the enemy that it was and is to them. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Trosky, Tito, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Castro—and the Sandinistas of the eighties—all the tyrants who have followed Marx have believed substantially the same thing about Christianity. Nothing has changed. Despite his shrewd public effort to picture himself as a benign and progressive reformer, Mikhail Gorbachev adhered to the same ideology. As recently as November 1986, he descried the struggle with traditional religion as “decisive and uncompromising” and called for more aggressive atheistic education. Like Lenin, Gorbachev knew who his enemies were. The greatest obstacle to the Marxist ideal of total control is the Christian faith, which is not simply a set of intellectual beliefs or weekly worship services, but involves personal submission to a King whose culture is incompatible with Lenin’s. The Christian church and the Marxist state may work out an accommodation for a time, but they will always be adversaries. The very nature of each makes any lasting accommodation impossible. They are the two great contenders for the soul of humankind. The people of Jaworzyna had had enough. For years they had petitioned the party authorities in the Silesia region of Poland for permission to build a church. Their repeated applications were denied. The people on the church-building committee tried pulling strings with higher party officials in Crakow and Warsaw. No luck. When they angrily protested the refusal, the petty bureaucrats turned a deaf ear. Now, other measures were required. #RandolphHarri 6 of 20
Months before, the authorities had issued a permit to build an auto-repair garage on a site near a highway. Now workers moved into the site, erected a tall fence, and began to build a garage. The building progressed slowly over a period of two years, but no one paid much attention. The party authorities in Jaworzyna were busy people. Then, on Sunday, February 5, 1978, the fence came down and the garage turned out to be a new church—its wide portals adorned with a picture of Our Lady of Czestochowa, the protector of Poland. Masses celebrated until late in the evening; thousands of people came to worship and rejoice. That spring, Cardinal Karol Wojtlya of Crakow came to Jawrzyna to dedicate the church. Soon afterward the authorities tried to close it, but hundreds of angry Poles organized a twenty-four-hour guard. The church building committee was taken to court and fined. Their clever lawyers tied up the case up in procedural disputes. The World saw that the church possessed the soul of the Polish people and embodied the essence of Polish nationhood. By contrast, the Polish Communists who operated the machinery of the state were alien usurpers who did the bidding of Russian masters. Though he went out of his way to avoid a direct confrontation with the Communist regime, John Paul’s message was widely understand by the restive Polish masses, and he lit a fuse during his triumphant nine-day visit to his homeland. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
“Christ would never approve that man be considered merely as a means of production,” he told workers in his old archdioceses in Mogila. At Czestochowa, John Paul urged the government to honour “the cause of fundamental human rights, including the right to religious liberty.” At Novy Targ, he told the Poles to set a Christian example, “even if it means risking danger.” The election of a Polish pope is surely why the church is so much stronger in Poland than almost anywhere else in the World, certainly strong than in Hungary and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. So is the fact that Christianity has become firmly established in Poland for a thousand years. However, a primary reason is the church’s long tradition of resistance to secular power. When the Communist imprisoned him in 1953, Cardinal Wyszynski reflected that of his seventeen seminary classmates, only he had thus far escaped being sent to German or Russian concentration camps. Cardinal Wyszynski confided a somewhat wry reflection to his diary: “Most of the priests and bishops with whom I worked had experienced prisons. Something would have been wrong if I had not experienced imprisonment. What was happening to me was very appropriate.” Collaboration with power, whether Communist or not, is always ruinous for the church. If the church exists, if it is to have legitimacy in the eyes of the people, it must always stand erect as a counter-power to political power. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Cardinal Wyszynski understood this. In prison in 1953, alone but supremely confident, he wrote a prophetic comment in his diary: “Any form of government, no matter how ruthless, will slowly cool and wane as it runs up against difficulties that the bureaucrat cannot resolve without cooperation from the people. Somehow the people must be taken into account. When the time came to reach the people, the Polish state found the church already there. It had been there for centuries. The only way to love God, whom we do not see, is by contributing to the advancement of this revolutionary process of biblical faith in the most sensible and radical way possible. Only then shall we be loving others, whom we do see. Therefore, we say that to be a Christian is to be a revolutionary. Do not legitimize tyranny. Remain aloof from the enticements and threats of the secular authority. Be faithful to God alone. At no other time in human history, than currently, has so much of the World come under the dark cloud of an oppressive regime consciously determined to eliminate religious influence from culture. However, we can be grateful that the Kingdom of God does not depend on the structures of humans. Though a third of the World, and growing, lives under tyranny and the official “religion” of atheism, the Kingdom of God remains visible. We must pull together from such scattered fields of psychology, neurology, communications theory and endocrinology, what science can tell us about human adaptation. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
There is, as yet, no science of adaptation per se. Nor is there any systematic listing of the diseases of adaption. Yet evidence now sluicing in from a variety of disciplines makes it possible to sketch the rough outlines of a theory of adaptation. For a while researchers in these disciplines often work in ignorance of each other’s efforts, their work is elegantly compatible. Forming a distinct and exciting pattern, it provides solid underpinning for the concept of future shock. What actually happens to people when they are asked to change again and again? To understand the answer, we must begin with the body, the physical organism, itself. Fortunately, a series of startling, but as yet unpublicized, experiments have cast revealing light on the relationship of change to physical health. These experiments grow out of the work of the late Dr. Harold G. Wolff at the Cornell Medical Center in New York. Dr. Wolff repeatedly emphasized that the health of the individual is intimately bound up with the adaptive demands placed on one by the environment. One of Dr. Wolff’s followers, Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle, Jr. has termed this the “human ecology” approach to medicine, and has argued passionately that disease need not be the result of any single, specific agent, such as a germ or virus, but a consequence of many factors, including the general nature of the environment surrounding the body. Dr. Hinkle has worked for years to sensitize the medical profession to the importance of environmental factors in medicine. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Today, with spreading alarm over air pollution, water pollution, urban crowding and other such factors, more and ore health authorities are coming around to the ecological notion that the individual needs to be seen as part of a total system, and that one’s health is dependent upon many subtle external factors. It was another of Dr. Wolff’s colleagues, however, Dr. Thomas H. Holmes, who came up with the idea that change, itself—not this or that specific change but the general rate of change in a person’s life—could be one of the most important environmental factors of all. Originally from Cornell, Dr. Holmes also taught at the University of Washington School of Medicine, and it was there, with the help of a young psychiatrist named Richard Rahe, that he created an ingenious research tool named the Life-Change Units Scale. This was a device for measuring how much change an individual has experienced in a given time span of time. Its development was an important methodological breakthrough, making it possible, for the first time, to qualify, at least crudely, the rate of change in individual life. Reason that different kinds of life-changes strike us with different force, Dr. Holmes and Dr. Rahe began by listing as many such changes as they could. A divorce, a marriage, a move to a new home—such events affect each of differently. Moreover, some carry greater impact than others. A vacation trip, for example, may represent a pleasant break in the routine. Yet it can hardly compared in impact with, say, the death of a parent. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Dr. Holmes and Dr. Rahe next took their list of life-changes to thousands of men and women in many walks of life in the United States of America and Japan. Each person was asked to rank order the specific items on the list according to how much impact each had. Which changes required a great deal of coping or adjustment? Which ones were relatively minor? To Dr. Holmes’ and Dr. Rae’s surprise, it turned out that there was widespread agreement among people as to which changes in their lives require major adaptations and which ones are comparatively unimportant. This agreement about the “impact-fullness” of various life events extends even across national and language barriers. (The work in the United States of America and Japan was also supplemented by studies in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.) People tend to know and to agree on which changes hit the hardest. Given this information, Dr. Holmes and Dr. Rahe were able to assign a numerical weight to each type of life change. Thus each item on their list was ranked by its magnitude and given a score accordingly. For example, if the death of one’s spouse is rated as one hundred points, then moving to a new home is rated by most people as worthy only twenty points, a vacation thirteen. (The death of a spouse, incidentally, is almost universally regarded as the single most impactful change that can befall a person in the normal course of one’s life.) #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Now Dr. Holmes and Dr. Rahe were ready for the next step. Armed with their Life-Change Units Scale, they began to question people about the actual pattern of change in their lives. The scale made is possible to compare the “changefulness” of one person’s life with that of another. By studying the amount of change in a person’s life, could we learn anything about the influence of change itself on health? To find out, Dr. Holmes, Dr. Rahe, and other researchers compiled the “life change scores” of literally thousands of individuals and began the labourious task of comparing these with the medical histories of these same individuals. Never before had there been a way to correlate change and health. Never before had there been such detailed data on patterns of change in individual lives. And seldom were the results of an experiment less ambiguous. In the United States and Japan, among servicemen and civilians, among pregnant women and the families of leukemia victims, among college athletes and retirees, the same striking pattern was present: those with high life change scores were more likely than their fellows to be ill in the following year. For the first time, it was possible to show in dramatic form that the rate of change in a person’s life—one’s pace of life—is closely tied to the state of one’s health. The results were spectacular, but Dr. Holmes, at first, hesitated to publish them. So when you doctor says you are allergic to something in your environment and it is causing an illness, it could be more than just the known allergen. There could be other precipitating factors contributing to the illness. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
In every case in which it has been applied, the Life-Change Units Scale and the Life Changes Questionnaire have been applied to a wide variety of groups of people. In every case, the correlation between change and illness has held. It has been established that “alteration in life style” that require a great deal of adjustment and coping, correlate with illness—whether or not these changes are under the individual’s own direct control, whether or not one sees them as undesirable. Furthermore, the higher the degree of life change, the higher the risk that subsequent illness will be severe. So strong is this evidence, that it is becoming possible, by studying life change scores, actually to predict levels of illness in various populations. Thus Commander Ransom J. Arthur, head of the United States Navy Medical Neuropsychiatric Research Unit at San Diego, and Dr. Richard Rahe, a the time a Captain in Commander Arthur’s group, sat out to forecast sickness patterns in a group of 3,000 Navy Men Drs. Arthur and Rahe began by distributing a Life Change Questionnaire to the sailors on three cruisers in San Diego harbour. The ships were about to depart and would be at sea for approximately six months each. During this time it would be possible to maintain exact medical records on each crew member. Could information about a human’s life change pattern tell us in advance the likelihood of one’s falling ill during the voyage? #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Each crew member was asked to tell what changes had occurred in one’s life during the year preceding the voyage. The questionnaire covered an extremely broad spectrum of topics. Thus it asked whether the man had experienced either more or less trouble with superiors during the twelve-month period. It asked about alterations in one’s eating and sleeping habits. It inquired about change in one’ circle of friends, one’s dress, one’s forms of recreation. It asked whether one had experienced any change in one’s social activities, in family get-togethers, in one’s financial condition. Has one been having more or less trouble with one’s in-laws? More or fewer arguments with one’s wife? Had one gained a child through birth or adoption? Had one suffered the death of one’s wife, a friend or relative? The questionnaire went on to probe such issues as the number of times one had moved to a new home. Had one been in trouble with the law over traffic violations or other minor infractions? Had one spent a lot of time away from one’s wife as a result of a job-related travel or marital difficulties? Had one changed jobs? Won awards or promotions? Had one’s living conditions changes as a consequence of home remodeling or the deterioration of one’s neighbourhood? Had one’s wife started or stopped working? Had one taken out a loan or mortgage? How many times had one taken a vacation? Was there any major change in one’s relations with one’s parents as a result of death, divorce, remarriage, et cetera? #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
The questionnaire tried to get at the kind of life changes that are part of normal existence. It did not ask whether a change was regarded as “good” or “bad,” simply whether or not it had occurred. For six months, the three cruisers remained at sea. Just before they were scheduled to return, Drs. Arthur and Rahe flew new research teams out to join the ships. These teams proceeded to make a fine-tooth survey of the ships’ medical records. Which men had been ill? What diseases had they reported? How many days had they been confined to sick bay? When the last computer runs were completed, the linkage between changefulness and illness was nailed down more firmly that ever. Men in the upper ten percent of life change units—those who had had to adapt to the most change in the preceding year—turned out to suffer from one-and-a-half to two times as much illness as those in the bottom ten percent. Moreover, once again, the higher the life change scored, the more severe the illness was likely to be. The study of life change patterns—of change as an environmental factor—contributed significantly to success in predicting the amount and severity of illness in widely varied populations. “For the first time,” says Dr. Arthur, appraising life change research, “we have an index of change. If you have had many changes in your life within a short time, this places a great challenge on your body…An enormous number of changes with a short period might overwhelm its coping mechanisms. #RandolphHrris 16 of 20
“It is clear,” he continues, “that there is a connection between the body’s defenses and the demands for change that society imposes. We are in a continuous dynamic equilibrium…Various “noxious” elements, both internal and external, are always present, always seeking to explode into disease. For example, certain viruses live in the body and cause disease only when the defenses of the body wear down. There may well be generalized body defense system that prove inadequate to cope with the flood of demands for change that come pulsing through the nervous and endocrine systems. Or the body may overreact to something in the environment and start attacking its self because it detects something foreign. The stakes in life-change research are high, indeed, for not only illness, but death itself, may be linked to the severity of adaptational demands placed on the body. Thus a report by Drs. Arthur, Rahe, and a colleague, Dr. Joseph D. Mckean, Jr., begins with a quotation from Somerset Maugham’s literary autobiography, The Summing Up: My father…went to Paris and became solicitor to the British Embassy…After my mother’s death, her maid became my nurse…I think my father had a romantic mind. He took it into his head to build a house to live in during the summer. He bought a piece of land on the top of a hill at Suresnes…It was to be like a villa on the Bosphorous and on the top floor it was surrounded by loggias. It was a white house and the shutters were painted red. The garden was laid out. The rooms were furnished and then my father died. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
“The death of Somerset Maugham’s father,” they write, “seems at first glance to have been an abrupt unheralded event. However, a critical evaluation of the events of a year or two prior to the father’s demise reveals changes in his occupation, residence, personal habits, finances and family constellation.” These changes, they suggest, may have been precipitating events. This line of reasoning is consistent with reports that death rates among widows and widowers, during the first year after loss of a spouse, are higher than normal. A series of British studies have strongly suggested that the shock of widowhood weakens resistance to illness and tends to accelerate aging. The same is true for men. Scientists at the Institute of Community Studies in London, after reviewing the evidence and studying 4,486 widowers, declare that “the excess mortality in the first six months is almost certainly real…[Widowerhood] appears to being in its wake a sudden increment in mortality-rates of something like 40 percent in the first six months.” Why should this be true? It is speculated that grief, itself, leads to pathology. Yet the answer may lie not in the state of grief at all, but in the very high impact that loss of a spouse carries, forcing the survivor to make a multitude of major life changes within a short period after the death takes place. The work of Drs. Hinkle, Holmes, Rahe, Arthur, McKean and others now probing the relationship of change to illness is still in its early stages. Yet one lesson already seems vividly clear: change carries a physiological price tag with it. And the more radical the change, the steeper the price. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
If we say that the Overself resides in each human we say something that is not quite true nor quite false. It would be better to say that each human first feels the Overself—when one does have the good fortune to feel it—as residing within one’s heart, but the result of further development is to show one that the contrary, although a paradox, is also correct, which is that one resides in the Overself! The godlike abides in each of us but only the master knows and feels it. The mind keeps on moving about until sleep overcomes it…and because it never stopped to collect itself, it still does not know the higher and better part of itself—the Overself. The divine presence is constant, it does not go away: but humans themselves are too often absent, heedless, interested elsewhere. However, each return gives one a glimpse which one calls a grace. The soul is present and active in every human. This is why it is quite possible for every human to have a direct glimpse of the truth about one’s own inward non-materiality. Nothing can ever exist outside God. Therefore, no human is bereft of the divine presence within oneself. All humans have the possibility of discovering this fact. And with it they will discover their real selfhood, their true individuality. This is the truth that must be proclaimed to our generation, that the Soul is with us here and now—not in some remote World or distant time, not when the body expires—and that it is our joy and strength to find it. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
There is no pint of seawater in which salt is not present in solution. There is no human entity in whom a divine soul is not present in secret. Not even a solitary Crusoe passes through life alone. Everyone passes through it in fellowship with one’s higher self. That such fellowship is, in most cases, an unconscious one, is not enough to nullify it. That humans may deny in faith or conduct even they very existence of their soul is likewise not enough to nullify it. This, the real I, is always accessible to one in prayer and always is the half-known background of one’s conscious self at other times. So long as the Overself is sought elsewhere than were It is, as apart from the seeker oneself, so long will the quest for its end in failure. The divine being is present in all people, from the crudest to the most cultured. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast sanctified us by Thy precepts and hast enjoined upon us the taking of the Lulav. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast kept us in life, and hast sustained us, and enabled us to reach this festive season. As we wave the Lulav in all directions, we acknowledge as did our forefathers that Thou, O Lord, art everywhere. From the north and from the south, from the east and from the west, praise the Lord. The shining Heavens praise Thee. All the Earth praises Thy name. The eyes, represented by the leaves of the myrtle, the lips, represented by the leaves of the willow, the spine, by the palm branch, and the heart, by the citron,–all render praise unto Thee, O Lord on high. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
CRESLEIGH MEADOWS AT PLUMAS RANCH
Plumas Lake, CA |
Now Selling!
Cresleigh Meadows is now selling! Found just north of Feather River Boulevard, Cresleigh Meadows is home of the largest neighborhood in Plumas Ranch as well as the popular Bear River Park. With four floor plans available, ranging from approximately 2,000 – 3,500 square feet offering, three to five bedrooms, we are certain you will find the home that fits your needs and lifestyle.
Popular design elements include open floor plans, large kitchen islands, and flex spaces are staples in Cresleigh homes. Multi-generational living options also available in select homes.
Homeowners will love the convenient commuter access to nearly Sacramento and Yuba City.
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To be Sure, One Step is Less than Five, but it is Only a Quantitative Difference!
The majority of believers have belief without understanding. Faith is that quality or power by which the things desired become the things possessed. For centuries theologians have argued about the meaning of Jesus’ declaration that the kingdom of Heaven was at hand. Most of them have given it a historical interpretation. Only those who could approach the mind of Jesus have given it a mystical interpretation. For only they can see that He meant that the kingdom of the Overself is really close to us as is our own hand. When it starts from different planes of knowledge, all such argument is unless, and the arguers never really meet each other. Everywhere we see people in bondage to their egos. Everywhere, too, the self-actualized sees the Overself waiting, always present, for them to turn from themselves to It. The overlooked part is one’s consciousness; the forgotten self is one’s knowing power. These exist uninterruptedly, even in apparently subconscious forms like deep sleep and swoon. Yet one denies this share of one’s in the Real Being, identifies with the body instead of making it merely an object of awareness. The Overself is in the heart of every human but few care to seek it out until pressure of its grace from within, or fatigue with the World-life without, drives them to do so. The difference between the pessimist and the cynic is that the pessimist carries on the losing battle against life in one’s own soul, while the cynic tries to wage the battle in someone else’s soul. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
The Overself exists in all of us—the bad as well as the good, the unenlightened as well as the clever. When the divinity in one’s own self is found at last, one will afterwards find its light reflected upon every other man and woman one encounters. Every human is sacred did one but know it. The fusion of technique and destructiveness was not yet visible in the first World War. There was little destruction by plans, and the tank was only a further evolution of traditional weapons. The second World War brought about a decisive change: the use of the airplane for mass killing. The Battle of Britain at the beginning of the war was still fought in the old-fashioned style; the British fighter pilots engaged their German adversaries; their plane was their individual vehicle; they were motivated by the passion to save their country from German invasion. It was their personal skill, courage, and determination that decided the outcome; in principle, their fighting was not different from that of the heroes of the Trojan war. The men dropping the bombs were hardly aware that they were killing and were hardly aware of an enemy. They were concerned with the proper handling of their complicated machine along the lines laid down in meticulously organized plans. That as a result of their acts many thousands, and sometimes over a hundred thousand people, would be killed, burnt, and maimed was of course known to them cerebrally, but hardly comprehended affectively; it was, paradoxical as this may sound, none of their concern. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Because it was their job and they believed the act to be righteous, it was probably for this reason that they—or at least most of them—did not feel guilty for acts that belong to the most horrible a human being can perform. However, I hope that the Lord’s people may be at peace one with another during times of trouble, regardless of what loyalties they may have to different governments or parties. The nations of the Earth have been divided. Feelings run strong. There are demonstrations for and against war. Our people have feelings. They have concerns. War, of course, is not new. The weapon change. The ability to kill and destroy is constantly refined. However, there has been conflict throughout the ages over essentially the same issues. The book of Revelation speaks briefly of what must have been a terrible conflict for the minds and loyalties of God’s children. “And there was war in Heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in Heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole World: he was cast out into Earth, and his angels were cast out with him,” reports Revelation 12.7-9. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
Satan’s plan is to destroy the agency of humans. We sometimes are prone to glorify the great empires of the past, such as the Ottoman Empire, the Roman and Byzantine Empires, and in more recent times, the vast British Empire. However, there is a darker side to every one of them. There is a grim and tragic overly brutal conquest, of subjugation, or repression, and an astronomical cost in life and treasure. I think our Father in the shining Heaven must weep as He looks down upon His children throughout the centuries as they have squandered their divine bright right in ruthlessly destroying one another. In the course of history tyrants have arisen from time to time who have oppressed their own people and threatened the World. Such is adjudged to be the case presently, and consequently great and terrifying forces with sophisticated and fearsome armaments have been engaged in battle. In modern aerial warfare destruction has been transformed into an act of modern technical production, mechanically organized work and mechanically organized destruction, in which both the worker and the engineer are completely alienated from the product of their work. They perform technical tasks in accordance with the general plan of management, but often do not see the finished product; even if they do, it is none of their concern or responsibility. They are not supposed to ask themselves whether it is a useful or harmful product—this is a matter for management to decide; as far as the latter is concerned, however, “useful” simply means “profitable” and has no reference to the real use of the product. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
In war “profitable” means all that serves the defeat of the enemy, and often the decision as to what is profitable in this sense is based on data as vague as those that led to the construction of Ford’s Edsel. For the engineer as well as for the pilot it is enough to know the decisions of management, and one is not supposed to question them, nor is one interested in doing so. Whether it is a matter of killing one hundred thousand people in Dresden or Hiroshima or devastating the land and people of Vietnam with Agent Orange which was produce by Dole, it is not up to one to worry about the military or moral justification of the orders; one’s only task is to serve one’s machine properly. One might object to this interpretation by stressing the fact that soldiers have always owed unquestioning obedience to orders. This is true enough, but the objection ignores the important difference between the ground soldiers and the bomber pilot. The former is close to the destruction caused by one’s weapon, and one does not, by a single act, cause the destruction of large masses of human beings whom one has never seen. The most one could say is that traditional army discipline and feelings of patriotic duty will also, in the case of pilots increase the readiness for unquestioning execution of orders; but this does not seem to be the main point, as it undoubtedly is for the average soldier who fights on the ground. These pilots are highly trained, technically minded people who hardly need this additional motivation to do their job properly and without hesitation. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
Even the mass extermination of the Jews by the Nazis was organized like a production process, although the mass extermination in the gas chambers did not require a high degree of technical sophistication. At one end of the process the victims were selected in accordance with the criterion of the capability for doing useful work. Those who did not fall into this category were led into the chambers and told that it was for a hygienic purpose; the gas was let in; clothes and other useful objects such as hair, gold teeth, were removed from the bodies, sorted out and “recycled,” and the corpses were burned. The victims were “processed” methodically, efficiently; the executioners did not have to see the agony; they participated in the economic-political political program of the Fuhrer, but were one step removed from direct and immediate killing with their own hands. Today, people like Senator Bernie Sanders and the fallen Senator, now Mayor of Sacramento, California USA, Darrell Steinberg are still bitter and holding on to deeply rooted hostility about the holocaust. However, I should like to remind those who may say that this “one step” was too little to matter, that millions of otherwise decent people show no reaction when cruelties are committed many steps removed from them by their state or party. How many steps removed were the men and women who profited from the atrocities committed against the Blacks and Whites in Africa by the Belgian administration at the beginning of the twentieth century? To be sure, one step is less than five, but it is only a quantitative difference. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
N doubt, to harden one’s heart against being touched by the fate of human beings whom one has seen and selected, and who are to be murdered only a few hundred yards away within hours requires a much more thorough hardening than is the case with the aircrews who drop bombs and Agent Orange. However, in spite of this difference the fact remains that the two situations have a very important element in common: the technicalization of destruction, and with it the removal of the full affective recognition of what one is doing. Once this process has been fully established there is no limit to destructiveness because nobody destroys; one only serves the machine for programmed—hence, apparently rational—purposes. Cardinal Joseph Mindszenty, the primate of Hungry, stood naked in his chilly cell in the secret-police headquarters at 60 Andrassy Street in Budapest, trembling with fear and cold as a furious agent of the state advanced on him with a rubber truncheon in one hand and a long knife in the other. “I’ll kill you,” the man snarled, lashing the truncheon across the cardinal’s back. “By morning I’ll tear you to pieces and throw the remains of your corpse into the canal. We are the masters now.” He prodded Cardinal Mindszenty with the knife. The cardinal moved away. And another prod. And another. The cardinal moved and moved again. Soon he was running in circles. For several hours the agent drove the naked, middle-aged prelate unrelentingly around the cell like a horse in training. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
It was late January 1949. Cardinal Mindszenty had been enduring such tortures since his arrest the day after Christmas. Every night his Communist interrogators demanded that he confess to crimes against the state, including the preposterous charge that he had conspired with the American government to restore a Hapsburg king to the throne of Hungary. Every night Cardinal Mindszenty refused to sign the confession. During the day the cardinal sat on a filthy couch trying to recover from the night’s tortures. If he drifted into sleep, one of the jailers who sat in the room prodded him awake. At night the cycle began again. “I was being made to feel in my soul, my body, my nerves, and my bones the power of bolshevism which was taking over the country,” he later wrote. Although his jailers may not have known it, Cardinal Mindszenty embodied, in a sense, the sufferings of an entire nation. The events that led to his imprisonment paralleled the ideological imprisonment of the Hungarian churches. The Communists had consolidated their power the Summer before, in 1948, and their first target had been the churches. Two days after the new regime took control, they secularized the nation’s religious schools. Party boss Matyas ‘Rakosi pressed church leaders to submit to government control over church affairs, including requirements that priest and ministers publicly support government policies. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
Bishop Lajos Ordass, the ablest leader of the Lutheran Church, refused to cooperate and was arrested and imprisoned. Bishop Laszlo Ravasz, the independent-minded head of the Hungarian Reformed Church, was forced out and replaced by a complaint theologian who thought support for Marxist Leninism was obligatory for Christians. The chief obstacle to the Communists’ plans, however, was Cardinal Mindszenty. As Catholic primate, he was the leader of the largest denomination in Hungary, a stubborn man with a record of fierce opposition to tyrants. The Nazis had jailed him during World War II. Later, as Communist powers grew in Hungary, he constantly protested their abuses of human rights. Cardinal Mindszenty was especially offended by the government’s demand that the church sign a formal treaty with the state. He had watched Lenin and Stalin subdue the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union through a campaign of terrorism, judicial persecution, and subversion. He vowed that he would not allow the same thing to happen in Hungary. The church-state agreement in the Soviet Union gave the state control over religious instruction, seminary education, and appointment of bishops. Bishops were called upon to give public support to government policies when their Communist masters wanted it, and all priests had to swear allegiance to the Communist government. Significantly, the party ruthlessly forbade the church to evangelize or to provide services to the less affluent, elderly, sick, and disadvantaged. Thus, the church was barred from conducting any activities that would publicly testify to its members’ allegiance to another King, even of the King was God! #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
Party Chief Rakosi wanted to make the church in Hungary a puppet church like the one in the Soviet Union. Cardinal Mindszenty would have none of it. After months of bickering with the recalcitrant cardinal, Chief Rakosi and his henchmen moved against the church leader. The day after Christmas 1948, police occupied the cardinal’s offices in Esztergom. Officers carrying submachine guns led Cardinal Mindszenty to a car and drove him to secret-police headquarters in Budapest. There he was subjected to torture. Thirty-nine days after his arrest—beaten, confused, plagued with despair, and racked with fear and anxiety—the cardinal signed the confession the authorities wanted. Later he told the harrowing account of those wees of torture in his memoirs. The mental and psychological pain were far worse than the deprivations and beatings, he wrote, and he was certain that the police had used drugs on him. He candidly admitted that the Communist torturers had shattered his personality, reducing him to a state where even the regime’s most absurd charges began to seem plausible. Certainly the man whom the Communists put on public trial for treason in February 1949 looked like a drugged, programmed shell, reciting the lines of a memorized script. He was found guilty of treason and sentenced to life in prison. Soon after Cardinal Mindszenty’s trial, the government suppressed the Catholic Church in Hungary. Religion schools were abolished, religious instruction was outlawed, and religious orders were dissolved. Monks and nuns scattered into the population and were left to what work they could. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
In their place the government organized “peace priests” composed of ambitious collaborators and cover Communist agents. Soon the priests, many of whom led dissolute lives, controlled all the higher posts in the church. Catholics who wanted authentic pastoral care had to seek out priests who carried on their ministry in secret. Eventually the regime got the agreement it wanted. The bishops agreed to support the government and its “peace priest” movement, and to tolerate state supervision of seminary training, clerical appointments, and other internal matters. In return, the government allowed the church to open eight schools and out the clergy on the state payroll. The Reformed Church submitted to a similar agreement. Thus the Communist rulers in Hungary have achieved what they consider “normal” relations with the church. Church authorities clear key appointments in advance with the government. Troublesome clerics are reassigned to the provinces. Bishops make regular expressions of support to the regime. When needed, priests and ministers read from their pulpits pastoral letters composed by the government Bureau of Religious Affairs. However, Christianity and Communism are irreconcilable in their basic premises. The Church believes that the dynamic of all history is spiritual, that its unfolding reveals God’s dealings with humans, that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, and that at the end of history, He will reign over all nations. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
For Marxists, the material realm is all there is. God and spiritual order are illusions. Humankind swims in the current of history, which progresses by economic forces from the decline of capitalism, through the dictatorship of the proletariat, to the Earthly paradise of the classless society. Communists are materialists and determinists; individuals count for nothing, the collective of the state for everything. Lenin thought that those who believed in God were worse than fools. “For he occupies himself not with activity, but with self-contemplation and self-reflection, and tries thereby to deify his most unclean, most stupid, and most servile features and pettinesses.” Consequently, anyone who believes in God is not simply in error; one is mentally deranged. This is why believers in God in the Soviet Union are frequently judged insane and committed to mental institutions. If these considerations regarding the technical-bureaucratic nature of modern large-scale destructiveness are correct, do they not lead to the repudiation of my central hypothesis concerning the necrophilous nature of the spirit of total technique? Do we not have to admit that contemporary technical humans are not motivated by a passion for destruction, but would be more properly described as a totally alienated human whose dominant orientation is cerebral, who feels little love but also little desire to destroy, who has become, in a characterological sense, an automaton, but not a destroyer? #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
This is not an easy question to answer. To be sure, in Marinetti, in Hitler, in thousands of members of the Nazi and Stalinist secret police, guards in concentration camps, members of execution commandos the passion to destroy is the dominant motivation. However, were they not perhaps “old-fashion” types? Are we justified in interpreting the spirit of the “technotronic” society as necrophilous? Sadism is often a by-product of the anal character. However, even the sadists are will with others; they want to control, but not to destroy them. Those in whom even this perverse kind of relatedness is lacking, who are still more narcissistic and more hostile, are the necrophiles. Their aim is to transform all that is alive int dead matter; they want to destroy everything and everybody, often even themselves; their enemy is life itself. While statistically speaking the phenomenon of total alienation probably does not exist in the majority of the American population, it is characteristic of the sector that is most indicative of the direction in which the whole society is moving. In fact, the character of the new type of human does not seem to fit into any of the older categories, such as the oral, anal, or genital character. I have tried to understand this new type as a “marketing character. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
For the marketing character everything is transformed into a commodity—not only things, but the person oneself, one’s physical energy, one’s skills, one’s knowledge, one’s opinions, one’s feelings, even one’s smiles. This character type is a historically new phenomenon because it is the product of a fully developed capitalism that is centered around the market—the commodity market, the labour market, and the personality market—and whose principle it is to make a profit by favourable exchange. This market is by no means entirely free in contemporary capitalism. The labour market is determined to a large extent by social and political factors, and the commodity market is highly manipulated. Cybernetic humans are so alienated that they experience their bodies as an instrument for success. One’s body must look youthful and healthy; it is experienced narcissistically as a most precious asset on the personal market. This new type of person, after all, is not interested in feces or corpses; in fact, one is so phobic toward corpses that one makes them look more alive than the person was when living. (This does not seem to be a reaction formation, but rather a part of the whole orientation that denies natural, not human-made reality.) However, one does something much more drastic. One turns one’s interest away from life, persons, nature, ideas—in short from everything that is alive; one transforms all life into things, including oneself and the manifestations of one’s human faculties of reason, seeing, hearing, tasting, loving. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
These people become a sum of lifeless artifacts; from synthetic food to synthetic organs, the whole human becomes part of the total machinery that one controls and is simultaneously controlled by. One has no plan, no goal for life, expect doing what the logic of technique determines one to do. One aspires to make robots as one of the greatest achievements of one’s technical mind, and some specialists assure us that the robot will hardly be distinguished from living humans. This achievement will not seem so astonishing when humans themselves are hardly distinguishable from a robot. The World of life has become a World of “no-life”; persons have become “nonpersons,” a World of death. Death is no longer symbolically expressed by unpleasant-smelling feces or corpses. Its symbols are now clean, shining machines; humans are not attracted to smelly toilets, but to structures of aluminum and glass However, the reality behind this antiseptic façade becomes increasingly visible. Humans, in the name of progress, are transforming the World into a stinking and poisonous place (and this is not symbolic). They pollute the air, the water, the soil, the animals—and themselves. They are doing this to a degree that has made it degree that has made it doubtful whether the Earth will be livable within a hundred years from now. One knows that facts, but in spite of many protesters, those in charge go on in the pursuit of technical “progress” and are willing to sacrifice all life in the worship of their idol. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
In earlier times humans also sacrificed their children or war prisoners, but never before in history have humans been willing to sacrifice all life to the Moloch—one’s own and that of all their descendents. It makes little difference whether one does it intentionally or not. If one had no knowledge of the possible danger, one might be acquitted from responsibility. However, it is the necrophilous element in one’s character that prevents one from making use of the knowledge one has. The same is true for the preparation of nuclear war. The two superpowers are constantly increasing their capacities to destroy each other, as well as developing nations who are benefiting from the catch-up effect, and at least large parts of the human race with them. Yet they have not done anything serious to eliminate the danger—and the only serious things would be the destruction of all nuclear weapons. In fact, those in charge were already close to using nuclear weapons several times (some suspect that is how Obama got elected)—and gambled with the danger. Strategic reasoning—for instance, Herman Kahn’s On Thermonuclear War (1960)—calmly raises the question whether fifty million dead would still be “acceptable.” That this is the spirit of necrophilia can hardly be question. The phenomena about which there is so much indignation—drug addition, crime, the cultural and spiritual decay, contempt for genuine ethical values—are all related to the growing attraction to death and dirt. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
When it is promoted by those who direct the course of modern society, such as the fake news media who profits off of death, destruction, pain, suffering, and chaos, how can one expect that the young, the less affluent, and those without hope would not be attracted to decay? Thus far we have considered the connection: mechanical—lifeless—anal. However, another connection can hardly fail to come to mind as we consider the character of the totally alienated, cybernetic human: one’s schizoid or schizophrenic qualities. Perhaps the most striking trait in one is the split between thought-affect-will. (It was this split that had prompted E. Bleuler to choose the name “schizophrenia”—from Greek schizo, to split; phren, psyche—for this type of illness.) In the description of the cybernetic human we have already seen some illustrations of this split, for instance in the bomber pilot’s absence of affect, combined with the clear knowledge that one is killing a hundred thousand people by pushing a button. The cybernetic human is almost exclusively cerebrally oriented: one is a monocerebral human. One’s approach to the whole World around one—and to oneself—is intellectual; one wants to know what things are, how they function and how they can be constructed or manipulated. This approach was fostered by science, and it has become dominant since the end of the Middle Ages. It is the very essence of modern progress, the basis of the technical domination of the World and of mass consumption. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
Is there anything ominous about this orientation? Indeed it might seem that this aspect of “progress” is not ominous, were it not for some worrisome facts. In the first place this “monocerebral” orientation is by no means only to be found in those who are engaged in scientific work; it is common to a vast part of the population: clerical workers, reporters, sales people, engineers, lawyers, judges, physicians, managers, and especially many intellectuals and artists—in fact, one may surmise, to most of the urban population. (It is a remarkable fact that the most creative contemporary scientists, humans such as Einstein, Born, Schrodinger, have been among the least alienated and monocerebral individuals. Their scientific concern has had none of the schizoid quality of the majority. It is characteristic of them that their philosophical, moral, and spiritual concerns have pervaded their whole personality. They have demonstrated that the scientific approach as such does not have to lead to alienation; it is rather the social climate that deforms the scientific approach into a schizoid approach.) However, for most others who do display the schizoid character, they all approach the World as a conglomerate of things to be understood in order to be used effectively. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
Second, and not less important, this cerebral-intellectual approach goes together with the absence of an affective response. One might say feelings have withered, rather than that they are repressed; inasmuch as they are alive they are not cultivated, and are relatively crude; they take the form of passions, such as the passion to win, to prove superior to others, to destroy, or the excitement in pleasures of the flesh, speed, and noise. The monocerebral human is s much part of the machinery that one has built, that one’s machines are just as much the object of narcissism as one is oneself; in fact, between the two exists a kind of symbiotic relationship: the union of one individual self with another self (or any other power outside of the own self) in such a way as to make each lose the integrity of its own self and to make them dependent on each other. In a symbolic sense it is not nature any more than is human’s mother but the “second nature” one has built, the machines that nourish and protect one. Another feature of the cybernetic human—one’s tendency to behave in a routinized, stereotyped, and unspontaneous manner—is to be found in a more drastic form in many schizophrenic obsessional stereotypes. There is a loss of that primordial differentiation between living and lifeless matter. An attachment to a lifeless object, such as a chair or a toy is combined with the inability to relate to a living person. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
For the cybernetic human, the use of language (if they speak) is for manipulative purposes, but not as a means of interpersonal communication. If monocerebral cybernetic humans did not offer a picture of low-grade chronic schizophrenic process, it would be surprising. They live in an atmosphere that is only quantitatively less empty than a human being living alone in a cave because they do not relate to others and their presentation is schizogenetic (schizophrenia-producing) families. I believe that it is legitimate to speak of an “insane society” and of the problem of what happens to the sane human in such a society. If a society produced a majority of members who suffer from severe schizophrenia, it would undermine its own existence. The full-fledged schizophrenic person is characterized by the fact that one has cut off all relations with the World outside; one has withdrawn into one’s own private World, and the main reason one is considered severely sick is a social one: one does not function socially; one cannot take care of oneself properly; one needs in some way or other the help of others. (This is not entirely true, either, as experience has shown in all those places where chronic schizophrenics worked or took care of themselves, although with the help of certain people who arranged favourable conditions and at least some material contributions from the state.) A society, not to speak of a large and complex one, could not be run by schizophrenic persons. Yet it can be very well managed by persons suffering from low-grade schizophrenia, who are perfectly capable of managing the things to be managed if a society is to function. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
People with low grade schizophrenia have not lost the capacity to look at the World “realistically,” provided we mean by this to conceive of things intellectually as they need to be considered of in order to deal with them effectively. They may have lost entirely the capacity to experience things personally, id east, subjectively, and with their hearts. The fully developed person can, for instance, see a rose and experience it as warming or even fiery (if one puts this experience into words we call one a poet), but one also knows that the rose—in the realm of physical reality—does not warm as fire does. Modern humans have lost the capacity for subjective experience, and experiences the World only in terms of practical ends. However, one’s defect is not small than that of the so-called sick person who cannot experience the World “objectively,” but who has retained the other human faculty of personal, subjective, symbolic experiences. Many people are seized by one and the same affect with great consistency. Even if it is not, all one’s senses are so strongly affected by one object to be present. If this happens while the person is awake, the person is believed to be insane. However, if the greedy person think thinks only of money and possessions, the ambitious one only of fame, one does not thin of them as being insane, but only as annoying; generally one has contempt for them. However, factually greediness, ambition, and so forth are forms of insanity, although usually one does not think of them as “illness.” #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
The pathology of normalcy rarely deteriorates to graver forms of mental illness because society produces the antidote against such deterioration. When pathological processes become socially patterned, they lose their individual character. On the contrary, the sick individual finds oneself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology and arranges the means to give satisfactions which fit the pathology. The result is that the average individual does not experience the separateness and isolation the fully schizophrenic person feels. One feels at ease among those who suffer from the same deformation; in fact, it is the fully same person who feels isolated in the insane society—one may suffer so much from the incapacity to communicate that it is one who may become psychotic. The most difficult problem with the schizophrenias offers in relation to necrophilia is that of destructiveness rooted in the schizophrenic aspect of the cybernetic human. One hundred fifty years ago, the answer would have seemed to be clear. It was generally assumed that schizophrenic patients are violent, and that for this reason they needed to be put in institutions from which they could not escape. The experiences with chronic schizophrenics working on farms or under their own management have demonstrated beyond any doubt that the schizophrenic person is rarely violent, when one is left in peace. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
Trying to force people with mental illness into the game of normal life intrudes on their private World. And, if additional, if the individual is forced to keep one’s ties with one’s family and cannot ye afford, one may withdraw completely. This situation may produce intense hate and destructiveness and account for the relatively greater frequency of violent tendencies some adults with mental illness. These speculations are of course very hypothetical and will need to be confirmed or rejected by specialists in this field. To formulate these aims of a successful life, reason is required, and reason is more than mere intelligence; it develops only when the brain and the heart are united, when feeling and thinking are integrated, and when both are rational. There is, I believe, no other country where the chances for the reassertion of life are greater than in the technically most developed country, the United States of American, where the hope that more “progress” will bring happiness has been proved to be an illusion for the most of those who have already had a chance to het a taste of the new “paradise.” Whether such a fundamental change will happen, nobody knows. The forces working against it are formidable and there is no reason for optimism. However, I believe there is reason for hope. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
A blessing expresses a wish that a deity look kindly on a person other than the one praying. It differs from the usual prayer in that pray-er offers themselves up as a link between the deity and the person blessed. They stand in, as it were, for the deity, serving as a mediator. God, please enter our home, and find your own, for the old ways are kept here and hospitality is a law all are proud to honour. Please be at my right hand, guiding my way. Please be at my left hand, guiding my way. God, please open my mind, and keep me safe, as I begin the great adventure of school. I stand here as your father, in the pace of the Father of All, as you prepare to move away and start your own household. Though you may live in another house, still God will protect you. Through you may join your life to another’s family, still will the Ancestors guide you. Though you may travel in strange lands, still will the spirits there welcome you. For my father’s blessings is not for your ears alone: the numinous beings hear, and they will honour it. Go on your way in safety, brining with you the blessings of my household God. As you have been with us, so will you stay a part of us. May they watch over you until we meet again. We stand in your place, Ancestors. We perform your deeds, Ancestors. Do not forget, let it be these words, Holy Ones, that my heart sings in my chest. Do not forget, do not forget, to walk in the sacred way. Do not forget, do not forget, that all I see is sacred. #RandolphHarri 24 of 25
Do not, forget, do not forget, my sacred duty to the World which surrounds me. Do not forget, do not forget. Please grant me this gift, you whom I worship, not to forget. Bring to naught designs of those who seek to do me ill; speedily defeat their aims and thwart their purposes for thine won sake, for Thine own power, for Thy holiness and Law. That Thy loved ones be delivered. Answer us, O Lord, and save with Thy redeeming power. May the words of my mouth and the prayer of my heart be acceptable unto Thee, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Thou wo establishes peace in the shining Heavens, please grant peace unto us and unto all America. Amen. May it be Thy will, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, to grant our portion in Thy Torah, and may the Temple be rebuilt in our day. There we will serve Thee with awe as in the days of old. I rise in reverence ready to fulfill the command of my Creator who hath enjoined upon us in His Torah: “And ye shall take for yourself on the first day the fruit of the goodly Hardar tree, branches of palm trees, a bough of the thick tree, and willows of the brook.” As I wave them, may the blessings of God be vouchsafed unto me and may I be imbued with holy thoughts reminding me that God is the supreme Lord, whose divine rule pervades the Earth below and the Heavens above, and whose kingdom has dominion over all. May my observance of this commandment be accounted as through I had fulfilled it with whole-hearted devotion. And let the graciousness of the Lord our God be upon us; establish Thou the work of our hands; yea, they work of our hands establish Thou it. Blessed be the Lord forever. Amen. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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Television in our country is, even more than movies, the American Dream made visible, and that is what makes it more desirable. Almost everyone I know dreams of owning a beautiful house. To be “between styles” or “between subcults” is a life crisis, and the people of the future spend more time in this condition, searching for styles, than do the people of the past or present. Altering one’s identity as one goes, super-age of information humans traces a private trajectory through a World of colliding subcults. This is the social mobility of the future: not simply movement from one economic class to another, but from one tribal grouping to another. Restless movement from subcult to ephemeral subcult describes the arc of one’s life. There are plenty of reasons for this restlessness. It is not merely that the individual’s psychological needs change more often than in the past; the subcults also change. For these and other reasons, as subcult membership becomes ever more unstable, the search for a personal style will become increasingly intense, even frenetic in the decades to come. Again and again, we shall find ourselves bitter or bored, vaguely dissatisfied with “the way things are”—upset, in other words, with our present style. At that moment, we begin once more to search for a new principle around which to organize our choices. We arrive again at the moment of super-decision. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
At this moment, if anyone studied our behaviour closely, one would find a sharp increase in what might be called the Transience Index. The rate of turnover of things, places, people, organizational and informational relationship spurts upward. We get rid of that Roberto Cavalli “Perfume” dress or that Stefano Ricci men’s handmade pleated silk tie the old 74” Tiffany Oriental Poppy floor lamp, that magnificent Victorian Swarovski claw foot bath, and the GemLookdesign Rock crystal sink—all those symbols of our links with the subcult of the past. We begin, bit by bit, to replace them with new items emblematic of our new identification. The same process occurs in our social lives—the through-put of people speeds up. We begin to reject ideas we have held (or to explain them or rationalize them in new ways). We are suddenly free of all the constraints that our subcult or style impose on us. A Transience Index would prove a sensitive indicator of those moments in our lives when we are most free—but, at the same time, most lost. It is in this interval that we exhibit the wild oscillation engineers call “searching behaviour.” We are most vulnerable now to the messages of new subcults, to the claims and counterclaims that rend the air. We lean this way and hat. A powerful new friend, a new fad or idea, a new political movement, some new hero rising from the depths of the mass media—all these strike us with particular force at such a moment. We are more “open,” more uncertain, more ready for someone or some group to tell us what to do, how to behave. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Decisions—even little ones—come harder. This is not accidental. To cope with the press of daily life we need more information about far more trivial matters than when we were locked into a firm life style. And so we feel anxious, pressured, alone, and we move on. We choose or allow ourselves to be sucked into a new subcult. We put on a new style. As we rush toward super-industrialism, therefore, we find people adopting and discarding life styles at a rate that would have staggered the members of any previous generation. For the life style itself has become a throw-away item. This is no small or easy matter. It accounts for the much lamented “loss of commitment” that is so characteristic of our time. As people shift from subcult to subcult, from style to style, they are conditioned to guard themselves against the inevitable pain of disaffiliation. They learn to armour themselves against the sweet sorrow of parting. The extremely devout Catholic who throws over one’s religion and plunges into the life of a New Left activist, then throws oneself into some other cause or movement or subcult, cannot go on doing so forever. One becomes, to adapt Graham Greene’s terms, a “burnt out case.” One learns from past disappointment never to lay too much of this old self on the line. And so, even when one seemingly adopts a subcult or style, one withholds some part of oneself. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
One conforms to the group’s demands and revels in the belongingness that it gives one. However, this belongingness is never the same as it once was, and secretly one remains ready to defect at a moment’s notice. What this means is that even when one seems most firmly plugged in to one’s group or tribe, one listens, in the dark of night, to the short-wave signals of competing tribes. In this sense, one’s membership in the group is shallow. One remains constantly in a posture of non-commitment, and without strong commitment to the values and styles of some group one lacks the explicit set of criteria that one needs to pick one’s way through the burgeoning jungle of overchoice. The super-age of information revolution, consequently, forces the whole problem of overchoice to a qualitatively new level. It forces us now to make choices not merely among lamps and lampshades, but among lives, not among life style components, but among whole life styles. This intensification of the problem of overchoice presses us toward revels of self-examination, soul-searching and introversion. It confronts us with that most popular of contemporary illness, the “identity crisis.” Never before have masses of humans faced a more complex set of choices. The hunt for identity arises not out of the supposed choicelessness of “mass society,” but precisely from the plenitude and complexity of our choices. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Each time we make a style choice, a super-decision, each time we link up with some particular subcultural group or groups, we make some change in our self-image. We become, in some sense, a different persons, and we perceive ourselves as different. Our old friends, those who knew us in some previous incarnation, raise their eyebrows. They have a harder and harder time recognizing us, and, in fact, we experience increasing difficulty in identifying with, or even sympathizing with, our own past selves. The hippie becomes the straight-arrow executive, the executive becomes the skydiver without noting the exact steps of transition. In the process, one discards not only the externals of one’s style, but many of one’s underlying attitudes as well. And one day the question hits one like a splash of cold water in a sleep-sodden face: “What remains?” What is there of “self” or “personality” in the sense of a continuous, durable internal structure? For some, the answer is very little. For they are no longer dealing in “self” but in what might be called “serials selves.” The Super-age of information Revolution this requires a basic change in human’s conception of oneself, a new theory of personality that takes into account the discontinuities in human’s lives, as well as the continuities. The Super-age of information Revolution also demands a new conception of freedom—a recognition that freedom, pressed to its ultimate, negates itself. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Society’s leap to a new level of differentiation necessarily brings with it new opportunities for individuation, and the new technology, the new temporary organizational forms, cry out for a new breed of human. This is why, despite “backlash” and temporary reversals, the line of social advance carries us toward a wider tolerance, a more easy acceptance of the more and more diverse human types. The sudden popularity of the slogan “do you thing” is a reflection of this historic movement. For the more fragmented or differentiated the society, the greater the number of varied life styles it promotes. And the more socially accepted life style models put forth by the society, the closer that society approaches a condition in which, in fact, each human does one’s own, unique thing. Thus, despite all the anti-technological rhetoric of the Elluls and Fromms, the Mumfords and Marcuses, it is precisely the super-industrial society, the most advanced technological society ever, that extends the range of freedom. The people of the future enjoy greater opportunities for self-realization than any previous group in history. The new society offers few roots in the sense of truly enduring relationships. However, it does offer more varied life niches, more freedom to move in and out of these niches, and more opportunity to create one’s own niche, than all earlier societies put together. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
This new found freedom also offers the supreme exhilaration of riding change, cresting it, changing and growing with it—a process infinitely more exciting than riding the surf, wrestling steers, playing “knock hubcaps,” or having a “sideshow” on an eight-lane speedway, or the pursuit of pharmaceutical kicks. It presents the individual with a contest that requires self-mastery, and high intelligence. For the individual who comes armed with these, and who makes the necessary effort to understand the fast-emerging super-age of informational social structure, for the person who finds the “right” life pace, the “right” sequence of subcults to join and life style models to emulate, the triumph is exquisite. Undeniably, these grand words do not apply to the majority of humans. Most people of the past and present remain imprisoned in life niches they have neither made nor have much hope, under present conditions, of ever escaping. For most human beings, the options remain excruciatingly few. This imprisonment must—and will—be broken. Yet it will not be broken by tirades against technology. It will not be broken by calls for a return to passivity, mysticism and irrationality. It will not be broken by “feeling” or “intuiting” our way into the future while derogating empirical study, analysis, and rational effort. Rather than lashing out, Luddite-fashion, against the machine, those who genuinely wish to break the prison-hold of the past and present would so well to hasten the controlled—selective—arrival of tomorrow’s technologies. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
To accomplish this, however, intuition and “mystical insights” are hardly enough. It will take exact scientific knowledge, expertly applied to the crucial, most sensitive points of social control. Nor does it help to offer the principle of the maximization of choice as the key to freedom. We must consider the possibility, suggested here, that choice may become overchoice, and freedom unfreedom. The goal of 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 gulagas would testify. If they could. However, sometimes the system performs with comic clumsiness. We had the experience one evening of going to the Kirov Ballet for a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. The Kirov is the crown jewel of Leningrad. The Soviets spared nothing to repair the heavy damage the building suffered during World War II, restoring its nineteenth-century elegance. During the renovation, which was completed in 1970, nearly nine hundred pounds of gold were used to gild the interior walls where give tiers of balconies sweep around the huge horseshoe-shaped hall like elegant ivory and gold rings, glistening in the blaze of massive crystal chandeliers. The sight took our breath away. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Our escort, a veteran U.S. Consulate officer, seemed pleased as we were shown to our orchestra center seats—thick, plush, sapphire-velvet chairs. Sure enough, when the light dimmed and the velvet curtain rose, it was not the opening strains of Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece we heard, but the strident opening strident chords of Creation of the World. I have seen it six times. I watched the faces of the surrounding audience. Not a murmur, not a single expression of displeasure. Seventeen hundred people sat stoically in their seats. It was a dreary evening indeed. The ballet was a parody on the Garden of Eden, where a buffoonlike character, God, contested with a vital, vigorous figure, Satan, for the soul of man, In the closing scene God retreated lamely, vanquished, leaving self-sufficient man living happily ever after in his Earthy paradise. The architect of this Earthly paradise was Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, the son of Christian parents, known to history as Lenin. Lenin, a single-minded radical, became the most successful revolutionary of the twentieth century. With the “will to power,” he pursued and eliminated his enemies ruthlessly—liberals and socialists, rival Marxists, reluctant peasants and skeptical military officers, monarchists and capitalists, Jews and various other “class enemies.” Above all, Lenin pursued and murdered Christians. He hated them. “There can be nothing more abominable than religion,” he wrote. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
Lenin particular hated seriously committed Christians. Weak Christians he could manage, but serious Christians meant nothing but trouble for a Marxist-Leninist regime. They owed allegiance to the one power greater than the totalitarian Communist state. History has borne Lenin out on this point, if not on others. The pattern of Communist persecution of Jews and Christians is remarkably ecumenical. It has fallen on orthodox believers and Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Ukraine; Roman Catholics in the Baltic Republics, Poland, Hungary, Cuba, Vietnam, and Nicaragua; Lutherans in East Germany and Czechoslovakia; Reformed Christians in Hungary and Czechoslovakia; Pentecostals, Baptists, and other evangelicals in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Asia; house church believers in China. In 1980 twenty-eight Marxist regimes around the World were committed to a policy of atheism, repressing and persecuting Christianity to some degree. These nations contained approximately 250 million Christians—almost one of every five Christians in the World. Those twenty-eight nations, at the time, had a total population of 1.48 billion—which was more than 33 percent of the World’s people. Consider just a few representative reports of that persecution around the World: In Vietnam seventeen evangelical pastors were in jail. From 1975-1995, some 200 churches had been closed. #RandolphHrris 10 of 19
In the Soviet Union criminal charges were filed against Nedezhda Mativkhina for allowing a group of Christians to meet in her home. Mativkhina, a double amputee, had already served two terms in the gulag and faced a third. In Czechoslovakia and Hungary the police crack down on leaders of “basic communities” where Catholic adults and young people met for Bible study and prayer. In China authorities “liberalize” rules covering Christians by banning Protestant house churches, restricting religious gatherings to licensed church buildings, and forbidding evangelism. In Nicaragua dozens of Moravian pastors serving impoverished Miskito Indians on the country’s Atlantic Coast are imprisoned and killed. Moravian communities are uprooted. In the Soviet Union dissident Anatoly Shcaransky was given 130 days in solitary for refusing to surrender his book of Psalms. The Soviet Union has set the course that virtually all Marxist governments have followed. Before the 1917 revolution 83.4 percent of the people living in what is now the Soviet Union were identified as Christians—three quarters of them Russian Orthodox. Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Christians have suffered violent persecution since the revolution, except for a brief period during World War II when the regime needed the support of the churches. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Since 1917, some 60 million Soviet citizens have been killed and 66 million have been sent to labour camps or imprisoned. At least half of these have been Christians. Activist theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once described Communism as “an organized evil which spears terror and cruelty through the World. And Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the great writer who came to faith while in prison, explains why Communist are so determined to destroy Christianity: “They flee from Christ like devils from the sight of the cross.” However, before leaving His disciples, Jesus Christ gave them a new commandment—to love one another, not as in times past with the qualification “as you love yourself,” but “as I have loved you,” reports John 13.34. It may well be that only those who undergo suffering can fully empathize with the suffering soul. Only those who go down into the depths of humility with a broken heart and a contrite spirit can fully understand the Master and the path he trod. Therefore, in times of suffering perhaps it is faith we need, rather than rational understanding. Perhaps our prayers should be for the strength to bear up under the burden rather than to have the burden removed. “And it came to pass that the voice of the Lord came to them in their afflictions, saying: Lift up your heads and be of good comfort, I know of the covenant which ye made unto me; and I will covenant with my people and deliver them out of bondage. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
“And I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in bondage; and this will I do that ye may stand as witness for me hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions. And now it came t pass that the burdens which were laid upon Alma and his brethren were made light; yea, the Lord did strengthen them that they could bear up their burdens with ease, and they did submit,” reports Mosiah 24.13-15. Perhaps the road we may have to tread through suffering leads ultimately to important discoveries of the soul. In the interior Word, the words are clearly formed and not to be mistake though not heard by the body’s ear. A mystical phenomenon which may develop out of this communion with one’s “holy ghost” is that of inspired writings. Helpful teachings that will be addressed to humanity in general or to the few seekers in particular may come through one’s pen. Or guidance in one’s personal life and instruction in one’s spiritual life may be addressed to the writer oneself through occasional notes. In most cases the words will be impressed spontaneously upon one’s mind as though telepathically received from the dictation of one’s unseen but much-felt other self. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
In some cases, however, one’s hand and pen may move across the paper by automatic compulsions at a high speed, one’s mind being forced to move as quickly. One will then distinctly feel that one is merely an instrument which is being used to produce this inspirational script. It would be a dangerous blunder for anyone to confuse this last phenomenon with the automatic writing of spiritualism and psychism. The similarities are only external ones. For in the one case there is the clear consciousness of a divine exalting ennobling presence whereas in other the other there is, at beast, only a blind submission to an unknown entity, usually purporting to be another human if discarnated, being. The words spoken by this unseen but much-felt presence are not heard by the physical ears yet they are strongly impressed upon the mind. They do not come from the spirits of deceased persons but from the holy spirit of one’s own diviner self, from a deep mystical source, not a shallow “astral” one. This is the same phenomenon which Emmanuel Swedenborg experienced and described and called “internal speech with the Lord.” The experience of the Interior Word brings with it, or is heard in, an intensely concentrated state. With it there is a beneficial feeling of being the assured master of one’s mind, emotions, and body. What is amounts to is that the Interior Word becomes in effect the Inner Teacher and prayer itself the gateway to an inner school where instruction is regularly obtained. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
It is the great Silence, yes, but also through the Interior Word it is to us humans the ever-speaking higher Self. To hear the Voice of the Silence is to understand that from within comes the only true guidance; to go to the Hall of Learning is to enter the state in which learning becomes possible. For when the disciple is ready, the Master is ready also. It is a process of inner dialogue, of mental conversation with the other self and of emotional communion with it, following under one’s thoughts to and fro. Interior Word: And in the deep silence the mysterious event will occur which will prove that the way has been found. Call it by what name you will, it is a voice that speaks where there is none to speak—it is a messenger that comes, a messenger without form or substance; for it is the flower of the soul that has opened. If God’s messages are to be heard aright (interior Word), the instrument of reception must be accurately tuned. To bring others a message which elevates them and a truth which inspire them, the Interior Word will speak through one as one. When it happens, this is a wonderful phenomenon. The Interior Word must not be mistaken for any of the psychic voices cultivated by spiritists and mediums. The two are on entirely different planes, even though they are both within. For Interior Word draw on my own experiences in 1918 when I also heard it for many months. The Interior Word did not speak to me for myself alone, to prepare, teach, and direct me. It spoke also for others. It requires me to write down its messages for them even more than for me. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
There is a wisdom deep deep within a huma but alas! it finds no voice until one turns from oneself and calls on the higher power. Then, from within, it—the deputy of that Power—when the conditions are right, can make itself heard and therefore speaks. Let one humbly acknowledge that one does not have the wisdom and purity to know what is right for one to have and what is right to do. Let one turn in silent waiting to the Interior Word, and listen for it to tell one these answers. When one has travelled to this stage of one’s journey; when one can close the door of one’s chamber, lie down, and listen to the Interior Voice; when the silence within becomes audible with clearly formulated instructions, then only is one ready to speak to others or write for others, and teach them. Until then one is a deaf mute, unable to hear and untrained to speak the sacred language. Now the Pentecostal power has descended on one and one is able not only to see the truth through the surrounding darkness but also to give it to those among one’s people who can take it. When our converts “come alive”—and they need nourishment—in the gospel, they soon come alive as students, as parents, in their professions, and as citizens. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
We look on the times of the past and often see our most memorable, satisfying, and blessed periods of our lives. That time is still rewarding us with rich experiences and blessings. The Lord has said to missionaries, “And if it so be that you should labour all your days in crying repentance unto this people, and bring, save it be one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy with Him in the kingdom of my Father!” reports Doctrine and Covenants 18.15. This promise stands like a beacon to every missionary, but as if that were not enough, there are other blessings from missionary work, and they are many and varied. Some are immediate; others come only with time. The spiritual self, the Overself, has never been lost. What has happened is that its being has not been recognized, covered over as it is with a multitude of thoughts, desires, and egocentricities. The day will inexorably come when this pen shall move on more and I wish therefore to leave on record, for the benefit of those who shall come after, a sacred and solemn testimony that I know that I am not this pen which scribes these lines—that a being, benign, wise, protective, and divine, whom humans call the Soul, whom I call the Overself, truly exists in the hearts of all. A day will break surely when every human will have to bend the knee to that unknown self and abandon every cell of one’s brain, every flowing molecule of one’s heart, one’s blood, into its waiting hands. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Though one will fear to do so, though one will fear to give up those ancient idols who had held one in bond so long and have given one so little in return, though one will tremble to loose one’s moorings and let one’s soul drift slowly from them with sails set for that mysterious region whose longitude few humans know and whose shores most humans shun, yet one will do so all the same. For the presence of human’s own innermost divinity is the guarantee that one must inescapably seek and find it. Whoever has been lead into the cave of timeless life will poise one’s pen in a futile attempt to find words which will accurately measures this sublime experience. One rises renewed from the exquisite embrace of such a contemplation. One learns in those shining hours. That which one has been seeking so ardently has been within oneself all the time. For there at the core of one’s being, hidden away underneath all the weakness, passion, pettiness, fear, and ignorance, dwells light, love, peace, and truth. The windows of one’s heart open on eternity, only one has kept them closed! One is as near the sacred spirit of God as one ever shall be, but one must open one’s eyes to see it. Human’s divine estate is there deep within oneself. However, one must claim it. In the divine estate, we are one with God, and He gives us spiritual nourishment as part of Himself. We also notice the coincidence of inbuilt patterns with correspondences in the outside World and it seems as a “holding situation.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
God places His grace just where we are ready to create, and at the right moment. God works with us to confirm it. Then we see ample opportunities follow this union. It almost seems like whatever we want appears as soon as it is thought is or wished for. For a moment we need this complicated way of saying that we have created the object or opportunity, but it is God. The most satisfying experience I have is to see what this gospel does for people. It gives them a new outlook on life. It gives them a perspective that they have never felt before. It raises their sights to things noble and divine. Something happens to them that is miraculous to behold. They look to Christ and come alive. Their lives and the lives of their posterity are changed forever. Spirits of God, please accept this offering from one who wishes only to be at peace with You. Today I am your host and I give you a host’s gift. Tomorrow the turn may fall to you and you will be the host. Please remember that I have acted as hospitality requires, and please reciprocate when You feel the time is right. May God help us always to do only that which is right. O Lord, please guard my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking guile, and to those who slander me, please let me give no heed. May my soul be humble and forgiving unto all. Please open Thou my heart, O Lord, unto Thy sacred Law, that Thy statutes I may know and all Thy truths pursue. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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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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Two of the cruelest, most primitive punishments our town deals out to those who fall from favour are the empty mailbox and the silent telephone. Grace is the divine help or strength extended to us through the Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. Through the grace of God, everyone who has lived will be resurrected—our spirits will be reunited with our bodies, never again to be separated. Through His grace, the Lord also enables those who live His gospel to repent and be forgiven. “We believer that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved,” reports Acts 15.11. A miracle is an extraordinary event caused by the power of God. Miracles are an important element in the work of Jesus Christ. They include healings, restoring the dead to life, and resurrection. Faith is necessary in order for miracles to be manifested. Love is the measure of our faith, the inspiration for our obedience, and the true altitude of our discipleship. As we grow in faith, the World is continually becoming a better place. The Saviour Himself provided the answer to all of life’s problems with this profound declaration: “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” This is the essence of what it means to be true disciple: those who receive Christ Jesus walk with him. Because love is the great commandment, it ought to be at the center of all and everything we do in our family, in our Church callings, and in our livelihood. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Love is the healing balm that repairs rifts in personal and family relationships. It is the bond that unites families, communities, and nations. Love is the power that initiates friendships, tolerance, civility, and respect. It is the source that overcomes divisiveness and hate. Love is the sun that warms our lives with unparalleled joy and divine hope. Love should be our walk and our talk. When we truly understand what it means to love as Jesus Christ loves us, the confusion clears and our priorities align. Our walk as disciples of Christ becomes more joyful. Our lives take on new meaning. Our relationship with our Heavenly Father becomes more profound. Obedience becomes joy rather than a burden. God, the Eternal Father, did not give the first great commandment because He needs us to love Him. His power and glory are not diminished should we disregard, deny, or even defile His name. God’s influence and dominion extend through time and space independent of our acceptance, approval, or admiration. By careful practice, through the application of correct principles, and by being sensitive to the feelings that come, one will gain spiritual guidance. Throughout the ages, any have obtained guidance helpful to resolve challenges in their lives by following the example of respected individuals who resolved similar problems. Today, World conditions change so rapidly that such a course of action is often not available to us. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Personally, I rejoice in that reality because it creates a condition where we, of necessity, are more dependent upon the Spirit to guide us through the vicissitudes of life. Therefore, we are led to seek personal inspiration in life’s important decisions. What can you do to enhance your capacity to be led to correct decisions in your life? What are the principles upon which spiritual communication depends? What are the potential barriers to such communication that you need to avoid? Once you have received the Holy Ghost, follow the influence of that Spirit, and it will lea you into all truth, until by and by, it will become in you a principle of revelation. Father in Heaven knew that you would face challenges and be required to make some decisions that would be beyond your own ability to decide correctly. In His plan of happiness, God included a provision for you to receive help with such challenges and decisions. That assistance will come to you through the Holy Ghost as spiritual guidance. It is a power, beyond your own capability, that a loving Heavenly Father wants you to use consistently for your peace and happiness. Through whatever medium one uses—artistic or not, physical form or silent thought—one’s inspiration will be transmitted, one’s perception of truth disseminated. The intensity of one’s awareness will measure the degree of one’s influence. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Inspiration comes and goes as it will, staying a few minutes or abiding for quite a while. Work done under the Overself’s inspiration can never be tedious but will always be satisfying. To do something really worthwhile, to become creative and constructive in an inspired way, aware of the Overself, is to become Godlike. We then fulfill the purpose of human existence on Earth. Whoever keeps this divine flame burning brightly within one’s heart, radiates the spirit of one’s purpose to all whom one contacts. I am convinced that there is no simple formula or technique that would immediately allow one to master the ability to be guided by the voice of the Spirit. Our Father expects one to learn how to obtain that divine help by exercising faith in Him and His Holy Son, Jesus Christ. Were you to receive inspired guidance just for the asking, you would become weak and ever more dependent on Them. They know that essential personal growth will come as you struggle to learn how to be led by the Spirit. What may appear initially to be a daunting task will be must easier to manage over time as you consistently strive to recognize and follow feelings prompted by the Spirit. Your confidence in the direction you receive from the Holy Ghost will also become stronger. I witness that as you gain experience and success in being guided by the Spirit, your confidence in the impressions you feel can become more certain than your dependence on what you see and hear. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Where do such feelings come from? Certainly not from one’s ordinary self. They come from one’s higher self. Inspired work will always bear the glow of inner life. The Overself is not merely a pleasant feeling—although it arouses such a feeling—but a veritable force. When it possesses a human, one is literally and actually gripped by a dynamic energy. A creative power henceforth pervades one’s atmosphere, enters one’s deeds, permeates one’s mind and charges one’s words, and runs through one’s history. At this stage one feels its presence as being very active and very real: one is not alone. Finding inspiration begins with a pondering on lofty universal spiritual truths which lead one into a deeper dreamlike semi-trance condition. After this prelude one feels inspired with the ideas for one’s work. Spirituality yields two fruits. The first is the inspiration to know what to do. The second is power, or the capacity to do it. These two capacities come together. That is why Nephi could say, “I will go and do the thing which the Lord hath commanded.” Nephi knew the spiritual laws upon which inspiration and power are based. Yes, when we live obediently and exercise the required faith in Him, God answers prayer and gives us spiritual direction. Constantin Stanislavski, who founded the Moscow Art Theatre at the turn of the 20th century, and whose brilliant directing work was honoured by members of his profession throughout Europe, believed that the inspired states could be brought about deliberately. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Constantin Stanislavski further believed that when the inspired state was reached, the actor’s own nature fused with one’s role and that one was then unable to distinguish between the two. He said that this was the mark of the genius but admitted that it was unlikely to last more than a short time. “One cannot stay here long. Nature pulls one back from one’s ethereal atmosphere; body and World insist that one come back, duty and responsibility buzz in one’s ears. Reluctantly one returns.” Harsh words! They come from an artist, from Richard Wagner. They are one-sided, yes, exaggerated no doubt, but it was to one of these turnings-away that the World owes his finest, noblest opera, Parsifal. Geoff Hodson on Krishnamurti: “When he spoke to an audience, there was a moment when you saw the expression on his face change: at that moment I saw clairvoyantly a great being began to overshadow him. He became inspired.” Why did the crowds press into the lecture halls wherever Emerson came? Why did they listen in awe and silence to this man in whose mind glowed a divine lamp? Emerson gave them inspiration. I remember one day when A.E. (George Russell), the Irish poet and statesman, chanted t me in his attractive Hibernian brogue some paragraphs from his beloved Plotinus that tell of the gods, although the number of words which stick to memory are but few and disjointed, so drugged were my senses by his magical voice. “All the gods are venerable and beautiful, and their beauty is immense. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
“For they are not one time wise, and at another destitute of wisdom; but they are always wise, in an impassive, stable, and pure mind. They likewise know all things which are divine….For the life which is there is unattended with labour, and truth is their generator and nutriment…And the splendour there is infinite.” Impressions of the Spirit can come in response to urgent prayer or unsolicited when needed. Sometimes the Lord reveals truth to you when you are not actively seeking it, such as when you are in danger and do not know it. However, the Lord will not force you to learn. You must exercise your agency to authorize the Spirit to teach you. As you make this a practice in your life, you will be more perceptive to the feelings that come with spiritual guidance. Then, when that guidance comes, sometimes when you least expect it, you will recognize it more easily. “In Germany they came for the Communisis, and I did not speak up because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak up because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak up because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I did not speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up,” reports Martin Niemoller. The inspiring influence of the Holy Spirit can be overcome or masked by strong emotions, such as anger, hate, passion, fear, or pride. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
When such influences are present, it is like trying to savour the delicate flavour of a grape while eating a ghost pepper. Both flavours are present, but one completely overpowers the other. In like manner, strong emotions overcome the delicate promptings of the Holy Spirit. Sin is addictive; self-degenerating; conducive to other strains of corruption; deadening to spirituality, conscience, and reason; blinding to reality; contagious; destructive to mind, body, and spirit. Sin is spiritually corrosive. Unrestrained it becomes all-consuming. It is overcome by repentance and righteousness. Satan is extremely good at blocking spiritual communication by inducing individuals, through temptation, to violate the laws upon which spiritual communication is founded. With some, he is able to convince them that they are not able to receive such guidance from the Lord. The leader who makes an idol of oneself and one’s office, thus mocking God. Many Germans believed they were God’s chosen people, and Hitler the new messiah. The national revival was more vital than anything they had ever found in their faith. Their morning meetings had something of the mysticism and religious fervour of an Easter or Christmas Mass in the great Gothic cathedral. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Many people will betray anything for the sake of their miserable little jobs and incomes. The Germans were stirred by their love for their nation and their faith in its God-given destiny. No human qualities or human works can bring salvation—only the goodness of God. Some of the German pastors thought a more reasonable tone would be more honouring to those with different views. I mean, calling it “a new religion making idol of blood, race, nation, honour, eternal Germany.” Whether these sensations are noticed at all, or noticed as pleasant or as disturbing, depends on other factors (for instance, on whether the individual just had a pleasant phantasy of Go and what that stands for, or of spiritual purity or relaxing prayer0. When an individual has a God of the kind we have described, who provides spiritual nourishment where the individual’s phantasy, too, has put it, the individual has an experience which is called “object-finding-and-creating” or “discovering the object.” The phantasy experience created by the individual is then very closely connected with the sensory experience made possible by God presenting whatever the individual had put a phantasy of just then. Combining the two sets of neural input, we can then represent the neural pattern. In this representation, there is no gap between the expectation/phantasy/hope/need/wish and the experience wished for. The two coincide. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
The gap, between what the human needs and what one is given, is bridged when the object is found at the right moment—when phantasy (central processes) and the sensory input coincide. So the phantasy is confirmed by the World. In adult life we know this experience, of phantasy confirmed by sensory input, mainly in disconcerting context, as in the tiny confusion which results when you blow your nose at the precise moment that a train whistles or when a roll of thunder breaks just as you turn your head: “Did I do that?” This omnipotent element is characteristic of the age at which we originally experienced such coincidences as part of normal well-being; we were feeling “grand.” Someone who is increasingly repulsed by grievous sin and who exercises self-restraint outside human influence has character. Repentance will be more efficacious for such an individual. A feeling of remorse after a mistake is fertile soil wherein repentance can flower. Have patience as you are perfecting your ability to be led by the Spirit. By careful practice, through the application of correct principles, and by being sensitive to the feelings that come, you will gain spiritual guidance. I bear witness that the Lord, through the Holy Ghost, can speak to your mind and heart. Sometimes the impressions are just general feelings. Sometimes the direction comes so clearly and so unmistakably that it can be written down like spiritual dictation. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
There is a moral psychology and acquisition of the sentiment of justice. Once these matters have been dealt with, we are in a position to discuss the relative stability of justice as fairness and to argue that, in a sense to be defined, justice and goodness are congruent, at least in the circumstances of a well-ordered society. A person’s good is determined by what is for one the most rational plan of life given reasonably favourable circumstances. In a well-ordered society citizens’ conception of their good conform to the principles of right publicly recognized and include an appropriate place for the various primary goods. However, the concept of goodness has been used only in a rather thin sense. And in fact I shall distinguish between two theories of the good. The reason for doing this is that in justice as fairness the concept of right is prior to that of the good. In contrast with teleological theories, something is good only if it fits into ways of life consistent with the principles of right already on hand. However, to establish these principles it is necessary to rely on some notion of goodness, for we need assumptions about the parties’ motives in the original position. Since these assumptions must not jeopardize the prior place of the concept of right, the theory of the good used in arguing for the principles of justice is restricted to the bare essentials. This account of the good I call the thin theory: its purpose is to secure the premises about primary goods required to arrive at the principles of justice. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Once this theory is worked out and the primary goods accounted for, we are free to use the principles of justice in the further development of what I shall call the full theory of the good. In order to clarify these matters, let us recall where a theory of the good has already played a role. First of all, it is used to define the least favoured members of society. The difference principle assume that this came be done. It is true that the theory need not define a cardinal measure of welfare. We do not have to know how disadvantaged the least fortunate are, since once this group is singled out, we can take their ordinal preference (from the appropriate point of view) as determining the proper arrangement of the basic structure. Nevertheless, we must be able to identify this group. Further, the index of well-being and the expectations of representative humans are specified in terms of primary goods. Rational individuals, whatever else they want, desire certain things as prerequisites for carrying out their plans of life. Other things equal, they prefer a wider to a narrower liberty and opportunity, and a greater rather than a smaller share of the wealth and income. That these things are good seems clear enough. However, I have also said that self-respect and a sure confidence in the sense of one’s own worth is perhaps the most important primary good. And this suggestion has been used in the argument for the two principles of justice. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Thus the initial definition of expectations solely by reference to such things as liberty and wealth is provisional; it is necessary to include other kinds of primary goods and these raise deeper questions. Obviously an account of the good is required for this; and it must be the thin theory. Again, some view of goodness is used in defending justice as fairness against various objections. For example, it may be said that the persons in the original position know so little about their situation that a rational agreement upon principles of justice is impossible. Since they do not know what their aims are, they many find their plans utterly ruined by the principles to which they consent. Therefore how can they reach a sensible decision? One might reply that the rationality of a person’s choice does not depend upon how much one knows, but only upon how much one knows, but only upon how well one reasons from whatever information one has, however incomplete. Our decision is perfectly rational provided that we face up to our circumstances and do the best we can. Thus the parties can in fact make a rational decision, and surely some of the alternative conceptions of justice are better than others. Nevertheless, the thin theory of the good which the parties are assumed to accept shows that they should try to secure their liberty and self-respect, and that, in order to advance their aims, whatever these are, they normally require more rather than less of other primary goods. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
In entering into the original agreement, then, the parties suppose that their conceptions of the good have a certain structure, and this is sufficient to enable them to choose principles on a rational basis. We need what I have called the thin theory of good to explain the rational preference for primary goods and to explicate the notion of rationality underlying the choice of principles in the original position. This theory is necessary to support the requisite premises from which the principles of justice are derived. However, looking ahead to other questions yet to be discussed, a more comprehensive account of the good is essential. Thus the definition of beneficent and supererogatory acts depends upon such a theory. So likewise does the definition of the moral worth of persons. This is the third main concept of ethics and we must find a place for it within the contract view. Eventually we shall have to consider whether being a good person is a good thing for that person, if not in general, then under what conditions. In some circumstances at least, for example those of a society well-ordered or in a state of near justice, it turns out, I believe, that being a good person is indeed a good. This fact is intimately connected with the good of justice and the problem of the congruences of a moral theory. We need an account of the good to spell al this out. The characteristic feature of this full theory, as I have said, is that it takes the principles of justice as already secured, and then uses these principles in defining the other moral concepts in which the notion of goodness is involved. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Once the principles of right are on hand, we may appeal to them in explaining the concept of moral worth and the good of the moral virtues. Indeed, even rational plans of life which determine what things are good for human beings, the values of human life so to speak, are themselves constrained by the principle of justice. However, clearly, to avoid moving in a circle, we must distinguish between the thin and the full theory, and always keep in mind which one we are relying upon. Finally, when we come to the explanation of the social values and the stability of a conception of justice, a wider interpretation of the good is required. For example, one basic psychological principle is that we have a tendency to love those who manifestly love us, those who with evident intention advance our good. In this instance our good comprises final ends and not only primary goods. Moreover, in order to account for the social values, we need a theory that explains the good of activities, and in particular the good of everyone’s willingly acting from the public conception of justice in affirming their social institutions. When we consider these questions we can work within the full theory. Sometimes we are examining the processes by which the sense of justice and moral sentiments are acquired; or else we are nothing that the collective activities of a just society are also good. There is no reason for not using the full theory, since the conception of justice is always available. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
However, when we ask whether the sense of justice is a good, the important question clearly is that defined by the thin theory. We want to know whether having and maintaining a sense of justice is a good (in the thin sense) for persons who are members of a well-ordered society. Surely if the sentiment of justice is ever a good, it is a good in this special case. And if within the thin theory it turns out that having a sense of justice is indeed a good, then a well-ordered society is as table as one can hope for. Not only does it generate its own supportive moral attitudes, but these attitudes are desirable from the standpoint of rational persons who have them when they assess their situation independently from the constraints of justice. This match between justice and goodness I refer to as congruence; and I shall examine this relation when we take up the good of justice. While charismatic figures may become style-setters, styles are fleshed out and marketed to public by the sub-societies or tribe-lets we have termed sub-cults. Taking in raw symbolic matter from the mass media, they somehow piece together odd bits of dress, opinion, and expression and form them into a coherent package: a life style model. Once they have assembled a particular model, they proceed, like any good corporation, to merchandise it. They find customers for it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Anyone doubting this is advised to read the letters of Allen Ginsberg to Timothy Leary, the two men most responsible for creating the hippie life styles, with its heavy accent on drug use. “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour,” reports 1 Peter 5.8. “Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ,” 1 Peter 1.13. The successful “sale” of the hippie life style model to young people all over the techno-societies, is one of the classic merchandising stories of our time. Not all subcults are so aggressive and talented at flackery, yet their cumulative power in the society is enormous. This power stems from our almost universal desperation to “belong.” The primitive tribesman feels a strong attachment to one’s tribe. One knows that one “belongs” to it, and may even have difficulty imagining oneself apart from it. The techno-societies are so large, however, and their complexities so far beyond the comprehension of any individual, that it is only by plugging in to one or more of their subcults, that we maintain some sense of identity and contact with the whole. Failure to identify with some such group or groups condemns us o feelings of loneliness, alienation and ineffectuality. We begin to wonder “who we are.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
In contrast, the sense of belonging, of being part of a social cell larger than ourselves (yet small enough to be comprehensible) is often so rewarding that we feel deeply drawn, sometimes even against our own better judgment, to the values, attitudes and most-favoured life style of the group. However, we pay for the benefits we receive. For once we psychologically affiliate with a subcult, it begins to exert pressures on us. We find that it pays to “go along” with the group. It rewards us with warmth, friendship, and approval when we conform to its life style model. However, it punishes us ruthlessly with ridicule, ostracism or other tactics when we deviate from it. Hawking their preferred life style models, subcults clamour for our attention. In so doing, they act directly on our most vulnerable psychological property, our self-image. “Join us,” they whisper, “and you become a bigger, better, more effective, more respected and less lonely person.” In choosing among he fast-proliferating subcults we may only vaguely sense that our identity will be shaped by our decision, but we feel the hot urgency of their appeals and counter-appeals. We are buffeted back and forth by their psychological promises. At the moment of choice among them, we resemble the tourist walking down Bourbon Street in New Orleans. As one strolls past the honky-tonks and clip joints, doormen grab one by the arm, spin one around, and open the door so one can catch a titillating glimpse of the naked flesh of the adult dancers on the platform behind the bar. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Subcults reach out to capture us and appeal to our most private fantasies in ways far more powerful and subtle than any yet devised by Madison Avenue. What they offer is not simply a skin show or a new soap or detergent. They offer not a product, but a super-product. It is true they hold out the promise of human warmth, companionship, respect, a sense of community. However, so do the advertisers of deodorants and cranberry juice. The “miracle ingredient,” the exclusive component, the one thing that subcults offer than other hawkers cannot, is a respite from the strain of overchoice. For they offer not a single product or idea, but a way of organizing all products and ideas, not single commodity but a whole style, a set of guidelines that help the individual reduce the increasing complexity of choice to manageable proportions. Most of us are desperately eager to find precisely such guidelines. In the welter of conflicting moralities, in the confusion occasioned by overchoice, the most powerful, most useful “super-product” of all is an organizing principle for one’s life. That is what a life style offers. The fruit of prayer may include messages conveying general teaching or specific guidance but the student will recognize that they emanate from one’s own mind at its best or from one’s own intuition. However, one will know the Interior Word seems to come to one from a source outside oneself, from some higher being or master. It uses one’s own thought to speak to one but the inspiration for each thought is not one’s own. This is the Interior Word. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
The feeling of some presence inside one’s heart will become so powerful at intervals, so real and so intense, that one will quite naturally enter into conversation with it. One will implore it, pray to it, express love for it, and worship it. And one will find that it will answer one in words, the sentences forming themselves spontaneously within one’s mind as speech without sound. It will give one pertinent didactic instruction—often at unexpected moments—and formulate higher points of view. Interior Word. When one succeeds in penetrating the still depths of one’s being, another mind will appear to superimpose itself on one’s own, directing, teaching, and inspiring one. It will speak to one out of the silence within oneself yet it will not be one’s own voice. Its tone will be friendly, and when one becomes familiar with it one will know it to be none other than the voice of the Holy Spirit, the word of the Higher Self. As the interior word delivers its message to one day by day, as one advances in understanding through receiving it and in character by obeying it, one will have the best evidence that this quest which one first tried as an experiment is become a priceless experience. It is the soul speaking truth to the intellect out of its larger range of life. Its voice is best and easiest heard when the consciousness is turned inward away from the sense-existence and brought as near to stillness as we can make it. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Dear Lord in Shining Heaven, Wo know the woof and warp, who sees the pattern before the cloth exists, please form from my actions here that which will be if the thread remains as they are now arranged. The hard Earth lies vulnerable beneath the onslaught of the Sun’s rays, too weak from thirst even to raise her hands in prayer for relief. I do it for her, then; I raise my face to the Sun: shining disk, wheel of light, your power is indeed great, your place of honour is assured. I come to you as a herald, asking for peace. Please withhold your darts that are keeping back the rain clouds. Please allow them to come and quench the thirst of their sister below. Establish peace between yourself and the Earth: a true king knows when to relent. They sky is weeping great tears in sorrow at the Earth’s drought. Weep on, over-reaching clouds: Your sorrow will return life to the Earth. O gather our exiles into the courts of Thy holy sanctuary to observe Thy statues, to do Thy will, and to serve Thee with a perfect heart. We give thanks unto Thee. Blessed be God to whom we are ever grateful. For all this, Thy name, O our King, shall be blessed and exalted for ever and ever. May all the living do homage unto Thee forever and praise Thy name in truth, O God, who art our salvation and our help. Blessed be Thou, O Lord, Beneficent One, unto whom our thanks are due. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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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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If the Truth is Carried in the Mind and Poise in the Heart—Let Us be Happy!
Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the stage to write an autobiography. However, the America novel is a conquest of the frontier; as it describes experience it creates. Therefore, it is not true that we have ne life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds as we wish. The chasm between the Real and human seems entirely impassable. The intellect is conditioned by its own finitude, by its particular set of space and time perceptions. It is unable to function where absolutes alone reign. The infinite eternal and absolute existence eludes the grasp of human’s logical thought. One may form mental pictures of it but at best they will be as far off from it as a photograph is far off from flesh and blood. Idea-worship is idol-worship. Everything else is an object of knowledge, experienced in a certain way by ourself as the knower of it; but the Infinite Real cannot be an object of anyone’s knowledge simply because it cannot be conditioned in any way whatsoever. It is absolute. If it is to be known to all, it be therefore be in a totally different way from that of ordinary experience. It is as inaccessible to psychic experience as it is impenetrable by thought and feeling. However, although we may not directly know Reality, we may know that it is, and that in some way the whole cosmic existence roots from it. Thus whichever way humans turn one, the finite creature, finds the door closed upon one’s face. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
The Infinite and Absolute Essence is forever beyond one’s vision, unreachable by one’s knowing capacity and inaccessible to one’s experience, and will forever remain so. The point is so subtle that, unless its development is expressed with great care here, it is likely to be misunderstood. Although humans must pause here and say, with Socrates, “None knoweth save God only”—for with this conception one has gone as far as human thought can grasp such mysteries—nevertheless one may know that the seers have not invented an imaginary Reality. One has neither been left alone in one’s mortality nor abandoned utterly to one’s finitude. The mysterious Godhead has provided a witness to its sacred existence, a Deputy to evidence its secret rulership. And that Witness and Deputy can be found for it sits imperishable in the very heart of humans themselves. It is indeed one’s true self, one’s immortal soul, one’s Overself. Although the ultimate principle is said to be inconceivable and unknowable, this is so only in relation to human’s ordinary intellect and physical senses. It is not so in relation to a faculty in one which is still potential and unevolved—insight. If it be true that even no adept has ever seen the mysterious absolute, it is also true that one has seen the way it manifests its presence through something intimately emanated from it. What begins as a mysterious presence ends as a clear influence. To the extent that we can keep and hold our awareness of this divine consciousness, we can also express something of its knowledge and power. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
If the nameless formless Void from which all things spring up and into which they go back is a World so subtle that it is not really intellectually understandable and so mysterious that it is not even mystically experienceable, we may however experience the strange atmosphere emanating from it, the unearthly aura signifying its hidden presence. Once “tuned in,” the longer you can stay with the Overself, the greater the depth penetrated; and this in turn means the more general benefit will be gained, the more creativity will be possible in ideas, in arts, and in intuitions. If one is an artist or writer–the glimpse becomes the creative source, the inspirer, of one’s intellectual or aesthetic pursuits—if one is not, they become part of one’s moral aspirations and conduct. First there is the turning-within and opening to that which is one’s finest being; then there is the reversal of directions, the turning-without and giving or serving one’s small or large World. This humanistic way is a grace for those whom it touches. There are humans who may be high in talent but low in character. Notice that I use the word talent. I cannot believe that it is possible to possess true inspiration and yet deny it or fail to express it in one’s conduct. Whatever talent of creative quality one brings to meditation could come out inspired, renewed, and exalted. What one gets from these delectable inner meetings one tries to give the World in whatever way one’s situation allows, in an artistic creation or a simple smile, or otherwise. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
To extent that a human is conscious of the presence of the Overself, one becomes inspired. To the extent that one is also talented in any of the arts, one’s work also becomes inspired. If one feels this presence, and can do one’s work without deserting it, then one’s is a sacred function, no matter whether it be an artist’s or an artisan’s. Even while working in an office or factory or field, a human is not prevented from continuing one’s search for the inner mind. The notion that this quest requires aloofness from the commonplace utilitarian World is one which philosophy does not accept. Distraction and action are not so mutually inclusive as we may think. The student may train oneself to maintain clam and serene poise even in the midst of strenuous activity, just as one also avails oneself of the latest discoveries of scientific technique and yet keeps one’s mind capable of browsing through the oldest books of the Ancient self-actualized. If the truth is carried in the mind and poised in the heart, one can discipline oneself to retuning from meditation to the turmoil, go anywhere, do anything. One may even learn to live in reality at all times. If one follows the philosophic threefold path, the sense of its presence will need no constant renewal, no frequent slipping into trance, no intermittent escape from the World. The whole of life must be inspired, not merely action alone, not merely thinking alone, not merely feeling alone. Inspired living must be the keynote of the disciple’s effort. One will carry its inspiration into all one’s activities. Every department of one’s life will be divinized. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
We may fittingly compare the Overself with any catalytic agent of chemistry which, unaltered itself, activates other substances by its presence. We may carry the comparison further and point out that just as the catalyst it ultimately a product of the same primal stuff as these substances, however different they appear to be, so the thoughts and things whose play constitutes the Universe are ultimately of the same primal essences as the Overself. This passive Mind or pure Being, the First, the Unconditioned Origin of all, the Inconceivable and Unknowable. It is beyond the capacity of any individual entity to penetrate this mystery of mysteries and still remain an individual. An intercession of faithful prayer is necessary. This exists in the Overself, in human’s higher self, which is nothing less than a germ of that same infinite life. If this were not present in humans, not only would mystical experience be impossible for one but all religious intuition would be mythical to one. “I and the Father are One,” said Jesus. The student asks why the individual should not therefore know the One as oneself? The saying of Jesus presupposed duality and difference, which explains why the awareness such a student seeks does not exist; it can come only after all duality disappears—even that mystical monism which seems to have transcended duality but has not really. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
The theosophy of The Secret Doctrine does not reach the height of the doctrine of Nonduality. That is quite all right because it purported to be only a “fragment” of the truth. H.P. Blavatsky wrote that the Causeless Cause, as she termed it, the Absolute, was unknowable that that seekers could reach only to the Logos. Dr. Bruton does not teach that. If all else but the Absolute is illusory (including the Logos) then the path is not worthwhile because truth is unattainable. This philosophy says that Truth is attainable and the so-called Absolute can be realized by humans. Some theosophic studies will help in the understanding of the teaching of this path, while others will bring the student’s mind into direct conflict with them. One will have to decide for oneself whether to give one’s loyalty to the one or the other, but this doctrine cannot be mixed with any other save at the risk of diluting its truth. This path is based solely on the appeal to reason, never to belief, whereas there are many times of theosophy which no one can prove. The “Principle” the Real, the Unique and the Absolute, the ground of all being and existence is human’s nature in alignment with the Spirit, but one has to find one’s way to this consciousness: one has the capacity but must realize it, to think and live-in goodness, sincerity; finally that the truth, being innate in one, could be found by intuiting it. If one’s inspiration is of the highest kind, it will be a fruitful one. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
One’s highest inspiration will manifest in external achievement by the personal ego and in altruistic service, enlightenment, and uplift of the World community in which one lives. Those critics who assert that we have lost out spiritual values because we teach the mystical contemplation is not an end in itself but rather a means to action, have not understood our teaching. The kind of action we refer to is not the ordinary one. It is something higher than that, wiser than that, nobler than that. It is everyday human life divinized and made expressive of a sublime FACT. We have indeed often used the phrase “inspired action” to distinguish it from the blind and egotistic kind. One who practices it does not thereby desert the contemplative path. This inner life is kept deep, full, and rich, but it is not kept refrigerated and isolated. One reflects it deliberately into the outer life to satisfy a twofold purpose. First, to be on the Earth, so far as one can, what one is in the shining Heaven. Second, to work actively for the liberation of others. This cannot be achieved by inertia and indifference—which are virtues to the spiritual but defects to the philosopher. The divine essence is Unknowable to the finite intellect, but knowable in a certain sense, by the deepest intuition. If one puts away thoughts, even those about the essence, or lets them lapse of their own accord, and awaits itself disclosure patiently, reverently, lovingly—the conditions of high importance–this sense can arise to the human previously prepared by instruction and purification, or by studied knowledge and purification. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The mind stilled, the self surrendered,a divine awareness possesses one. For there can be three forms of possession: divine, human (as in artist or writers), and diabolic. In the ideal self-actualized, divine posses has become a permanent state. One finds within oneself not merely a passive repose but also a veritable fountain of wisdom and strength, inspiration and bliss. When spirituality shines through a human, it makes one great, even though one be bereft of talent in any other direction. It should heighten, and not destroy, one’s creative capacities in the World of art or intellect, in public service or technical endeavour, in the businesses and professions. In ancient times the very idea of inspiration, of being under the influence of a higher power, connoted an accompaniment of extremely strong stirring of the feelings. This is clearly on a spiritual level, for there is deep clam during inspiration on a philosophical level. It is not quite correct to say that in literary inspiration then pen races ahead of the mind, that thoughts are too swift and too numerous to get written down without missing any. This is one kind of inspiration. There is another wherein thoughts are slow and few, but deeper. The priest and the self-actualize, the artist and the writer have to carry a small flock or millions of minds with them by means of their work. If they posses the talent, it is theirs. However, the inspiration comes from a higher level. The disappointed escapist seeks compensations for life, the inspired activist seeks life. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
To make the mood if inspiration a haphazard affair, is imprudent. Whether it comes as an inspirational idea or as intuitive feeling, it should be treasured and nurtured and developed. A good deal of achievement goes on in the silent solitude of our own hearts, unnoticed and unknown to other humans; one day it blossoms into irresistible action, then the World wonders why. In the end, though and conduct, ideal and action, truth and being, must be coordinated, fused, and united. When we find ourselves in the divine presence unendingly, aware of it and expressing it we fulfill life. The Godhead is too far beyond human’s conception, experience, and knowledge; the Absolute cannot be comprehended by one’s finite capacity. We are nothing, meaningless, we cannot know God. We must beg for His forgiveness and devote our lives to loving Him. God gave His one and only Son (the only one He was willing to claim) to purify this Earth so we could live and prosper. Jesus Christ was God in the flesh. That is why the Father and the Son are One. Now metaphysical ideas must be metaphysically understood. If they are understood sensuously or physically, of if an eternal principle is replaced by historical person, truth is turned to idolatry. Those whoa re able to hold such lofty conception of its fleshly appearance as an Incarnation cannot cramp it into the little box of human individuality. Any prophet who makes such a claim repeatedly is merely emphasizing one’s person at the cost of one’s Overself, is glorifying one’s little self rather than the Infinite whose messenger one claims to be. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
The human who understands one’s own limitations and the Absolute’s lack of them will never claim equality with it. Such a human will never ask others to show one the reverence which they ought to show to the pure spirit nor to give one the allegiance which they ought to give to God. Whereas nearly all popular religions set up as an intermediary between It and us “The Divinely Incarnate Prophet” or else “The Son of God,” philosophy depersonalizes it and set up instead the true self, the divine soul in humans. For even the prophets and avatars whom the divine Godhead sends down to humankind are sent not only to teach them that this Absolute exists but also to direct them towards the realization of their own true inner self. The true self will then reflect as much of the divine as it is able to, but it can never exhaust it. It is the Overself and, through the threefold path, is Knowable. In the Unique Godhead, ever mysterious in its unmanifested World-Mind, in which—in its turn—there rises and sets all this wonderful cosmos of which it is the very soul. The first is forever beyond humans but the second is always accessible to humans as the Overself within one. We cannot know it as it is but only can know that if It has not been there first, the creative God could not have been there. We cannot give it any name for no picture, no concept, no thinkable nature is within our apprehension concerning It. At the enunciation of its mere possibility, we are hushed into silence, struck dumb. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Let us retreat, then, into territory where a contact is possible, where GOD and HUMANS may meet. This Great Aloneness, where no other living creature may intrude—no matter who—where human and God mingle. When we, human beings, though our most enlightened representatives, look for the highest principle of being, life, existence, consciousness—the Supreme Power, the Origin of all Substance, the ultimate Deity, in fact—we find It is one and the same thing looked at from different human standpoints. It is nameless but we may call it, Mind. There is no point where we can come into contact with It for It transcends everything, every human capacity. When we look for It in relation to the Universe which includes us, we may call It World-Mind, or in religious terminology, God. Here there is real possibility of a contact, for in our innermost self the connection is already there. Let us not deceive ourselves and dishonour the Supreme Being by thinking that we know anything at all about It. We know nothing. The intellect may formulae conceptions, the intuition may give glimpses, but these are our human reactions to IT. Even the self-actualized, who has attained a harmony with one’s Overself, has found only the Godlike within oneself. Yes, it is certainly the Light, but it is so for one, for the human being. One still stands as much outside the divine Mystery as everyone else. The difference is that whereas they stand in darkness, one stand in this Light. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Philosophic prayer will show one that one’s own existence is rooted in that of a higher power, while philosophic study will explain some of the laws governing one’s experiences from crib to coffin. However, at the bottom of existence and experience is ineffable incomprehensible Mystery. Neither the senses nor the intellect can tell us anything about the intrinsic nature of this Infinite Mind. Nevertheless we are not left in total ignorance about it. From its manifestation, the cosmos, we may catch a hint of its Intelligence. From its emanation, the soul, we may catch more than a hint of its Beneficence. “More than,” I say, because the emanation may be felt within us as our very being whereas the manifestation is outside us and is apart. After the last sermon has been preached, the last book written, Mind remains the Mystery behind all mysteries. Thought cannot conceive It, imagination picture It, nor language express It. The greatest mystic’s experience is only one’s own personal reaction to Its atmosphere, as from a distance. Even this blows one to pieces like an atomic bomb, but the fact that one can collect them together again afterwards shows that it must have been present in some inexplicable supernormal way and was not lost, both to continue existence and to remember the event. During Elizabethan times the term “gentleman” referred to a whole way of life, not simply an accident of birth. Appropriate lineage may have been a prerequisite, but to be a gentleman one has to live in a certain style: to be better educated, have better manners, wear better clothes than the masses; to engage in certain recreations (and not others); to live in large, well-furnished house; to maintain a certain aloofness with subordinates; basically, never to lose sight of one’s class “superiority.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
The merchant class had its own preferred life style and the peasantry still another. These life styles, like that of the gentleman, were pieced together out of many different components, ranging from residence, occupation and dress to jargon, gesture and religion. Today we still create our life styles be forming a mosaic of components. However, much has changed. Life style is no longer simply a manifestation of class position. Classes themselves are breaking up into smaller units. Economic factors are declining in importance. Thus today it is not so much one’s class base as one’s ties with a subcult that determine the individual’s style of life. The working-class hippie and the hippie who dropped out of Exeter or Eon share a common style of life but no common class. Since life style has become the way in which the individual expresses one’s identification with this or that subcult, the explosive multiplication of subcults in society has brought with it an equally explosive multiplication of life styles. Thus the stranger launched into American or English or Japanese or Mandarin Chinese or Swedish or German society today must choose not among four or five class-based styles of life, but among literally hundreds of diverse possibilities. Tomorrow, as subcults proliferate, this number will be even larger. Kevin Ball (Steve Howey) on Showtimes innovative and popular situational comedy Shameless calls mixed race babies of African and European descent “Tomorrow people,” because their subcult represents the future of humanity. How we choose a life style, and what it means to us, therefore, looms as one of the central issues of the psychology of tomorrow. For the selection of life style, whether consciously done or not, powerfully shapes the individual’s future. It does this by imposing order, a set of principles or criteria on the choices one makes in one’s daily life. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
If we examine how such choices are actually made, this becomes clear. The young couple setting out to furnish their new Cresleigh Home may look at literally hundreds of different lamps—Scandinavian, Japanese, hand craved African mahogany, French, Provincial, Tiffany lamps, hurricane lamps, American colonial lamps—dozens, scores of different sizes, models and styles before selecting say, the Magnolia 75” Novelty Floor Lamp by Meyda Tiffany. Having surveyed a “Universe” of possibilities, they zero in on one. In the furniture department, they again scan an array of alternatives, then settle on an Alexander Roux 19th century Victorian Rosewood Marble Top Parlor Center Table. This scan-and-select procedure is repeated with respect to rugs, sofa, drapes, dining room chairs, et cetera. In fact something like this same procedure is followed not merely in furnishing their Cresleigh Home, but also in their adoption of ideas, friends, even the vocabulary they use and the values they espouse. While the society bombards the individual with a swirling, seemingly patternless set of alternatives, the selections made are anything but random. The consumer (whether of end tables or ideas) comes armed with a pre-established set of preferences. Moreover, no choice is wholly independent. Each is conditioned by those mad earlier. The couple’s selection of an end table has been conditioned by their previous choice of lamp. In short, there is a certain consistency, and attempt at personal style, in all our actions—whether consciously recognized or not. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
The American male who wears a button-down collar and garter-length socks probably also wears wing-tip shoes and carries an attache case. If we look closely, chances are we shall find a facial expression and brisk manner intended to approximate those of the stereotypical executive. The odds are astronomical that he will not let his hair grow wild in the manner of rock musician Jimi Hendrix. He knows, as we do, that certain clothes, manner, forms of speech, opinions and gestures hang together, while others do not. He may know this only by “feel,” or “intuition,” having picked it up by observing others in the society, but the knowledge shapes his actions. The black-jacketed motorcyclist who wears steel-studded gauntlets and an obscene swastika dangling from his throat complete his costume with rugged boots, not loafers or wing-tips. He is likely to swagger as he walks and to grunt as he mouths his anti-authoritarian platitudes. For he, too, values consistency. He knows that any trace of gentility or articulateness would destroy the integrity of his style. Why do motorcyclists wear black jackets? Why not brown or blue? Why do executives in America prefer attache cases, rather than the traditional briefcase? It is as though they were following some model, trying to attain some ideal laid down from above. Finding the Overself is one thing, and the first thing, but letting it take over is another thing. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
The first reality of universal existence must become the first thought of human consciousness. Only then is our life rightly orientated and properly sustained. All action will then become sublime, inspired, and wise, leading to the true success at all times and despite adverse outward appearances. It is one secret of the inspired individual that one lets oneself be led: one does not try to do with one’s ego what can be better done for one by the intuition. However, if one pauses and waits for the inner leading to come to one, this will be possible. Give the ego back to the Overself and then the Overself will use it as it should be used—in harmony with the cosmic laws of being. This means that the wellbeing of all others in contract with the ego will be considered as well as the ego’s own. When these wonderful inspirations come on one, when the Overself draws one inward to involvement in its glorious being, even one’s physical gait, movement, and actvitiy are affected by the change. They become quite relaxed, slowed down, and very leisurely. It is as if time is no longer as important as it ordinarily seems. Yet if the intellect protests against the change, the intuition replies that the higher power will take care of the real duties. One’s behaviour is spontaneous, but not through mere impulse nor through unused intellect. It is the spontaneity, the forthrightness of an inspired person who knows where one is going and what one is doing, who one is directly guided in one’s relations with other humans by a higher will than one’s own ego. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
When the Overself’s will is the motivating power in one’s life, all strain and all effort to ac rightly cease. When the ego is displaced and the Overself is using one, there will be no need and no freedom to choose between two alternatives in regard to actions. Only a single course will present itself, directly and unwaveringly, as the right one. One’s activity as a merely selfish person comes to an end; one’s activity as a divinely inspired one begins. It is a transformation from “works of the flesh” to “fruits of the spirit” in the Bible’s phrase. To gain such inspiration in all its untarnished purity, one’s egoism must be totally lost and absorbed in the experience. One has to penetrate to the inner workings of the mind, to discover where the spark of contact with the Overself is glowing, and with that find that a finer being, a nobler outlook, and a collaboration with the World-Idea can be created. We know little about the origin of life style models. We do know, however, that popular heroes and celebrities, including fictional characters (James Bond, for example), have something to do with it. Marlon Brando, swaggering in a black jacket as a motorcyclist, perhaps originated, and certainly publicized a life style model. Aaliyah’s long hair in covering part of her beautiful face was inspired by Veronica Lake, and she became an icon for the style, and provided a model for millions of youths. Such heroes, as the sociologist Orrin Klapp puts it, help to “crystallize a social type.” He cites the late James Dean who depicted the alienated adolescent in the movie Rebel Without a Cause or Elvis Presley who initially fixed the image of the guitar-twangin rock-‘n’-roller. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Later came the Beatles with their (at that time) outrageous hair and exotic costumes. Then of course there is Britney Speaks who is know for her hairography she does “The Britney,” by dancing and swinging her long golden locks, which shimmer in the light and look like gold falling from Heaven. Then there is Paris Hilton, who looks like a Barbie Doll, quite a sight to see. “One of the prime functions of popular favourites,” says Dr. Klapp, “is to make types visible, which in turn makes new life styles and new tastes visible.” Yet the style-setter need not be a mass media idol. One may be almost unknown outside a particular subcult. This for years Lionel Trilling, an English professor at Columbia, was the father figure for the West Side Intellectuals, a New York subcult well known in the literary and academic circles in the United States of America. The mother figure was Mary McCarthy, long before she achieved popular fame. And James Brown made being Black a beautiful thing with his hit song, “Black and Proud.” An acute article by John Speicher in a youth magazine called Cheetah listed some of the better-known life style models to which young people were responding in the late sixties. They ranged from Che Guevara to William Buckley, from Bob Dylan, the Wallflowers and Joan Baez to Robert Kennedy. “The American youth bag,” wrote Speicher, lapsing into hippie jargon, “is overcrowded with heroes.” And, he adds, “where heroes are, there are follower, cultists.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Of course, because there are so many celebrities, and it is so hard for them to make a living, the one star studded Malibu, California is pushing out the millionaires and making way for the billionaires. Rest in peace, Charles Minor. To the subcult member, its heroes provided what Speicher calls the “crucial existential necessity of psychological identity.” This is, of course, hardly new. Earlier generations identified with Charles Lindbergh or Theda Bara. What is new and highly significant, however, is the fabulous proliferation of such heroes and mini-heroes. As subcults multiply and values diversify, we find, in Speicher’s words, “a national sense of identity hopelessly fragmented. For the individual, he says, this means greater choice: “There is a wide range of cults available, a wide range of heroes. You can do comparisons shopping.” Inspired action becomes possible when, to speak in spatial metaphors, every deed receives its necessary and temporary attention within the foreground of the mind whilst the Overself holds the permanent attention of the human within the background of one’s mind. As the consciousness of the Overself seeps into one, the power of the Overself expresses through one. Over and above the pressure of our individual wills there is this sublimely gentle yet ever-insistent pressure of the Overself’s will. One has access to infinite wisdom and infinite support in every situation and under every given circumstance. However, one has it only so far as one submits the ego to the higher self. The next characteristic of the inspired life is that it is an effortless one. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
No striving in any direction is necessary. Neither the weight of external compulsion nor the pressure of interior desires is ever again felt. One acts with the lightest touch. Even if one has found an intermittent inspiration, it will desert one in the end if one tries to glorify oneself. Dear Lord in shining Heaven, to You I call, from the turning of the World, toward the center I face You, Who stand like a pillar in the still point, enwrapped with the tuning, surrounded by the changing. It all happens about You; You are not aloof from it, You are there in its midst. You do not reject the changing World, nor do you transcend it, but by standing within it, You find the still point. Axis mundi, to You I call, from the turning World. May I, though engrossed in the great changing, find, even as You, the center. Dear God, please look down here, please look and see me, me down here. Please take my cares away from here. Away from here, far away. Please turn me onto a productive path. Thank you for your gifts. Please do not forget to keep on giving. We can always use more. Remember us this day, O Lord our God, for our good, and please be mindful of us for a life of blessing. With Thy promise of salvation and mercy, please deliver us, and please be gracious unto us; please have compassion upon us and please save us. Unto Thee do we lift our eyes for Thou art a gracious and merciful God and King. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
Looking to upgrade your home AND your office space? Check both boxes when you make the move to #PlumasRanch #Riverside. These homes offer open floor plans, large kitchen islands, and flex spaces. PLUS additional game rooms, bedroom space and three-car garages provide other custom possibilities.
Residence Four is the largest home offered in Cresleigh Riverside. This two-story, 3,489 square foot home features four bedrooms, including one suite on the first floor, three and one half bathroom, and a true three-car garage. The covered porch provided a warm entry and the dining room is located right off the entry way. The Kitchen is connected through the Butler’s Pantry providing ample storage.
The Cresleigh Plumas Lake Collection features one- and two-story single-family homes ranging from 2,100 to 3,600 square feet with spacious kitchens, open living areas, and private master suites.
The Cresleigh Plumas Lake Collection features award-winning, single-family home designs in an exclusive, natural community, just a short drive to shopping, dining, and the lake. Choose from a variety of flexible floor plans with impact-rated glass on front windows and doors, built with Cresleigh’s commitment to quality, value, and craftsmanship. #CresleighHomes
Sophisticated contemporary design and style–the Cresleigh Riverside’s impressive covered entry and two-story foyer open onto the expansive great room, sunny dining area, and desirable covered private yard beyond. The well-designed gourmet kitchen is equipped with a large center island with breakfast bar, plenty of counter and cabinet space, and sizable walk-in pantry.
The beautiful primary bedroom suite is highlighted by a walk-in closet, and spa-inspired primary bath with dual-sink vanity, large soaking tub, luxe shower, linen storage, and private water closet.
Secondary bedrooms feature roomy closets and private full baths. Additional highlights include a spacious private office off the foyer, convenient powder room, centrally located laundry, and additional storage throughout. Learn more at the link in our bio! https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-riverside-at-plumas-ranch/
Randolph Harris II International Institute 