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Even the Truth Can Spread and Not Only the Popular Lie!
It is easy enough to praise humans for the courage of their convictions. I wish I could teach the sad young of this mealy generation the bravery of this confusion. The hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any. We all learn by experience but some of us have to go to summer school. The malignant forms of aggression—sadism and necrophilia—are not innate; hence, they can be substantially reduced when the socioeconomic conditions are replaced by conditions that are favourable to the full development of human’s genuine needs and capacities: to the development of human self-activity and human’s genuine need and capacities: to the development of human self-activity and human’s creative power as its own end. Exploitation and manipulation produce boredom and triviality; they cripple human self-activity and all factors that make humans into a psychic cripple turn one also into a sadist or a destroyer. Humans, have in our day become a source of suspicion and distrust of all against all. Credulity is one our worst enemies, but that is the makeshift the neurotic always resorts to in order to quell the doubter in one’s own heart or to conjure one out of existence. The result is that modern humans know oneself only in so far as one can become conscious of oneself—a capacity largely dependent on environment conditions, knowledge and control of which necessitated of suggested certain modifications of one’s original instinctive tendencies. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Their consciousness therefore orients itself chiefly by observing and investigating the World around one, and it is to the latter’s peculiarities that one must adapt one’s psychic and technical resources. This task is so exacting, and its fulfilment so profitable, that one forgets oneself in the process, losing sight of one’s instinctual nature and putting one’s own conception of oneself in place of one’s real being. In this way one slips imperceptibly into a purely conceptual World where the products of one’s conscious activity progressively take the place of reality. The Communist revolution has debased humans far lower than collective psychology has done, because it robs one of one’s freedom not only in the social but in the moral and spiritual sphere. Aside from the political difficulties, this entailed a great psychological disadvantage for the West that had already made itself unpleasantly felt in the days of German Nazism: we can now point a finger at the shadow. Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair. If one truly responds to humans and their future, id est, concernedly and “responsibly,” one can respond only by faith or by despair. Rational faith as well as rational despair are based on the most thorough, critical knowledge of all the factors that are relevant for the survival of humans. The basis of rational faith in humans is the presence of a real possibility for one’s salvation; the basis for rational despair would be the knowledge that no such possibility can be seen. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Most people are quite ready to denounce faith in human’s improvement as unrealistic; but they do not recognize that despair is often just as unrealistic. It is easy to say: “Humans have always been killer.” However, the statement nevertheless is not correct, for it neglects to take into account the intricacies of history of destructiveness. It is equally easy to say, “The desire to exploit others is just human nature”; but again, the statement neglects (or distorts) the facts. In brief, that statement, “Human nature is evil,” is not a bit more realistic than the statement, “Human nature is good.” However, the first statement is much easier to make; anyone who wants to prove human’s evilness finds followers most readily, for one offers everybody an alibi for one’s own sins—and seemingly risks nothing. Yet the spreading of irrational despair is in itself destructive, as all untruth is; it discourages and confuses. Preaching irrational faith or announcing false Messiahs is hardly destructive—it seduces and then paralyzes. The attitude of the majority is neither that of faith nor that of despair, but, unfortunately, that of complete indifference to the future of humans. With those who are not entirely indifferent, the attitude is that of “optimism” or of “pessimism.” They are accustomed to identifying human achievement with technical achievement, human freedom with freedom from direct coercion and the consumer’s freedom to choose between many allegedly different commodities. The dignity, cooperativeness, kindness of the primitive do not impress them; technical achievement, wealth, toughness do. Centuries of rule over technically backward people of different colour have left their stamp on the optimists’ minds. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
How could a “savage” be human and equal, not to speak of superior, to the humans who can fly to the moon—or by pushing a button, destroy millions of living beings? The optimists live well enough, at least for the moment, and they can afford to be “optimists.” Or at least that is what they think because they are so alienated that even the threat to the future of their grandchildren does not genuinely affect them. The “pessimists” are really not very different from the optimists. They live just as comfortably and are just as little engaged. The fate of humanity is as little their concern as it is the optimists’. They do not feel despair; if they did, they would not, and could not, live as contentedly as they do. And while their pessimism functions largely to protect the pessimists from any inner demand to do something, by projecting the idea that nothing can be done, the optimists defend themselves against the same inner demand by persuading themselves that everything is moving in the right direction anyway, so nothing needs to be done. To have faith means to dare, to think the unthinkable, yet to act within the limits of the realistically possible; it is the paradoxical hope to expect the Messiah every day, yet not to lose heart when He has not come at the appointed hour. This hope is not passive and it is not patient; on the contrary, it is impatient and active, looking for every possibility of action within the realm of real possibilities. Least of all is it passive as far as the growth and the liberation of one’s own person are concerned. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
There are several limitations to personal development determined by the social structure. However, those alleged radicals who counsel that no personal change is possible or even desirable within present-day society use their revolutionary ideology as an excuse for their personal resistance to inner change. The situation of humankind today is too serious to permit us to listen to the demagogues—least of all demagogues who are attacked to destruction—or even to the leaders who use only their brains and whose hearts have hardened. Critical and radical thought will only bear fruit when it is blended with the most precious quality humans are endowed with—the love of life. Hate, as a relation to objects is older than love. It derives from the narcissistic ego’s primordial repudiation of the external World. It really seems as though it is necessary for us to destroy some other thing or person in order not to destroy ourselves, in order to guard against the impulsions to self-destruction. A sad disclosure indeed for the moralist! Humans are looked upon as an isolated system, driven by two impulses: one to survive (ego instinct) and one to have pleasure by overcoming the tensions that in turn were chemically produced within the body and localized in the “erogenous zones.” However, there is no need for psychoanalysis to be ashamed to speak of love, for religion itself said: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” This, however, is more easily said than done. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Emotional bonds are means of identification. Whatever leads humans to share important interests produces this community of feeling, these identifications. And the structure of human societies is to a large extent based on them. “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” It is known throughout the World and is undoubtedly older than Christianity, which puts it forward as its proudest claim. Yet it is certainly not very old; even in historical times it was still strand to humankind. Let us adopt a naïve attitude towards it, as though we were hearing it for the first time; we shall be unable then to suppress a feeling of surprise and bewilderment. Why should we do it? What good will it do us? However, above all, how shall we achieve it? How can it be possible? My love is something valuable to me which I ought not to throw away without reflection It imposes duties on me for whose fulfillment I must be ready to make sacrifices. If I love someone, one must deserve it in some way. (I leave out of account the use one may be to me in important ways that I an love myself in one; and one deserves it if one is so much more perfect than myself that I can love my ideal of my own self in one. Again, I have to love one if one is my friend’s son, since the pain my friend would feel if any harm came to one would be my pain too—I should have to share it. However, if one is a stranger to me and if one cannot attract me by any worth of one’s own or any significance that one may already have acquired for my emotional life, it would be for hard for me to love one. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Indeed, I should be wrong to do so, for my love is valued by all my own people as a sign of my preferring them, and it is an injustice to them if I put a stranger on a par with them. However, I am to love one (with this universal love) merely because one, too, is an inhabitant of this Earth, like an insect, and Earth-worm or a grass-snake, then I fear that only a small modicum of my love will fall to one’s share—not by any possibility as much as, by the judgment of my reason, I am entitled to retain for myself. The contradiction between death instinct and Eros (fundamental and creative love) confronts humans with a real and truly trading alternative. A real alternative because one can decide to attack and wage war, to be aggressive, and to express one’s hostility because one prefers to do this rather than to be sick. That this alternative is a tragic one hardly needs to be proven. And now we are struck by the significance of the possibility that the aggressiveness may not be able to find satisfaction in the external World because it comes up against real obstacles. If this happens, it will perhaps retreat and increase the amount of self-destructiveness holding sway in the interior. Holding back aggressiveness is in general unhealthy and leads to illness. However, science and learning to control the environment and making is more palatable for habitation and cultivation of agriculture, along with religion and psychology is good for humans. Humans are freed from the tragic choice between destroying either others or oneself, because the energy of destructive instinct is used for the control over nature. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
However, we must ask, can this really be so? Can it be true that destructiveness becomes transformed into constructiveness? What can “control over nature” mean? Taming and breeding animals, gathering and cultivating plants, weaving cloth, building huts, manufacturing pottery, and many more activities including the construction of machines, railroads, airplanes, and skyscrapers. All these acts of constructing, building, unifying, synthesizing, and, indeed, if one wanted to attribute them to one of the two basic instincts, they might be considered as being motivated by Eros rather than by the death instinct. With the possible exception of the killing animals for their consumption and killing humans in war, both of which could be considered as rooted in destructiveness, control, and mastery over nature is not destructive but constructive. The death instinct turns into the destructive instinct when, with the help of special organs, it is directed outwards, on to objects. However, civilization leads to the holding back of aggressiveness and results in physical illness, and this is why so many people go to church, are in therapy, and on psychotropic drugs. Many human beings want to deal with their aggression in health ways and have a peaceful, well-behaved community. The forlorn state of consciousness in our World is due primarily to loss of instinct, and the reason for this lies in the development of the human mind over the past aeon. The more power humans have over nature, the more one’s knowledge and skill went to one’s head, and the deeper became one’s contempt for the merely natural and accidental, for all irrational data—including the objective psyche, which is everything that consciousness in not. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
The Church recommends, in order to maintain society, that we develop more faith. Faith is a gift of grace and depends on human’s good will and pleasure. The seat of one’s faith, however, is not consciousness but spontaneous religious experience, which brings the individual’s faith into immediate relation with God. Here each of us must ask: Have I any religious experience and immediate relation to God, and hence that certainty which will keep me, as an individual, from dissolving in the crowd? To this question there is an optimistic answer only when the individual is willing to fulfil the demands of rigorous self-examination and self-knowledge. If one does this, one will not only discover some important truths about oneself but will also have gained a psychological advantage: one will have succeeded in deeming oneself worthy of serious attention and sympathetic interests. One will have set one’s hand, as it were, to a declaration of one’s own dignity and taken the first step towards the foundations of one’s consciousness—that is, towards the unconscious, the only available source of religious experiences. This is certainly not to say that what we call the unconscious is identical with God or is set up in His place. It is simply the medium from which religious experience seems to flow. As to what the further cause of such experience may be, the answer to this lies beyond the range of human knowledge. Knowledge of God is a transcendental problem. When it comes to answering the crucial question that hangs over our time like a threat, the religious person enjoys a great advantage. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
The religious person has a clear idea of the way one’s subjective existence is grounded in one’s relation to “God.” God is an anthropomorphic idea whose dynamism and symbolism are filtered through the medium of the unconscious psyche. Anyone who wants to can at least draw near to the source of such experiences, no matter whether one believes in God or not. Exotic races have ceased to be peepshows in ethnological museums. They have become our neighbours, and what was yesterday the private concern of the ethnologist is today a political, social, and psychological problem. We may hope for humans of understanding and humans of good will, and must therefore not grow weary of reiterating those thoughts and insights which are needed. Even the truth can spread and not only the popular lie. Only a fool can permanently disregard the conditions of one’s own nature. In fact, this negligence is the best means of making one an instrument of evil. Harmless and naivete are as little helpful as it would be for a cholera patient and those in one’s vicinity to remain unconscious of the contagiousness of the disease. One the contrary, they lead to the projection of the unrecognized evil in the “other.” This strengthens the opponent’s position in the most effective way, because the projection carries the fear which we involuntarily and secretly feel for our own evil over to the other side and considerably increases the formidableness of one’s threat. What is even worse, our lack of insight deprives us of the capacity to deal with evil. Here, of course, we come up against ne of the main prejudices of the Christian tradition, and one that is a great stumbling block to our policies. We should, so we are told eschew evil and, if possible, neither touch for mention it. For evil is also the thing of ill omen, that which is tabooed and feared. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
This apotropaic attitude toward evil, and the apparent circumventing of it, flatter the primitive tendency in us to shut our eyes to evil and drive it over some frontier or other, like the Old Testament scapegoat, which was supposed to carry the evil into the wilderness. However, if one can no longer avoid the realization that evil, without human’s ever having chosen it, is lodged in human nature itself, then it bestrides the psychological stage as the equal and opposite partner of good. This realization leas straight to a psychological dualism, already unconsciously prefigured in the political World schism and in the even more unconscious dissociation in modern humans. The dualism does not come from this realization; rather, we are in a split condition to begin with it. It would be an insufferable thought that we had to take personal responsibility for so much guiltiness. We therefore prefer to localize the evil in individual criminals or groups of criminals, while washing our hands in innocence and ignoring the general proclivity to evil. This sanctimoniousness cannot be kept up in the long run, because the evil, as experience shows, lies in humans—unless, in accordance with the Christian view, one is willing to postulate a metaphysical principle of evil. The great advantage of this view is that it exonerates human’s conscience of too heavy a responsibility and foists it off on the devil, in correct psychological appreciation of the fact that humans are much more the victims of their psychic constitution than its inventor. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Considering that the evil of our day puts everything that has ever agonized humankind in the deepest shade, one must ask oneself how it is that, for all our progress in the administration of justice, in medicine and in technology, for all our concern with life and health, monstrous engines of destruction have been invented which could easily exterminate the human race. No one will maintain that the atomic physicists are a pack of criminals because it is to their efforts that we owe that peculiar flower of human ingenuity, the hydrogen bomb. The vast amount of intellectual work that went into the development of nuclear physics was put forth by humans who dedicated themselves to their task with the greatest exertion and self-sacrifice, and whose moral achievement could therefore just as easily have earned them the merit of inventing something useful and beneficial to humanity. However, even though the first step along the road to a momentous invention may be the outcome of a conscious decision, here, as everywhere, the spontaneous idea—the hunch or intuition—plays an important part. In other words, the unconscious collaborates too and often makes decisive contributions. So it is not the conscious effort alone that is responsible for the result; somewhere or other the unconscious, with its barely discernible goals and intentions, has its finger in the pie. If it puts a weapon in your hand, it is aiming at some kind of violence. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Knowledge of the truth is the foremost goal of science, and if in pursuit of the longing for light we stumble upon an immense danger, then one has the impression more of fatality than of premeditation. It is not that present-day humans are capable of greater evil than the humans of antiquity or the primitive. One merely has incomparably more effective means with which to realize one’s propensity to evil. As one’s consciousness has broadened and differentiated, so one’s moral nature has lagged behind. That is the great problem before us today. Reason alone no loner suffices. If only because of their dangerousness, in theory, in lies within the power of reason to desist from experiments of such hellish scope as nuclear fission. However, fear of evil which one does not see in one’s own bosom but always in somebody else’s checks reason every time although everyone knows that the use of this weapon means the certain end of our present human World. The fear of universal destruction may spare us the worst, yet the possibility of it will nevertheless hang over us like a dark cloud so long as no bridge is found across the World-side psychic and political split—a bridge as certain as the existence of the hydrogen bomb. It is in the nature of political bodies always to see evil in the opposite group, just as the individual has an ineradicable tendency to get rid of everything one does not know and does not want to know about oneself by foisting it off on somebody else. The perfect have no needs of others, but weakness has, for it seeks support and does not confront its partner with anything that might force one into an inferior position and even humiliate one. When high idealism plays too prominent a role, this humiliation may happen only too easily. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Whenever unjust is uncertain and police spying an terror are at work, human beings fall into isolation, which, of course, is the aim and purpose of the dictator State, since it is based on the greatest possible accumulation of depotentiated social units. To counter this danger, the free society needs a bond of an affective nature, a principle of a kind like caritas, the Christian love of your neighbour. However, it is just this love for one’s fellow humans that suffers most of all from the lack of understanding wrought by projection It would therefore by very much in the interest of the free society to give some thought to the question of human relationship from the psychological point of view, for in this resides its real cohesion and consequently its strength. Where love stop, power begins, and violence, and terror. What our age thinks as the “shadow” and inferior part of the psyche contains more than something merely negative. The very fact that through self-knowledge, that is, by exploring our own souls, we come upon the instincts and their World of imagery should throw some light on the powers slumbering in the psyche, of which we are seldom aware so long as all goes well. We are living in what the Greeks called the right moment for a metamorphosis of the gods, of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious within us who is changing. If humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science, coming generations will have to take to account of this momentous transformation. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
As at the beginning of the Christian era, so again today we are faced with the problem of general moral backwardness which has failed to keep pace with our scientific, technical, and social progress. So much is at stake and so much depends on the psychological constitution of modern humans. Are they capable of resisting the temptation to use their powers of the purpose of staging a World conflagration? Are humans conscious of the path they are treading, and what the conclusions are that must be drawn from the present World situation and their own psychic situation? Do they know that they are on the point of losing the life-preserving myth of the inner human which Christianity has treasured up for one? Does one realize what lies in store should this catastrophe ever befall one? Is one even capable of realizing that this would in fact be a catastrophe? And finally, does the individual know that one is the makeweight that tips the scales? Happiness and contentment, equability of mind and meaning—fulness of life—these can be experienced only by the individual and not by a State, which, on the one hand, is nothing but a convention agreed to by independent individuals and, on the other, continually threatens to paralyse and suppress the individual. The psychiatrist is one of those who know most about the conditions of the soul’s welfare, upon which so infinitely much depends in the social sum. The social and political circumstances of the time are certainly of considerable significance, but their importance for the weal or woe of the individual has been boundlessly overestimated in so far as they are taken for the sole deciding fact. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
In this respect all our social goals commit the error of overlooking the psychology of the person for whim they are intended and—very often—of promoting only one’s illusions. I hope, therefore that a psychiatrist, who in the course of a long life has devoted oneself to the causes and consequences of psychic disorders, may be permitted to express one’s opinion, in all the modesty enjoined upon one as an individua, about the questions raised by the World situation today. I am neither spurred on by excessive optimism nor in love with high ideals, but am merely concerned with the fate of the individual human being—that infinitesimal unit on whom a World depends, and in whom, if we read the meaning of the Christian message aright, even God seeks His goal. Testimony to the existence and reality of the glimpse will be found in the literatures of all peoples through all times. It is not a newly manufactured idea, nor a newly manufactured fancy. A human who denies it is foolish so to limit one’s own possibilities, but one may learn better with time. These glimpses cannot rightly be dismissed by the scientist as merely self-suggested or wholly hallucinatory. Nor can they properly be regarded by the metaphysician as valueless for truth. As human beings we live by experience, and they are personal experiences which help to confirm the truth of the impersonal bases underneath them and which encourage us to continue on the same path. The Overself is a living reality. If the quest were merely an intellectual conception or an emotional fancy, nobody would waste one’s years, one’s endeavours, and one’s energies it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
The Overself is not only a necessary conception of logical thought. It is also a beautiful fact of persona experience. There are three signs, among others, of the Soul’s presence in a Soul-denying generation. They are: moral conscience, artistic imagination, and metaphysical speculation. Criticism which knows only sensuous and intellectual experience can be litter valid here if, indeed, it is not entirely irrelevant. When a human confuses the nature of the mind with its own thoughts, when one is unable properly to analyse consciousness and memory, when one has never practised introspection and meditation successfully, one can know nothing of the soul and may well be sceptical of its existence. That the Overself is not the product of an inflated imagination but has a real existence, is a truth which any human who has the required patience and submits to the indispensable training may verify oneself. It is not a dim abstraction but a real presence. Not a vauge theory but a vital fact. To the human of insight there is something strange, ironic, and yet pathetic in the spectable of those who turn the consciousness and the understanding derived from the Overself against the acknowledgement of Its existence. If one can shed the mummy wrappings of acquired notions, complacent bigotries, and superstitious customs, and look at a problem with fresh eyes, one is more likely to succeed in one’s quest for truth. If one can re-examine the whole meaning of it as though it were a newly discovered problems, one is more likely to move towards it correct solution. If one will refuse to be intimidated by dietary precedent, and begin to rethink the whole matter of eating’s why and wherefore, one will reach astonishing results. For much nonsense about diet has come down to us by ignorant tradition and unthinking inheritance. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
As one draws closer to the soul of things, one comes more into harmony with Nature. And if one is true to one’s instincts, one will eat one’s food more and more as Nature herself produces it. Inferior and even harmful foods have been eaten for so long that most people have become addicted to them and, through habitual use, come to like them. It is true that several of these food have been part of a civilized diet for generations, but the duration of an error does not make it less an error, and does not justify its continuance. It is a fact worthy speculating upon that many groups of early Christians were mystical and had a special diet. Had they not been ousted by the Emperor Constantine—whose imperialistic political purpose they did not serve—from the official Christianity which he (and not Jesus) established, we might today have seen half the Christian World holding a faith in mystical beliefs and eating special diets. The France of Louis XII saw some remnants of those early sects, such as the Albigenses, Montanists, and Camisards—and no less than one third of total population of the country—living on special diets. Luigi Cornaro lived to a hundred in Italy on a strictly limited daily quantity of food. Dr. Josiah Oldfield was nearing his hundred year when I last visited England and attributed the fact to avoiding eating too much, which he termed “the great evil.” He is also an enthusiastic advocate of special diets. In the moment when you feel that actual contact with the One Infinite Life-Power has been made, draw it into the body and let it permeate every part, every organ, and every atom. It will tend to dissolve sickness and drive out disease. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Healing powers are like prayers, they can cross oceans and traverse continents as readily and as speedily as can radio waves or thought. Telepathy is a fact and the basis of this operation. The ministrations of absent healing are most successful when the individual is passive and receptive to them. Hence the work of its power is most effective when the sufferer is sleeping or relaxing. I am the family of the Universe, and with all of us together I do not fear being alone; I can reach out and touch a rock or a hand or dip my feet in water Always there is some body close by, and when I speak I am answered by a plane’s roar or the bird’s whistling or the voice of others in conversation far apart from me When I lie down to sleep, I am in the company of the dark and the starts. Breathe to me, sheep in the meadow. Sun and moon, my father and my fathers brother, shine your light on me. My sister, Earth, hold me up to be blessed. Sun and moon, I smile at you both and spread my arms in affection and lay myself down at full length of the Earth to know I love it too and am never to be separated from it In no way shall death part us. Life up your heads, O ye gates, yea, lift them up, ye everlasting doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is the King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. Life up your hears, O ye gates, yes, lift the up, ye everlasting doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who then is the King of glory? The Lord of hosts; He is the King of glory. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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Humans Never Ask Who is Paying for this Paradise?
Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the stage to write an autobiography. Today unconscious adaption is no longer adequate. Faced with the power to alter the gene, to create new species, to populate the planets or depopulate the Earth, humans must now assume conscious control of evolution itself. As the number of social components grows and change and makes the whole system less stable, it becomes less and less possible to ignore the demands of political minorities. The best way to deal with angry or recalcitrant minorities is to open the system further, bringing them into it as full partners, permitting them to participate in social goal-setting, rather than attempting to ostracize or isolate them. Young people forced into prolonged adolescence and deprived of the right to partake in social decision-making will grow more and more unstable until they threaten the overall system. In short, in politics, in industry, in education, goals set without the participation of those affected will be increasingly hard to execute. The continuation of top-down technocratic goal-setting procedures will lead to greater and greater social instability, less and less control over the forces of change; an ever-greater danger of cataclysmic, human-destroying upheaval. To master change, we shall therefore need both a clarification of important long-range social goals and a democratization of the way in which we arrive at them. And this means nothing less than the next political revolution in the techno-societies—a breathtaking affirmation of popular democracy. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Avoiding future shock as one rides the waves of change, one must master evolution, shaping tomorrow to human need. Instead of rising in revolt against it, one must, from this historic moment on, anticipate and design the future. Our first and most pressing need, therefore, before we can begin to gently guide our evolutionary destiny, before we can build a humane future, is to halt the runaway acceleration that is subjecting multitudes to the threat of future shock while, at the very same moment, intensifying all the problems they must deal with—war, ecological incursions, racism, the obscene contrast between rich and poor, the revolt of the young, and the rise of a potentially deadly mass irrational. There is no facile way to treat this wild growth, this cancer in history. There is no magic medicine, either, for curing the unprecedented disease it bears in its rushing wake: future shock. We must take radically curative procedures for the society—new social services, a future-facing education system, new ways to regulate technology, and a strategy for capturing control of change. Other ways must also be found. Yet the basic thrust is diagnosis. For diagnosis precedes cure, and we cannot begin to help ourselves until we become sensitively conscious of the problem. By making imaginative use of change to channel change, we cannot only spare ourselves the trauma of future shock, we can reach out and humanize distant tomorrows. When the light of truth seems to depart from humans, there will be souls looking for light, and who are filled with perplexity and sorrow. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Seeking salvation, people will be thirsting for the knowledge of the living God, for some assurance of life beyond the grave. A rational individual is not subject to envy, at least when the differences between oneself and others are not thought to be the result of injustice and do not exceed certain limits. Nor are the parties influenced by different attitudes toward risk and uncertainty, or by various tendencies to dominate or to submit, and the like. These special psychologies I have also imagine to be behind the veil of ignorance along with the parties’ knowledge of their conception of the god. One explanation for these stipulations is that as far as possible, the choice of a conception of justice should not be affected by accidental contingencies. The principles adopted should be invariant with respect to differences in these inclinations for the same reason that we want them to hold irrespective of individual preferences and social circumstances. These assumptions tie in with the Kantian interpretation of justice as fairness and greatly simplify the argument from the standpoint of the original position. The parities are not swayed by individual differences in these propensities, thereby avoiding the complications in the bargaining process that would result. If any, without rather definite information about which configuration of attitudes existed, one might not be able to say what agreement would be reached. In each case it would be contingent upon the particular hypothesis laid down. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Unless we could show some distinctive merit from a moral point of view in the postulated array of special psychologies, the principles adopted would be arbitrary, no longer the outcome of reasonable conditions. And if possible, since envy is generally regarded as something to be avoided and feared, at least wen it becomes intense, it seems desirable that the choice of principles should not be influenced by this trait. Therefore, for reasons both of simplicity and moral theory, I have assumed an absence of envy and lack of knowledge of the special psychologies. Nevertheless these inclinations do exist and in some way they must be reckoned with. First of all, we proceed on the presumptions just mentioned, and it is illustrated by most of the argument so far; secondly, we must ask whether the well-ordered society corresponding to the conception adopted will actually generate feelings of envy and patterns of psychological attitudes that will undermine the arrangements it counts to be just. At first we reason as if there is no problem of envy and the special psychologies; and then having ascertained which principles would be settled upon, we check to see whether just institutions so defined are likely to arouse and encourage these propensities to such an extent that the social system becomes unworkable and incompatible with human good. If so, the adoption of the conception of justice must be reconsidered. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
However, should the inclinations engendered support just arrangements, or be easily accommodated by them, the first part of the argument is confirmed. The essential advantage of the two-step procedure is that no particular constellation of attitudes is taken as given. We are simply checking the reasonableness of our initial assumptions and the consequences we have drawn from them in the light of the constraints imposed by the general facts of our World. The reasons why envy poses a problem, namely the fact that the inequalities sanctioned by the difference principle may be so great as to arouse envy to a socially dangerous extent. The envy experienced by the least advantaged towards those better situated is normally general envy in the sense that they envy the more favoured for the kinds of good and not for the particular objects they possess. The upper classes say are envied for their greater wealthy and opportunity; those envying them want similar advantages for themselves. By contrast, particular envy is typical of rivalry and competition. Those who lose out in the quest for office and honour, or for the affections of another, are liable to envy the success of their rivals and to covet the same thing that they have won. Our problem then is whether the principles of justice, and especially the difference principle with fair equality of opportunity, is likely to engender in practice too much destructive general envy. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
The definition of envy that seems appropriate for this question deals with fixed ideas. Suppose that the necessary interpersonal comparisons are made in terms of the objective primary goods, liberty, and opportunity, income and wealth, which for simplicity I have normally used to define expectations in applying the difference principle. Then we may think of envy as the propensity to view with hostility the greater good of others even though their being more fortunate than we are does not detract from our advantages. We envy persons whose situation is superior to ours (estimated by some agreed index of goods as noted above) and if it is necessary to five up something of ourselves, we are willing to deprive them of their greater benefits. When others are aware of our envy, they may become jealous of their better circumstances and anxious to take precautions against the hostile acts to which our envy makes us prone. So understood envy is collectively disadvantageous: If only the discrepancy between them is sufficiently reduced, the individual who envies another is prepared to do things that make them both worse off. Thus Kant, whose definition I have pretty much followed, quite properly discusses envy as one of the vices of hating humankind. Envy and spite are passions; their names already imply badness. As Kant observers, there are many occasions when we openly speak of the greater good of others as enviable. Thus we may remark upon the enviable harmony and happiness of a marriage or a family. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
Similarly, one might say to another that one envies one’s greater opportunities or attainments. In these cases, those of benign envy, there is no ill will intended or expressed. We do not wish, for example, that the marriage or family should be less happy or harmonious. By these conventional expressions we are affirming the value of certain things that others have. We are indicating that, although we possess no similar good of equal value, they are indeed worth striving for. Those to whom we address these remarks are expected to receive them as a kind of praise and not as a foretaste of our hostility. A somewhat different case is that of emulative envy which leads us to try to achieve what others have. The sight of their greater good moves us to strive in socially beneficial ways for similar things for ourselves. Thus envy proper, in contrast with benign envy which we freely express, is a form of rancor that tends to hard both its object and its subject. It is what emulative envy may become under certain conditions of defeat and sense of failure. A further point is that envy is not a moral feeling. No moral principle need be cited in its explanation. It is sufficient to say that the better situation of others catches our attention. We are downcast by their good fortune and no longer value as highly what we have; and this sense of hurt and loss arouses our rancor and hostility. Thus one must be careful not to conflate envy and resentment. For resentment is a moral feeling. If we resent our having less than others, it must be because we think that their being better off is the result of unjust institutions, or wrongful conduct on their part. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
Those who express resentment must be prepared to show why certain institutions are unjust or how others have injured them. What marks off envy from the moral feelings is the different way in which it is accounted for, the sort of perspective from which the situation is viewed. We should note also the nonmoral feelings connected with envy but not to be mistake for it. In particular, jealousy and grudgingness are reverse, so to speak, to envy. A person who is better off may wish those less fortunate than one to stay in their place. One is jealous of one’s superior position and begrudges them the greater advantages that would put them on a level with oneself. And should this propensity extend to denying them benefits that one does not need and cannot use oneself, then one is moved by spite. Spite is characterizes as being pleased at the bad fortune of others, whether deserved or not. For the idea that jealousy, grudgingness, and spite are the reverse of envy, the feelings of those who envied and who possess what is wanted. These inclinations are collectively harmful in the way that envy is, since the grudging and spiteful human is willing to give up something to maintain the distance between oneself and others. Envy and grudgingness are vices. As we have seen, the moral virtues are among the broadly based traits of character which it is rational for persons to want in one another as associates. Thus vices are broadly based traits that are not wanted, spitefulness and envy being clear cases, since they are to everyone’s detriment. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
He parties will surely prefer conceptions of justice the realization of which does not arouse these propensities. We are normally expected to forbear from the actions to which they prompt us and to take the steps necessary to rid ourselves of them. Yet sometimes the circumstances evoking envy are as compelling that given human beings as they are no one can reasonably be asked to overcome one’s rancorous feelings. A person’s lesser position as measured by the index of objective primary goods may be so great as to wound one’s self-respect; and given one’s situation, we my sympathize with one’s sense of loss. Indeed, we can resent being made envious, for society may permit such large disparities in these goods that under existing social conditions these differences cannot help but cause a loss of self-esteem. For those suffering this hurt, envois feelings are not irrational; the satisfaction of their rancor would make the better off. When envy is a reaction to the loss of self-respect in circumstances where it would be unreasonable to expect someone to feel differently, this is excusable. Since self-respect is the main primary good, the parties would not agree, I shall assume, to count this sort of subjective loss as irrelevant. Therefore the question is whether a basic structure which satisfies the principles of justice is likely to arouse so much excusable envy that the choice of these principles should be reconsidered. As the dialectical discussion proceeds, a point is reached when an evaluation of these individual impulses becomes necessary. By that time the individual should have acquired enough certainty of judgment to enable one to act on one’s own insight and decision and not from the mere wish to copy convention—even if one happens to agree with the collective opinion. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Unless one stands firmly on one’s own feet, the so-called objective values profit one noting, since they then only serve as a substitute for character and so help to suppress one’s individuality. Naturally, society has an indisputable right to protect itself against arrant subjectivisms, but, in so far society is itself composed of de-individualized human beings, it is completely at the mercy of ruthless individuals. Let it band together into groups and organizations as much as it likes—it is just this banding together and the resultant extinction of the individua personality that makes it succumb so readily to a dictator. A millions zeros joined together do not, unfortunately, add up to one. Ultimately everything depends on the quality of the individual, but our fatally shortsighted age thinks only in terms of large numbers and mass organizations, though one would think that the World has seen more than enough of what a well-disciplined mob can do in the hands of a single madman. Unfortunately, this realization does not seem to have penetrated very far—and our blindness is extremely dangerous. People go on blithely organizing and believing in the sovereign remedy of mass action, without the least consciousness of the fact that the most powerful organizations can be maintained only by the greatest ruthlessness of their leaders and the cheapest of slogans. Curiously enough, the Churches too want to avail themselves of mass action in order to cast of the devil with Beelzebub—the very Churches whose care is the salvation of the individual soul. They do not appear to have heard of the elementary axiom of mass psychology that the individual becomes morally and spiritually inferior in the mass, and for this reason they do not bother themselves overmuch with their real task of helping the individual to achieve a metanoia, a rebirth of the spirit—Deo concedente. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
If the individual is not truly a regenerated spirit, it is, unfortunately, only too clear that society cannot be either, for society is the sum total of individuals in need of redemption. I can therefore see it only as a delusion when the Churches try—and they apparently do—to rope the individual into some social organization and reduce one to a condition of diminished responsibility, instead of raising one out of the torpid, mindless mass and making clear to one that one is the one important factor and that the salvation of the World consists in the salvation of the individual soul. It is true that mass meetings parade these ideas before one and seek to impress them on one’s mind by dint of mass suggestion, with the melancholy result that once the intoxication has worn off the mass human promptly succumbs to another even more obvious and still louder slogan. One’s individual relation to God would be an effective shield against these pernicious influences. Did Christ, perchance, call his disciples to him any followers who did not afterwards cry with the rest, “Crucify him!” when even the rock named Peter showed signs of wavering? And are not Jesus and Paul prototypes of those who, trusting their inner experience, have gone their individual ways in defiance of the World? This argument should certainly not cause us to overlook the reality of the situation confronting the Church. When the Church tries to give shape to the amorphism mass by uniting individuals into a community of believers and to hold such an organization together with the help of suggestion, it is not only performing a great social service, but it also secures for the individual the inestimable boon of a meaningful form life. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
These, however, are gifts which as a rule only confirm certain tendencies and do not change them. As experience unfortunately shows, the inner human remains unchanged however much community one has. One’s environment cannot give one as a gift something which one can win for oneself only with effort and suffering. On the contrary, a favourable environment merely strengthens the dangerous tendency to expect everything from outside—even that metamorphosis which external reality cannot provide. By this I mean a far-reaching change of the inner man, which is all the more urgent in view of the mass phenomena of today and the still greater problems of overpopulation looming in the future. It is time we asked ourselves exactly what we are lumping together in mass organizations and what constitutes the nature of the individual human being, id est, of the real human not the statistical human. This is hardly possible except by a new process of self-reflection. All mass movements, as one might expect, slip with the greatest ease down an incline plane made up of large numbers. Where the many are, there is security; what the many believe must of course be true; what the many want must be worth striving for, and necessary, and therefore good. In the clamour of the many resides the power to snatch wish-fulfilments by force; sweetest of all, however, is that gentle and painless slipping back into the kingdom of childhood, into the paradise of parental care, into happy-go-luckiness and irresponsibility. All the thinking and looking after are done from the top; to all questions there is an answer, and for all needs the necessary provision is made. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
The infantile dream state of the mass human is so unrealistic that one never thinks to ask who is paying for this paradise. The balancing of accounts is left to a higher political or social authority, which welcomes the task, for its power is thereby increased; and the more power it has, the weaker and more helpless the individual becomes. Whenever social conditions of this type develop on a large scale, the road to tyranny lies open and the freedom of the individual turns into spiritual and physical slavery. Since every tyranny is ipso facto immoral and ruthless, it has much more freedom in the choice of its methods than an institution which still takes account of the individual. Should such an institution come into conflict with the organized State, it is soon made aware of the very real disadvantage of its morality and therefore feels compelled to avail itself of the same methods as its opponent. In this way the evil spreads almost of necessity, even when direct infection might be avoided. The danger of infection is greater when decisive importance is attached to larger numbers and to statistical values, as is everywhere the case in our New World. The suffocating power of the mases is paraded before our eyes in one form or another every day in the newspapers, and the insignificance of the individual is rubbed into one so thoroughly that one loses all hope of making oneself heard. The outworn ideals of liberte, egalite, fraternite help one not at all, as one can direct this appeal only to one’s executioners, the spokesman of the masses. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the person who is as well organized in one’s individuality as the mass itself. I fully realize that his proposition must sound well-neigh unintelligible to the human of today. The helpful medieval view that humans are a microcosm, a reflection of the great cosmos in miniature, has long since dropped away from one, although the very existence of one’s World-embracing and World-conditioning psyche might have taught one better. Not only is the image of the macrocosm imprinted upon one’s psychic nature, but one also creates this image for oneself on an ever-widening scale. One bears this cosmic “correspondence” within one by virtue of one’s reflecting consciousness on the one hand, and, on the other, thanks to the hereditary, archetypal nature of one’s instincts, which bind one to one’s environment. However, one’s instincts not only attach one to the macrocosm, they also, in a sense, tear one apart, because one’s desires pull one in different directions. In this way one falls into continual conflict with oneself and only very rarely succeeds in giving one’s life an undivided goal—for which, as a rule succeeds in giving one’s life an undivided goal—for which, as a rule, one must pay very dearly by repressing other sides of one’s nature. One often has to ask oneself whether this kind of single-mindedness is worth forcing at all, seeing that the natural state of the human psyche consists in a jostling together of its components and their contradictory behaviour—that is, in a certain degree of dissociation. The Buddhist name for this is attachment to the “ten thousand things.” Such a condition cries out for order and synthesis. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Just as the chaotic movements of the crowd, all ending in mutual frustration, are impelled in a definite direction by a dictatorial will, so the individual in one’s dissociated state needs a directing and ordering principle. Ego-consciousness would like to let its own will play this role, but overlooks the existence of powerful unconscious factors which thwart its intentions. If it wants to reach the goal of synthesis, it must first get to know the nature of these factors. It must experience them, or else it must possess a numinous symbol that expresses them and leads to their synthesis. A religious symbol that comprehended and visibly represented what is seeking expression in modern humans might possibly do this; but our conception of the Christian symbol to date has certainly not been able to do so. On the contrary, that frightful World split runs right through the domains of the “Christian” American man, and our Christian outlook on life has proved powerless to prevent the recrudescence of an archaic social order like Communism. This is not to day that Christianity is finished. I am, on the contrary, convinced that it is not Christianity, but our conception and interpretation of it, that has become antiquated in the face of the present World situation. The Christian symbol is a living thing that carries in itself the seeds of further development. It can go on developing; it depends only on us, whether we can make up our minds to mediate again, and more thoroughly, on the Christian premises. This requires a very different attitude towards the individual, towards the microcosm of the self, from the one we have adopted hitherto. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
That is why nobody knows what ways of approach are open to humans, what inner experiences one could still pass through and what psychic facts underlie the religious myth. Over all this hangs so universal a darkness tat no one can see why one should be interested or to what end one should commit oneself. Before this problem we stand helpless. This is not surprising, since practically all the trump cards are in the hands of our opponents. They can appeal to the big battalions and their crushing power. Politics, science, and technology stand ranged on their side. The imposing arguments of science represent the highest degree of intellectual certainty yet achieved by the mind of humans. So at least it seems to the human of today, who has received hundred-fold enlightenment concerning the backwardness and darkness of past ages and their superstitions. That one’s teachers have themselves gone seriously astray by making false comparisons between incommensurable factors never enters one’s head. All the more so as the intellectual elite to whom one puts one’s questions are almost unanimously agreed that what science regards as impossible today was impossible at all other times as well. Above all, the facts of faith, which might give one the chance of an extramundane standpoint, are treated in the same context as the facts of science. Thus, when the individual questions the Churches and their spokesperson, to whom is entrusted the cure of souls, one is informed that to belong to a church—a decidedly Worldly institution—is more or less de rigueur; that the facts of faith which have become questionable for one were concrete historical events; that certain ritual actions produce miraculous effects; and that the sufferings of Christ have vicariously saved one from sin and its consequences (id est, eternal damnation). #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
If, with the limited means at one’s disposal, one begins to reflect on these things, one will have to confess that one does not understand them at all and that only two possibilities remain open to one: either to believe implicitly, or to reject such statements because they are flatly incomprehensible. Whereas the humans of today can easily think about and understand all the “truth” dished out to one by the State, one’s understanding of religion is made considerably mire difficult owing to the lack of explanations. (“Do you understand what you re reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” Acts 8.30.) If, despite this, one has still not discarded all one’s religious convictions, this is because the religious impulse rests on an instinctive basis and is therefore a specifically human function. You can take away human’s gods, but only to give one others in return. The leaders of the mass State could not help being deified, and wherever crudities of this kind have not yet been put over by force, obsessive factors arise in their stead, charged with demonic energy—money, work, political influence and so forth. When any natural human function gets lost, id est, is denied conscious and intentional expression, a general disturbance results. Hence, it is quite natural that with the triumph of the Goddess of Reason a general neuroticizing of modern humans should set in, a dissociation of personality analogous to the splitting of the World today by the Iron Curtain. This boundary line bristling with barbed wire runs through the psyche of modern humans, no matter on which side one lives. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
And just as the typical neurotic is unconscious of one’s shadow in one’s neighbour or in the human beyond the great divide. It has even become a political and social duty to apostrophize the capitalism of the one and the communism of the other as the very devil, so as to fascinate the outward eye and prevent it from looking within. However, just as the neurotic, despite unconsciousness of one’s other side, has a dim premonition that all is not well with one’s psychic economy, so Western humans have developed an instinctive interest in one’s psyche and in “psychology.” Thus it is that the psychiatrist is summoned willy-nilly to appear on the World stage, and questions are addressed to one which primarily concern the most intimate and hidden life of the individual, but which in the last analysis are the direct effects of the Zeitgeist. Because of its personal symptomatology this material is usually considered to be “neurotic”—and rightly so, since it is made up of infantile fantasies which ill accord with the contents of an adult psyche and are therefore repressed by our moral judgment, in so far as they reach consciousness at all. Most fantasies of this kind do not, in the nature of things, come to consciousness in any form, and it is very improbable, to say that the least of it, that they were ever conscious and were consciously repressed. Rather, they seem to have been present from the beginning or, at any rate, to have arisen unconsciously and to have persisted in that state until the psychologist’s intervention enabled them to cross the threshold of consciousness. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
The activation of unconscious fantasies is a process that occurs when consciousness find itself in a situation of distress. Were that not so, the fantasies would be produced normally and would then bring no neurotic disturbances in their train. In reality, fantasies of this kind belong to the World of childhood and give rise to disturbances only when prematurely strengthened by abnormal conditions of conscious life. This is particularly likely to happen when unfavourable influences emanate from the parents, poisoning the atmosphere and producing conflicts which upset the psychic balance of the child. When a neurosis breaks out in an adult, the fantasy World of childhood reappears, and one is tempted to explain the onset of neurosis causally, as due to the presence of infantile fantasies. However, that does not explain why the fantasies did not develop any pathological effects during the interim period. These effects develop only when the individual is faced with a situation which one cannot overcome by conscious means. The resultant standstill in the development of personality opens a sluice for infantile fantasies, which, of course, are latent in everybody but do not display any activity so long as the conscious personality can continue on its way unimpeded. When the fantasies reach a certain level of intensity, they begin to break through into consciousness and create a conflict situation that becomes perceptible to the individual oneself, splitting one into two personalities with different characters. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
The dissociation, however, had been prepared long before in the unconscious, when the energy flowing off from consciousness (because unused) reinforced the negative qualities of the unconscious and particularly the infantile traits of the personality. Since the normal fantasies of a child are nothing other, at bottom, than the imagination of instincts, and may thus be regarded as preliminary exercises in the use of future conscious activities, it follows that the fantasies of the neurotic, even though pathologically altered and perhaps perverted by the regression of energy, contain a core of normal instinct, the hallmark of which is adaptedness. A neurotic illness always implies an unadapted alteration and distortion of normal dynamisms and of the “imagination” proper to them. Instincts, however, are highly conservative and of extreme antiquity as regards both their dynamism and their form. Their form, when represented to the mind, appears as an image which expressed the nature of the instinctive impulse visually and concretely, like a picture. If we could look into the psyche of the yucca moth, for instance, we would find in it a pattern of idea, of a numinous or fascinating character, which not only compels the moth to carry out its fertilizing activity on the yucca plant but helps it to “recognize” the total situation. Instinct is anything but a blind and indefinite impulse, since it proves to be attuned and adapted to a definite external situation. This latter circumstance gives it its specific and irreducible form. Just as instinct is original and hereditary, so, too, its form is age-old, that is to say, archetypal. It is even older and more conservative than the human form. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
These biological considerations naturally apply also to Homo sapiens, who still remain within the framework of general biology despite the possession of consciousness, will, and reason. The fact that our conscious activity is rooted in instinct and derives from it its dynamism as well as the basic features of its ideational forms has the same significance for human psychology as for all other members of the animal kingdom. Human knowledge consists essentially in the constant adaptation of the primordial patterns of ideas that were given us a priori. These need certain modifications, because in their original form, they are suited to an archaic mode of life but not to the demands of a specially differentiated environment. If the flow of instinctive dynamism into our life is to be maintained, as is absolutely necessary for our existence, then it is imperative that we should remould these archetypal forms into ideas which are adequate to the challenge of the present. The Overself is not something imagined or supposed. Its presence is definitely felt. If a human asks why one can find no trace of God’s presence in oneself, I answer that one is fully of evidence, not merely traces. God is present in one as consciousness, the state of being aware; as thought, the capacity to think; as activity, the power to move; and as stillness, the condition of ego, emotion, intellect, and body which finally and clearly reveals what these other things simply point to. “Be still, and know that I am God” is a statement of being whose truth can be tested by experiment and whose value can be demonstrated by experience. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
When we realize that the intellect can put forth as man arguments against this theme as for it, we realize that there is in the end only one perfect proof of the Overself’s existence. The Overself must prove itself. This can come about faintly through the intuition or fully through the mystical experience. Whoever needs proofs of the authenticity of this experience has not had it. The difficulty of collecting and studying, sifting and describing the varieties of mystical experience which may be found is a barrier to the expansion of scientific psychology. For those persons who are most eager to talk about their own experiences are the most dubious and unreliable source. Those who are the least eager, feeling the matter to be too private, personal, intimate, and sacred, are able to offer valuable evidence. The human whose mind is rounded out to perfection knows full well truth cut in half and things do not exist apart from the mind. We know ourselves to be made from this Earth. We know this Earth is made from our bodies. For we see ourselves. And we are nature. We are nature seeing nature. We are nature with a concept of nature. Nature weeping. Nature speaking of nature. The Earth is the Lord’s and all its fulness, the World, and they that dwell thereon. For He hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods. Who shall ascend the mountains of the Lord? And who shall stand in His holy place? One that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not set one’s mind on what is false, and hath not sworn deceitfully. One shall receive a blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of one’s salvation. Such is the generation of them that seek God, that seek the presence of the God of Jacob. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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Why then the World’s Mine Oyster, Which I with Sword Will Open!
The “generation gap” is the cause of the brewing social revolution. Parents teach their children to obey and to have a blind trust for authority, so their only other option is to rebel because they are not taught to communicate and negotiate or compromise. By the time parents realize there is a problem, then their sons and daughters are unreasonable and beyond their command. The youth are now edging the middle age out of power. Corporations, a last stronghold of maturity and responsibility, are now recruiting vice presidents whose major qualifications are a B.A. degree and an age under thirty. In the end, however, social futurism must cut even deeper. For technocrats suffer, too, from the virus of elitism. To capture control of change, we shall, therefore, require a final, even more radical breakaway from technocratic tradition: we shall need a revolution in the very way we formulate our social goals. Rising novelty renders irrelevant the traditional goals of our chief institutions—state, church, corporation, army, and university. Acceleration produces a faster turnover of goals, a greater transience of purpose. Diversity or fragmentation leads to a relentless multiplication of goals. Caught in this churning, goal-cluttered environment, we stagger, future shocked, from crisis to crisis, pursuing a welter of conflicting and self-cancelling purposes. Nowhere is this more starkly evident than in our pathetic attempts to govern our cities. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
New Yorkers, within a short span, have suffered a nightmarish succession of disasters: the death of Aaliyah in a preventable airplane crash, Twin Towers destroyed by airplanes and over 3,500 lives lost in a single day, a water shortage, a subway strike, racial violence in the community and schools, hackers shutdown of a pipeline that supplies gasoline, a housing shortage, a fuel oil strike, a pandemic, a breakdown of telephone service, a teacher walkout, a power blackout, to name just a few. In its City Hall, as in a thousand city halls all over the high-technology nations, technocrat dash, firebucket in fist, from one conflagration to another without the least semblance of a coherent plan or policy for the urban future. This is not to say no one is planning. On the contrary; in this seething social brew, technocratic plans, sub-plans, and counter-plans pour fourth. They call for new highways, new roads, new power plants, new schools, more parking, new malls, and high-speed Internet. They promise better hospitals, housing, mental health centers, welfare programs. However, the plans cancel, contradict and reinforce one another by accident. Few are logically related to one another, and none to any overall image of the preferred city of the future. No vision—utopia or otherwise—energizes our efforts. No rationally integrated goals bring order to the chaos. And at the national and international levels, the absence of coherent policy is equally marked and doubly dangerous. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
It is not simply that we do not know which goals to pursue, as a city or as a nation. The trouble lies deeper. For accelerating change has made obsolete the methods by which we arrive at social goals. The technocrats do not yet understand this, and, reacting to the goals crisis in knee-jerk fashion, they reach for the tried and true methods of the past. Thus, intermittently, a change-dazed government will try to define its goals publicly. Instinctively, it establishes a commission. In 2019 President Trump pressed into service, among others, a general, a judge, a couple of industrialist, border security, a few college presidents, and a labour leader to “develop a broad outline of coordinated national policies and programs” and to “set up a series of goals in various areas of national activity.” In due course, a red-white-and-blue paperback appeared with the commission’s report, Goals for Americans. Neither the commission nor its goals were able to reach their objective because federal judges and politicians and the mainstream screens news media, and some of the public fought against the American First agenda. The battle continued and the juggernaut of change continued to roll through America not fully realized, as it were, by a managerial intelligence. A far more significant effort to tidy up governmental priorities was still being initiated by President Trump as he successfully rolled out life saving vaccines, tax cuts, and relief checks to help the public. There was also the introduction of a planning program budgeting system throughout the federal establishment. The goal was to try to run programs much more closely and rationally to organizational goals. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Thus, for example, by applying it, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare can assess the costs and benefits of alternative programs to accomplish specified goals. However, who specifies these larger, more important goals? The inception of the planning and budgeting program and the systems approach is a major governmental achievement. It is of paramount importance in managing large organizational efforts. However, it leaves entirely untouched the profoundly political question of how the overall goals of a government or a society are to be chosen in the first place. President Trump wanted to Make America Great Again. He said it was “time we addressed ourselves, consciously and systematically, to the question of what kind of a nation we want to be.” He thereupon put his finger on the quintessential question. However, once more the method chosen for answering it proved to be inadequate. “Today, I have ordered the establishment, within the White House, of a National Goals Research Staff,” the President announced. “This will be a small, highly technical staff, made up of experts in the collection…and processing of data relating to social needs, and in the projection of social trends.” Such a staff, located within shouting distance of the Presidency, could be extremely useful in compiling goal proposals, in reconciling (at least on paper) conflicts between agencies, in suggesting new priorities. If it did nothing but force high officials to question their primary goals, staffed with excellent social scientists and futurists, it could earn its keep. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
Yet even this step, like the two before it, bear the unmistakable imprint of the technocratic mentality. For it, too, evades the politically charged core of the issue. How are preferable futures to be defined? And by whom? Who is to set goals for the future? Behind all such efforts runs the notion that national (and, by extension, local) goals for the future of society ought to be formulated at the top. This technocratic premise perfectly mirrors the antiquated bureaucratic forms of organization in which line and staff were separated, in which rigid, undemocratic hierarches distinguished leader from led, manager from managed, planner from plannee. Yet the real, as distinct the glibly verbalized, goals of any society on the path to super-industrialism are already too complex, too transient and too dependent for their achievement upon the willing participation of the governed, to be perceived and defined so easily. We cannot hope to harness the runaway forces of change by assembling a kaffee klatsche of elders to set goals for us or by tuning the risk over to a “highly technical staff.” A revolutionary new approach to goal-setting is needed. Nor is this approach likely to come from those who play-act at revolution. One radical group, seeing all problems as a manifestation of the “maximization of profits” displays, in all innocence, an econocentricism as narrow as that of the technocrats. Another hopes to plunge us willy-nilly back into the pre-industrial past. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
Still another sees revolution exclusively in subjective and psychological terms. None of these groups is capable of advancing us toward post-technocratic forms of change management. By calling attention to the growing ineptitude of the technocrats and by explicitly challenging not merely the means, but the very goals of industrial society, today’s young radicals do us all a great service. However, they no more know how to cope with the goals crisis than the technocrats they scorn. An orientation toward the future has been the hallmark of every revolutionary—but many people suffer from a disbelief in the future. The masses find themselves incapable of formulating a future. We must urge people to incorporate the future in the present by, in effect, living the life styles of tomorrow today. However, if this only leads to a pathic charade—free societies, cooperatives, pre-industrial communes, few of which have anything to do with the future, and most of which reveal, instead, only a passionate penchant for the past, then we need to try harder. Yet, the irony is compounded when we consider that some (though hardly all) of today’s young radicals also share with the technocrats a streak of virulent elitism. While decrying bureaucracy and demanding “participatory democracy” they, themselves, frequently attempt to manipulate the very groups of workers, marginalized groups or students on whose behalf they demand participation. The working mases in the high-technology societies are totally indifferent to calls for a political revolution aimed at exchanging one form of property ownership for another. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
For most people, the rise in affluence has meant a better, not a worse, existence, and they look upon their much envied “suburban middle-class lives” as fulfillment rather than deprivation. Faced with this stubborn reality, undemocratic element in America seems to indicate that the masses are too bourgeosified, too corrupted and addled by Madison Avenue to know what is good for them. And so, even if it means stuffing it down the throats of thee who are too unenlightened to know their own interests, a revolutionary elite must establish a more humane and democratic future. In short, the goals of society have to be set by an elite. Technocrat and anti-technocrat often turn out to be elitist brothers under the skin. Yet systems of goal formulation based on elitist premises are simply no longer “efficient.” In the struggle to capture control of the forces of change, they are increasingly counter-productive. For under super-age of information, democracy becomes not a political luxury, but a primal necessity. Democratic political forms arose in the New World not because a few geniuses willed them into being or because man showed an “unquenchable instinct for freedom.” They arose because the historical pressure toward social differentiation and toward faster paced systems demanded sensitive social feedback. In complex, differentiated societies, vast amounts of information must flow at ever faster speeds between the formal organizations and subcultures that make up the whole, and between the layers and sub-structures within these. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
We have already seen that despite the individualistic features of justice as fairness, the two principles of justice provide an Archimedean point for appraising existing institutions as well as the desires and aspirations which they generate. These criteria provide an independent standard for guiding the course of social change without invoking a perfectionist or an organic conception of society. However, the question remains whether the contract doctrine is a satisfactory framework for understanding the values of community and for choosing among social arrangements to realize them. It is natural to conjecture that the congruence of the right and the good depends in large part upon whether a well-ordered society achieves that good of community. One of the conditions of the original position is that the parties know that they are subject to the circumstances of justice. They assume that each has a conception of one’s good in the light of which one presses claims against the rest. So although they view society as a cooperative venture for mutual advantage, it is typically marked by a conflict as well as by an identity of interests. Now there are two ways of viewing these suppositions. The first is taken by the theory of justice: the idea is to derive satisfactory principles from the weakest possible assumptions. The premises of the theory should be simple and reasonable conditions that everyone or most everyone would grant, and for which convincing philosophical arguments can be given. At the same time, the greater the initial collision of claims into which the principles can introduce an acceptable order, the more comprehensive the theory is likely to be. Therefore a deep opposition of interests is presumed to obtain. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
The other way to think of these suppositions is to regard the as describing a certain kind of social order, or a certain aspect of the basic structure that is actually realized. Thus we are led to the notion of private society. Its chief features are first that the persons comprising it, whether they are human individuals or associations, have their own private ends which either competing or independent, but not in any case complementary. And second, institutions are not thought to have any value in themselves, the activity of engaging in them not being counted as a good but if anything as a burden. Thus each person assesses social arrangements solely as a means to one’s private aims. No one takes account of the good of others, or of what they possess; rather everyone prefers the most efficient scheme that gives one the largest share of assets. (Expressed more formally, the only variables in an individual’s utility function are commodities and assets held by one, and not items possessed by others nor their level of utility.) We may suppose also that the actual division of advantage is determined largely by the balance of power and strategic position resulting from existing circumstances. Yet this division may of course be perfectly fair and satisfy the claims of mutuality. By good fortune the situation may happen to lead to this outcome Public goods consist largely of those instrumentalities and conditions maintained by the state for everyone to use for one’s own purposes as one’s means permit, in the same manner that each has one’s own destination when traveling along the highways. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
The theory of competitive markets is a paradigm description of this type of society. Since the members of this society are not moved by the desire to act justly, the stability of just and efficient arrangements when they exist normally requires the use of sanctions. Therefore the alignment of private and collective interests is the result of stabilizing institutional devices applied to persons who oppose one another as indifferent if not hostile powers. Private society is not held together by a public conviction that its basic arrangements are just and good in themselves, but by the calculations of everyone, or of sufficiently many to maintain the scheme, that any practicable changes would reduce the stock of means whereby they pursue their personal ends. It is sometimes contended that the contract doctrine entails that private society is the ideal, at least when the division of advantages satisfies a suitable standard of reciprocity. However, this is not so, as the notion of a well-ordered society shows. And as I have just said, the idea of the original position has another explanation. The account of goodness as rationality and the social nature of humankind also requires a different view. Now the sociability of human beings must not be understood in a trivial fashion. It does not imply merely that society is necessary for human life, or that by living in a community humans acquire needs and interests that prompt them to work together for mutual advantage in certain specific ways allowed for and encouraged by their institutions. Nor is it expressed by the truism that social life is a condition for our developing the ability to speak and think, and to take part in the common activities of society and culture. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
No doubt even the concepts that we use to describe our plans and situation, and even to give voice to our personal wants and purposes, often presuppose a social setting as well as a system of belief and thought that are the outcome of the collective efforts of a long tradition. These facts are certainly not trivial; but to use them to characterize our ties to one another is to give a trivial interpretation of human sociability. For all of these things are equally true of persons who view their relations purely instrumentally. The social nature of humankind is best seen by contrast with the conception of private society. Thus human beings have in fact shared final ends and they value their common institution and activities as good in themselves. We need one another as partners in ways of life that are engaged in for their own sake, and the successes and enjoyments of others are necessary for and complimentary to our own good. These matters are evident enough, but they call for some elaboration. In the account of goodness as rationality we came to the familiar conclusions that rational plans of life normally provide for the development of at least some of a person’s powers. The Aristotelian Principle points in this direction. Yet one basic characteristic of human beings is that no one person can do everything that one might do; nor a fortiori can one do everything that any other person can do. The potentialities of each individual are greater than those one can hope to realize; and they fall short of the powers among humans generally. Thus everyone mist select which of one’s abilities and possible interests one wishes to encourage; one must plan their training and exercise, and schedule their purist in an orderly way. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Different persons with similar or complementary capacities may cooperate so to speak in realizing their common or matching nature. When humans are secure in the enjoyment of the exercise of their own powers, they are disposed to appreciate the perfections of others, especially when their several excellences have an agreed place in a form of life the aims of which all accept. Thus we may say that it is through social union founded upon the needs and potentialities of its members that each person can participate in the total sum of the realized natural assets of the others. We are led to the notion of the community of humankind the members of which enjoy one another’s excellences and individuality elicited by free institutions, and they recognize the good of each as an element in the complete activity the whole scheme of which is consented to and gives pleasure to all. This community may also be imagined to extend over time, and therefore in this history of a society the joint contributions of successive generations can be similarly conceived. Every human being, then, can act with only one dominant faculty at a time; or rather, our whole nature disposes us at any given time to some single form of spontaneous activity. It would therefore seem to follow from this that humans are inevitably destined to a partial cultivation, since one only enfeebles one’s energies by directing them to a multiplicity of objects. However, humans have it in their power to avoid this one-sidedness, by attempting to unite the distinct and generally separately exercised faculties of this nature, by bringing into spontaneous cooperation, at each period of one’s life, the dying sparks of activity, and those which the future will kindle, and endeavouring to increase and diversify the powers with which one works, by harmoniously combining them, instead of looking for mere variety of objects for their separate exercise. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
What is achieved, in the case of the individual, by union of past and future with the present, is produced in society by the mutual cooperation of its different members; for, in all stages of one’s life, each individual can achieve only one of those perfections, which represent the possible features of human character. It is through a social union, therefore, based on the internal wants and capacities of its members, that each is enabled to participate in the rich collective resources of all the others. As a pure cause to illustrate this notion of social union, we may consider a group of musicians every one of whom could have trained oneself to play equally as well as the others any instrument in the orchestra, but who each have by a kind of tacit agreement set out to perfect their skills on the one they have chosen so as to realize the powers of all in their joint performances. If one were to learn how to make complete use of all one’s natural capacities, every individual human will have to live for a vast length of time, and therefore it will require perhaps an incalculable series of generations of humans. A communist society is one in which each person completely realizes one’s own nature, in which one expresses all of one’s power. In any event, it is important not to confuse the idea of social union with the high value put upon human diversity and individuality, or with the conception of the good as the harmonious fulfillment of natural powers by (complete) individuals; nor finally, with gifted individuals, artists, states-people, and so one, achieving this for the rest of humankind. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
Rather, in the limiting case where the powers of each are similar, the group achieves, by a coordination of activities among peers, the same totality of capacities latent in each. Or when these powers differ and are in suitable ways complementary, they express the sum of potentialities of the membership as a whole in activities that are intrinsically good and not merely cooperation for social or economic gain. In either case, persons need one another since it is only in active cooperation with others that one’s powers reach fruition. Only in a social union is the individual complete. Our predecessors in achieving certain things leave it up to us to pursue them further; their accomplishments affect our choice of endeavours and define a wider background against which our aims can be understood. To say that humans are historical beings is to day that the realization of powers of human individuals living at any one time takes the cooperation of many generations (or even societies) over a long period of time. It also implies that this cooperation is guided at any moment by an understanding of what has been done in the past as it is interpreted by social tradition. By contrast with humankind, every individual terrestrial being can and does do what for the most part it might do, or what any other of its kind might or can do that lives at the same time. The range of realized abilities of a single individual of the species is not in general materially less than the potentialities of others similar to it. The striking exception is the difference of pleasures of the flesh. This is perhaps why an affinity of pleasures of the flesh is the most obvious example of the need of individuals both human and other terrestrial beings for each other. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Yet this attraction may take but a purely instrumental form, each individual treating the other as a means to one’s own pleasure or the continuation of one’s line. Unless this attachment is fused with elements of affection and friendship, it will not exhibit the characteristic features of social union. Now many forms of life possess the characteristic of social union, shared final ends and common activities valued for themselves. Science and art provide ready-to-hand illustrations. Likewise families, friendships, and other groups are social unions. There is some advantage though in thinking about the simpler instances of games. Here we can easily distinguish four sorts of ends: the aim of the game as defined by its rules, say to score the most runs; the various motives of the players in playing the game, the excitement they get from it, the desire for exercise, and so on, which may be different for each person; the social purposes served by the game which may be unintended and unknown to the players, or even to anyone in the society, these being matters for the reflective observer to ascertain; and then finally, the shared end, the common desire of all the players that there should be a good play of the game. If the same is played fairly according to the rules, if the sides are more or less evenly matched, and if they players all sense that they are playing well, only then can this shared end be realized. However, when this aim is attained, everyone takes pleasure and satisfaction in the very same thing. A good play of the game is, so to speak, a collective achievement requiring the cooperation of all. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
Now the shared end of a social union is clearly not merely a common desire for the same particular thing. Grant and Lee were one in their desire General Ulysses S. Grant and General Robert E. Lee were one in their desire to hold Richmond, Virginia USA but this desire did not establish community between them. Persons generally want similar sorts of things, liberty and opportunity, shelter and nourishment, yet these wants may put them at odds. Whether individuals have a shared end depends upon the more detailed features of the activity to which the excellences and enjoyments of each are complementary to the good of all. Each can then take pleasure in the actions of the other as they jointly execute a plan acceptable to everyone. Despite their competitive side, many games illustrate this type of end in a clear way: if everyone’s zest and pleasure are not to be languish, the public desire to execute a good and fair play of the game must be regulative and effective. The development of art and science, of religion and culture of all kinds, high and low, can of course be thought of in much the same way. Learning from one another’s efforts and appreciating their several contributions, human beings gradually build up systems of knowledge and belief; they work out recognized techniques for doing things and elaborate styles of feeling and expression. In these cases the common aim is often profound and complex, being defined by the respective artistic, scientific, or religious tradition; and to understand this aim often takes years of discipline and study. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
The essential thing is that there be a shared final end and accepted ways of achieving it which allow for the public recognition of the attainments of everyone. When this end is achieved, all find satisfaction in the very same thing; and this fact together with the complementary nature of the good of individuals affirms the tie of community. I do not wish to stress, however, the cases of art and science and high forms of religion and culture. In line with the rejection of the principle of perfection and the acceptance of democracy in the assessment of one another’s excellences, they have no special merit from the standpoint of justice. Indeed the reference to games not only has the virtue of simplicity but in some ways is more appropriate. It helps to show that the primary concern is that there are many types of social union and from the perspective of political justice we are not to try to rank them in value. Moreover these unions have no definite size; they range from families and friendships to much larger associations. Nor are there limits of time and space, for those widely separated by history and circumstance can nevertheless cooperate in realizing their common nature. A well-ordered society, and indeed most societies, will presumably contain countless social unions of many different kinds. With these remarks as preface, we can now see how the principles of justice are related to human sociability. The main idea is simply that a well-ordered society (corresponding to justice as fairness) is itself a form of social union. Indeed, it is social union of social unions. Both characteristic features are present: the successful carrying out of just institutions is the shared final end of all the members of society, and these institutional forms are prized as good in themselves. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Let us consider these features in turn. The first is quite straightforward. In much the same way that players have the shared end to execute a good and fair play of the game, so the members of a well-ordered society have the common aim of cooperating together to realize their own and another’s nature in ways allowed by the principles of justice. This collective intention is the consequence of everyone’s having an effective sense of justice. Each citizen wants everyone (including oneself) to act from principles to which all would agree in an initial situation of equality. This desire is regulative, as the condition of finality on moral principles requires; and when everyone acts justly, all find satisfaction in the very same thing. The explanation of the second feature is more involved, yet clear enough from what has been said. We have only to note the various ways in which the fundamental institutions of society, the just constitution and the main parts of the legal order, can be found good in themselves once the idea of social union is applied to the basic structure as a whole. Thus first of all, we can say that everyone’s acting to uphold just institutions is for the good of each. Human beings have a desire to express their nature as free and equal moral persons, and this they do most adequately by acting from the principles that they would acknowledge in the original position. When all strive to comply with these principles and each succeeds, then individuality and collectively their nature as moral persons is most fully realized, and with it their individual and collective good. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
Further, a just constitutional order, when adjoined to the smaller social unions of everyday life, provides a framework for these many associations and sets up the most complex and diverse activity of all. In a well-ordered society each person understands the first principles that govern the whole scheme as it is to be carried out over many generations; and all have a settled intention to adhere to these principles in their plan of life. Thus the plan of each person is given a more ample and rich structure than it would otherwise have; it is adjusted to the plans of others by mutually acceptable principles. Everyone’s more private life is so to speak a plan within a plan, this superordinate plan being realized in the public institutions of society. However, this larger plan does not establish a dominant end, such as that of religious unity or the greatest excellence of culture, much less national power and prestige, to which the aims of all individuals is rather that the constitutional order should realize the principles of justice. And if the Aristotelian Principle is sound, this collective activity must be experienced as a good. We have seen that the moral virtues are excellences, attributes of the person that it is rational for persons to want in themselves and in one another as things appreciated for their own sake, or else as exhibited in activities so enjoyed. Now it is clear that these excellences are display in the public life of a well-ordered society. Therefore the companion principle to the Aristotelian Principle implies that human appreciate and enjoy these attributes in one another as they are manifested in cooperating to affirm just institutions. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
It follows that the collective activity of justice in the preeminent form of human flourishing. For given favourable conditions, it is by maintaining these public arrangements that persons best express their nature and achieve the widest regulative excellences of which each is capable. At the same time just institutions allow for and encourage the diverse internal life of associations in which individuals realize their more particular aims. Thus the public realization of justice is a value of community. A well-ordered society does not do away with the division of labour in the most general sense. To be sure, the worst aspects of this division can be surmounted: no one need be servilely dependent on others and made to choose between monotonous and routine occupation which are deadening to human thought and sensibility. Each can be offered a variety of tasks so that the different elements of one’s nature find a suitable expression. However, even when work is meaningful for all, we cannot overcome, nor should we wish to, our dependence on others. In a fully just society persons seek their good on ways peculiar to themselves, and they rely upon their associates to do things they could not have done, as well as things they might have done but did not. It is tempting to suppose that everyone might fully realize one’s powers and that some at least can become complete exemplars of humanity. However, this is impossible. It is a feature of human sociability that we are by ourselves but parts of what we might be. We must look to others to attain the excellences that we must leave aside, or lack altogether. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
The collective activity of society, the many associations and the public life of the largest community that regulates the, sustains our efforts and elicits our contribution. Yet the good attained from the common culture far exceeds our work in the sense that we cease to be mere fragments: that art of ourselves that we directly realize is joined to a wider and just arrangement the aims of which we affirm. The division of labour is overcome not by each becoming complete in oneself, but by willing and meaningful work within a just social union of social union in which all can freely participate as they so incline. The works, and the designs, and the purposes of God, can not be frustrated, neither can they come to naught, for God does not walk in crooked paths. Remember, remember, that it is not the work of God that is frustrated, but the work of humans. For although a human may have many revelations, and have power to do many mighty works, yet, if one boasts in one’s own strength, and follows after the dictates of one’s own will, one must fall and insure the vengeance of a just God upon one. Behold, you have been intrusted with these things, but how strict were your commandments. And remember, also, the promises which were made to you, if you did not transgress them. Clouds are flowing in the river, waves are flying in the sky. Life is laughing in pebble. Does a pebble ever die? Flowers grow out of the Earth, such a miracle to see. What seems dead and what seems dying makes for butterflies to be. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
Life is laughing in a pebble, flowers bathe in morning dew. Dust is dancing in my footsteps, and I wonder who is who. Clouds are flowing in the river, clouds are drifting in my teas, on a never-ending journey, what a miracle to be! Let them praise the name of the Lord, for is name alone is exalted. His glory is above the Earth and Heaven. He hath given glory unto Hi people, praise to all His faithful ones, to the children of America, a people near to Him. Hallelujah. Ascribe unto the Lord, ye ministering Angels, ascribe unto the Lord glory and power. Render unto the Lord the glory due unto His name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thundereth! The Lord is over the great waters. The voice of the Lord is mighty; the voice of the Lord is fully of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars; yea, the Lord shattereth the cedars of Tahoe. He maketh the mountains leap like a calf, Tahoe and Sacramento like a wild ox. The voice of the Lord causeth the desert to tremble; the Lord maketh the desert a Heavenly temple. The voice of the Lord maketh the oak trees dance, and strippeth the forest bare; while in His Temple everything proclaims His glory. The Lord was King at the Flood; the Lord shall remain King forever. May the Lord give strength unto His people; may the Lord bless His people with peace. There is no other way to settle doubts concerning the soul with incontestable certainty than the way of getting personal knowledge of it by a mystical glimpse. Even when a human denies the Overself and thinks it out of one’s view of life, one is denying and thinking by means of the Overself’s own power—attenuated and reflected though it be. One is able to reject the divine presence with one’s mind only because it is already in one’s mind. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH
Rancho Cordova, CA |
Now Selling!
Brighton Station at Cresleigh Ranch is Rancho Cordova’s newest home community! This charming neighborhood offers an array of home types with eye catching architecture styles such as Mid-Century Modern, California Modern, Prairie, and Contemporary Farmhouse.
Located off Douglas Road and Rancho Cordova Parkway, the residents of Cresleigh Ranch will enjoy, being just minutes from shopping, dining, and entertainment, and quick access to Highway 50 and Grant Line Road providing a direct route into Folsom. Residents here also benefit from no HOA fees, two community parks and the benefits of being a part of the highly-rated Elk Grove Unified School District.
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Welcome to Cresleigh Homes, America’s Favourite! Our homes are designed for seamless integration between indoors and outdoors. The colors, the trim, the sightlines – everything combines to make you feel like you’re experiencing the best of both worlds – at the same time! See more pictures from our Brighton Station Res 4 model via the link in profile. https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/
Ethics are Responsibility without Limit Towards All that Lives!
The concept of a united family that lives and progresses forever is at the core of Latter-day Saint doctrine. Within families led by a father and a mother, children develop virtues such as love, trust, loyalty, cooperation and service. We must rally to protect marriage, family, so we can strengthen our loved ones and protect their faith and freedom. There is a young and impressionable mind out there that is very hungry for information. Instead of fighting for freedom of the press, maybe we should be fighting for freedom from the press. I am worried about present-day journalism. The emphasis on negative happenings is much too strong. Not infrequently, news about events marking great progress is overlooked or minimized. It tends to make for a negative and discouraging atmosphere. If humans feel that very little happens to support that faith in the salvation of humanity, there is a danger that people may lose faith in the forward direction of Kingdom of God. And real progress is related to the belief that salvation and the Kingdom God will be established in our lifetime. Another hinderance to civilization today is the over-organization of our public life. While it is certain that a properly ordered environment is the condition and, at the same time, the result of civilization, it is developed at the expense of the spiritual life. Personality and ideas are often subordinated to institutions, when it is really thee which ought to influence the latter and keep them inwardly alive. Humans have lost the capacity to foresee and forestall. They will end by destroying the Earth. Simply investigating and apportioning responsibility after the fact is hardly sufficient. We must create an environmental screen to protect ourselves against dangerous intrusions as well as a system of public incentives to encourage technology that is both safe and socially desirable. This means governmental and private machinery for reviewing major technological advances before they are launched upon the public. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
So great was His love for the World, that God covenanted to give His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believe in Him should not peris, but have everlasting life. Lucifer has said, “I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, counted it not a thing to be grasped to be on an equality with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men. This was a voluntary sacrifice. Jesus might have retained the glory of Heaven, and the homage of the angels. However, He chose to give back the scepter into the Father’s hands, and to step down from the throne of the Universe, that He might bring light to the benighted, and life to the perishing. Over two thousand years, a voice of mysterious import was heard in Heaven, from the throne of God, “Lo, I come.” “Sacrifice and offering Thou would not, but a body has Thou prepared Me. Lo, I come (in the volume of the Book it is written of Me,) to do Thy will, O God.” In these words is announced the fulfillment of the purpose that had been hidden from eternal ages. Christ was about to visit our World, and become incarnate. He says, “A body has Thou prepared Me.” Had He appeared with the glory that was His with the Father before the World was, we could not have endured the light of His presence. That we might behold it and not be destroyed, the manifestation of His glory was shrouded. His divinity was veiled with humanity—the invisible glory in the visible form. This great purpose had been shadowed forth in types and symbols. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
The burning bush, in which Christ appeared to Moses, revealed God. The symbol chosen for the representation of the Deity was a humble shrub, that seemingly has no attractions. This enshrined the Infinite. The all-merciful God shrouded His glory in a most humble type, that Moses could look upon it and live. So in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, God communicated with America, revealing to humans His will, and imparting to them His grace. God’s glory was subdued, and His majesty veiled, that the weak vision of finite humans might behold it. So Christ was to come in the body of our humiliation in the likeness of humans. In the eyes of the World He possessed no beauty that they should desire Him; yet He was the incarnate God, the light of Heaven and Earth. His glory was veiled, His greatness and majesty were hidden, that He might draw near to sorrowful, tempted men. God commanded Moses for America, “Let them make Me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them,” and he abode in the sanctuary, in the midst of His people. Through all their weary wandering in the desert, the symbol of His presence was with them. So Christ set up His tabernacle in the midst of our human encampment. He pitched His tent by the side of the tents of men, that He might dwell among us, and make us familiar with His divine character. “The Word became flesh, and tabernacled among us (and we beheld His glory, glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth.” Since Jesus came to dwell with us, we know that God is acquainted with out trials, and sympathizes with our griefs. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
Every son and daughter of Adam may understand that our Creator is the friend of sinners. For in every doctrine of grace, every promise of joy, every deed of love, every divine attraction presented in the Saviour’s life on Earth, we see “God with us.” Satan represents God’s law of love as a law of selfishness. He declares that it is impossible for us to obey its precepts. The fall of our first parents, with all the woe that has resulted, he charges upon the Creator, leading humans to look upon God as the author of sin, and suffering, and death. Jesus was to unveil this deception. As one of us Jesus was to give an example of obedience. His life testifies that it is possible for us also to obey the law of God. By His humanity, Christ touched humanity; by His divinity, He lays hold upon the throne of God. As the Son of man, He gave us an example of obedience; as the Son of God, He gives us power to obey. “God with us” is the surety of our deliverance from sin, the assurance of our power to obey the law of Heaven. Christ revealed a character the opposite of the character of Satan. By His life and His death, Christ has achieved even more than recovery from the ruin wrought through sin. It was Satan’s purpose to bring about an eternal separation between God and man; but in Christ we become more closely united to God, like we had never fallen. In taking our nature, the Saviour has bound Himself to humanity by a tie that is never broken. Through the eternal ages He is linked with us. “God so loved the World, that he gave His only-begotten Son. He gave Him not only to bear our sins, and to die as our sacrifice; He gave Him to the fallen race. To assure us of His immutable counsel of peace, God gave His only-begotten Son to become one of the human family, forever to retain His human nature. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
This is the pledge that God will fulfill His Word. “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder.” God has adopted human nature in the person of His Son, and has carried the same into the highest Heaven. It is the “Son of man” who shares the throne of the Universe. It is the “Son of man” who shares the throne of the Universe. It is the “Son of man” whose name shall be called, “Wonderful,” Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” Heaven is enshrined in humanity, and humanity is enfolded in the bosom of Infinite Love. The exaltation of the redeemed will be an eternal testimony to God’s mercy. In the ages to come, God will show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. To the intent that unto the principalities and the powers in the Heavenly places might be made known the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purposes which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord. Through Christ’s redeeming work, the government of God stand justified. The Omnipotent One is made known as the God of love. Satan’s charges are refuted, and his character unveiled. Rebellion can never again arise. Sin can never again enter the Universe. Through eternal ages all are secure from apostasy. By love’s self-sacrifice, the inhabitants of Earth and Heaven are bound to their Creator in bonds of indissoluble union. The work of redemption will be complete. In the place where sin abounded, God’s grace much more abounds. The Earth itself, the very field that Satan claims as his, is to be not only ransomed but exalted. Our little World, under the curse of sin the one dark blot in His glorious creation, will be honoured above all other Worlds in the Universe of God. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
Here, where the Son of God tabernacle in humanity; where the King of glory lived and suffered and died—here, when He shall make all things new, the tabernacle of God shall be with humans, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God. And through endless ages as the redeemed walk in the light of the Lord, they will praise Him for His unspeakable Gift—God with us. God has a word for us to release increase, multiplication, and miracles right now in our lives. Our obedience to His Word leads to restoration and authority like a rushing river. “If you love me, you will obey what I command,” reports John 14.15. If you have been asking God for a supernatural turnaround in your life, Miracles are coming! Increase is coming! Multiplication is coming! God works in seasons, cycles, patterns. Understanding His timing is key to activating His greatest blessing in your life! A season means a “set time.” When you do not discern the shift of a season, you will lack in some area of your life! It is possible to be in a season that you are not cooperating with and therefore you are experiencing scarcity! This will change with your obedience! No more missed moments in Jesus’ name! “And they worshiped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple praising and blessing God,” reports Luke 24.52-53. One hundred and twenty of them remined in prayer until the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost) arrived, and then it did, they were he gathered together. “On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave this command: ‘Do not leave America, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have hear me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit,’” reports Acts 1.4-5. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
What we seem to forget is that, yes, the sun will continue to rise and set and the moon will continue to move across the skies, but humankind can create a situation in which the sun and moon can look down upon the Earth that has been stripped of all life. “They joined all together in constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers. In those days Peter stood up among the believers (a group numbering about a hundred and twenty) and said, ‘Brothers, the Scripture had to be fulfilled which the Holy Spirit spoke long ago through the moth of David concerning Judas, who served as guide for those who arrested Jesus—he was one of our number and shared in this ministry,’” reports Acts 1.14-17. “When the day of the Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from Heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them,” reports Acts 2.1-4. Those who conduct an atomic war for freedom will die, or end their lives miserably. Instead of freedom, they will find destruction. Radioactive clouds resulting from a war between The Old World and the New World would imperil humanity. There would be no need to use up the remaining stock of atom and H-bombs. An atomic war is therefore the most senseless and lunatic act that could ever take place. At all costs, it must be prevented. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Corporations might be expected to set up their own “consequence analysis staffs” to study the potential effects of the innovations they sponsor. They might, in some cases, be required not merely to test new technology in pilot areas but to make a public report about its impact before being permitted to spread the innovation through the society at large. Much responsibility should be delegated to industry itself. The less centralized the controls the better. If self-policing works, it is preferable to external, political controls. Where self-regulation fails, however, as it often does, public intervention may well be necessary, and we should not evade the responsibility. At one point, in the United States of America, Congressman Emilio Q. Daddario, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Science, Research and Development, had proposed the establishment of a technology Assessment Board with the federal government. And this might be a great idea with social media becoming so power that the owners of these platforms were censoring and banned the President from using their forums. Studies by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress, and by the science and technology program of the George Washington University are all aimed at defining the appropriate nature of such an agency. We may wish to debate its form; its need is beyond dispute. The society might also set certain general principles for technological advance. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Where the introduction of an innovation entails undue risk, for example, it might require that funds be set aside by the responsible agency for correction of adverse effects should they materialize. We might also create a “technological insurance pool” to which innovation-diffusing agencies might pay premiums. Certain large-scale ecological interventions might be delayed or prohibited altogether—perhaps in line with the principle that is an incursion on nature is too big and sudden for its effects to be monitored and possibly corrected, it should not take place. For example, it has been suggested that Aswan Dam, far from helping Egyptian agriculture, might someday lead to salinization of land on both banks of the Nile. This could prove disastrous. However, such a process would not occur overnight. Presumably, therefore, it can be monitored and prevented. By contrast, the plan to flood the entire interior of Brazil is fraught with such instant and imponderable ecological effects that it should not be permitted at all until adequate monitoring can be done and emergency corrective measures are available. At the level of social consequences, a new technology might be submitted for clearance to panels of behavioural scientists—psychologists, sociologist, economists, political scientists—who would determine, to the best of their ability, the probable strength of its social impact at different points in time. Where an innovation appears likely to entail seriously disruptive consequences, or to generate unrestrained accelerative pressures, these facts need to be weighed in a social cost-benefit accounting procedure. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
In the case of some high-impact innovations, the technology appraisal agency might be empowered to seek restraining legislation, or to obtain an injunction forcing delay until full public discussion and study is completed. In other cases, such innovations might still be released for diffusion—provided ample steps were taken in advance to offset their negative consequences. In this way, the society would not need to wait for disaster before dealing with its technology-induced problems. By considering not merely specific technologies, but their relationship to one another, the time lapse between them, the proposed speed of diffusion, and similar factors, we might eventually gain some control over the pace of change as well as its direction. Needless to say, these proposals are themselves fraught with explosive social consequences, and need careful assessment. There may be far better ways to achieve the desired ends. However, the time is late. We simply can no longer afford to hurtle blindfolded toward super-industrialism. The politics of technology control with trigger bitter conflict in the days to come. However, if the accelerative thrust is to be brought under control, conflict or no, technology must be tamed. And, if future shock is to be prevented, the accelerative thrust must be brought under control. In some cultures, people endure tattooing, stretching, cutting, and burning wit little apparent pain. How is such insensitivity achieved? Very likely the answer lies in four factors that anyone can use to reduce pain. These are anxiety, control, attention, and interpretation. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
The basic sensory message of pain can be separated from emotional reactions to it. Fear or high levels of anxiety almost always increase pain. (Anxiety is a feeling of apprehension or uneasiness similar to fear, but based on an unclear threat.) A dramatic reversal of this effect is the surprising lack of pain displayed by soldiers wounded in battle. Being excused from further combat apparently produces a flood of relief. This emotional state leaves many soldiers insensitive to wounds tat would agonize a civilian. In general, unpleasant emotions increase pain and pleasant emotions decrease it. If you can regulate painful stimulus, you have control over it. A moment’s reflection should convince you that the most upsetting pain is that over which you have no control. Loss of control seems to increase pain by increasing anxiety and emotional distress. People who are allowed to regulate, avoid, or control a painful stimulus suffer less. In general, the more control one feels over a painful stimulus, the less pain experienced. Distraction can also radically reduce pain. As you recall, attention refers to voluntarily focusing on a specific sensory input. Pain, even though it is highly persistent, can be selectively “turned out” (at least partially), just like any other sensation. Subjects in one experiment were in intense pain experienced the greatest relief when they were distracted by the task of watching for signal lights to come on. Another example is provided by burn patients, who must undergo excruciating pain while their bandages are changed. Recently, video games and virtual reality have been used to distract them from their pain, which helps immensely. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
The Fountain of Youth and the Elixir of Life were dreams of the ancient mystics, and they are still dreams of today. However, to the soul that has found the, in most cases, they are divine realities. If humans were to learn that one can prolong one’s life on this Earth in youth and health for an indefinite period in which days and years are not counted, one could pass from one joy to another. Nobody has historically succeeded in robbing Nature of her power to inflict death. However, there is another aspect of this topic which throws some light on it. When the body of Father Charles de Foucald was exhumed, one year after burial, for transfer to another site, his friend General Laperrine was astonished to find that the body was without any break and the face quite recognizable, whereas of the two Arabian guards murdered at the same time and buried near him only a little dust remained. One of the native soldiers then said, “Why are you astonished that he is thus preserved, General? It is not astonishing, since he was a great marabout (holy man).” Father Foucald was a nineteenth-century Christian hermit of the Saharan desert, who sacrificed social position and fortune for an ascetic existence devoted to prayer, meditation, and service for the poor. Hs ascetic self-mortification was extremely severe. To this case there may be added the somewhat similar cases of Swami Yogananda of Los Angeles, and Sir Aurobindo of Pondicherry. The ancient hatha yoga texts promise the successful yogi “the conquest of death.” This does not mean he will not die, but that his flesh will not decay after death. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
We have so intimate a relation to the body in practical life that none of us need be blamed for calling it “me.” However, metaphysically that indicates an adolescent attitude. We advance towards maturity when we regard it as only a part of “me.” This domain of natural living, food reform, and hygiene is infested with cranks, fanatics, extremists, and one-idea devotees, just as the domain of mysticism is. The seeker must be warned against letting oneself be deceived by their wild intemperate enthusiasms. Have you ever temporarily forgotten about a toothache or similar pain while absorbed in a movie or book? As this suggests, concentrating on pleasant, soothing images can be especially helpful. Instead of listening to the whirr of a dentist’s drill, for example, you might imagine that you are lying in the sun at a beach, listening to the roar of the surf. At home, music can be a good distractor from chronic pain. So much may depend on so little! The condition of a single organ or of a half-centimeter of gland may curse a human’s whole life more than and sorcerer can. A physical feature may be so dislike by others that one’s ambitions are thwarted or one’s desire for love defeated. Some physical attributes may be unpleasant, undignified, and unfortunate for a human. However, they are well-countered by invisible compensations. The meaning of interpretation, you give a stimulus also affects pain. For example, if you make a funny face at a child while playing, you will probably get a burst of laughter. Yet that same face given as a punishment may bring tears. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
The effects of interpretation are illustrated by an experiment in which thinking of pain as pleasurable (denying the pain) greatly increased pain tolerance. Another study found that people who believe a painful procedure will improve their health feel less pain during the procedure. A physiognomist once told me that he considered the mouth more revealing of a human’s character than, as commonly believed, the eyes. Is this a fact? How important is it to remember that the fall of temperature in the evenings is an invitation to catch cold. Goethe complained while living in Rome of the care one had to take even in the middle of summer to prevent the realization of this possibility. The joy owning a physical body comes out most in physical activity, yet the person will feel disgusted with it under different circumstances and at a different time. The pain of owning a body comes out mostly in ill health, yet the same person may glory in it during a game or a sport. For as bats’ eyes are to daylight so is our intellectual eye to those truths which are, in their own nature, the most obvious of all. It must be clearly understood that the argument so far leads to no conception of “souls” or “spirits” (words I have avoided) floating about in the realm of Nature with no relation to their environment. Hence we do not deny—indeed we must welcome—certain considerations which are often regarded as proofs of Naturalism. We can admit, and even insist, that Rational Thinking can be shown to be conditioned in its exercise by a natural object (the brain). #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Rational Thinking is temporarily impaired by alcohol or a blow to the head. It wanes as the brain decays and vanishes when the brain ceases to function. In the same way the moral outlook of a community can be shown to be closely connected with its history, geographical environment, economic structure, and so forth. The moral ideas of the individual are equally related to one’s general situation: it is no accident that parents and schoolmasters so often tell us that they can stand any vice rather than lying, the lie being the only defensive weapon of most children. All this, far from presenting us with a difficulty, is exactly what we should expect. The rational and more element in each human mind is a point of force from the Supernatural working its way into Nature, exploiting at each point those conditions which Nature offers, repulsed where the conditions are hopeless and impeded when they are unfavourable. A human’s Rational thinking is just so much of one’s share in eternal Reason as the state of one’s brain allows to become operative: it represents, so to speak, the bargain struck or the frontier fixed between Reason and Nature at that particular point. A nation’s moral outlook is just so much of its share in eternal Moral Wisdom as its history, economics, et cetera, lets through. In the same way the voice of the Announcer is just so much of a human voice as the receiving set lets through. Of course it varies with the state of the receiving set, and deteriorates as the set wears out and vanished altogether if I throw a brick at it. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
The voice of the announcer is conditioned by the apparatus but not originated by it. If it were—if we know that there was no human being at the microphone—we should not attend to the news. The various and complex conditions under which Reason and Morality appear are the twists and turns of the frontier between Nature and Supernature. That is why, if you wish, you can always ignore Supernature and treat the phenomena purely from the Natural side; just as a human studying on a map the boundaries of Cornwall and Devonshire can always say, “What you call a bulge in Devonshire is really a dent in Cornwall.” And in a sense, you cannot refute one. What call a bulge in Devonshire always is a dent in Cornwall. What we call a rational thought in a human always involves a state of the brain, in the long run a relation of atoms. However, Devonshire is none the less something more than “where Cornwall ends,” and Reason is something more than cerebral bio-chemistry. The practical method which is here presented differs radically from the method of the Christian Scientists, although a superficial reading my give the impression of similarity. The Christian Scientist asserts one’s inner nature to be divine and a part of God, but the assertion remains a mere intellectual statement unless one has previously opened up a channel to that inner nature with the tool of intersession, prayer, or aspiration. If one has done this, then the assertion rises into the realm of reality and may produce remarkable results; if one has not succeeded in doing this, then one’s assertion remains mere words, one thought out of the multitude which pass and repass through the brain of humans. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Moreover, so long as one possess false notions of what constitutes “demonstration,” so long as one thinks that one is entitled to prosperity, good health, and other desirable Worldly things because of his spirituality, so long will one find—as so many Christian Scientists do find—that one’s successes alternate with startling failures. It would be an unpleasant task to illustrate this statement with instances of such failures, not in the rank and file, but in the foremost ranks of the Christian Scientists, and I shall not attempt it. These failures indicate that we must follow no narrow track of sect-ordained thought, but do some research on our own account. It is a dramatic fact that remedial changes may take place in the organs themselves under the influence of this healing force. The more one comes into harmony with the cosmic order, the more will one’s health and strength benefit, one’s thoughts and feelings become beneficial. However, this is not to say that one will be cured of existing maladies or be kept in perfect health. Harmony means that due regard and attention will be given to the body’s importance, hygiene, care, and correct feeding. It means that the thoughts and feelings will be constructive. If not obstructed by human’s foolish methods, nature’s healing power will do its own work upon that sick body. It is possible to direct the healing power of the white light, in imagination and with deep breathing, to any part of the body where pain is felt or to any organ which is not functioning properly. This does not instantly remove the trouble, but it does make a contribution towards the healing process. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
For moderate pain, it can make quite a difference to reduce anxiety, redirect attention, and increase control. When you can anticipate pain (during a trip to the doctor, dentist, and so on), you can lower anxiety by making sure that you are fully informed. Be sure that someone explains everything that will happen or could happen to you. Also, be sure to fully discuss any fears you have. If you are physically tense, you can use relaxation exercises to lower your level of arousal. Relaxation methods involve tensing and then releasing muscles in various parts of the body. Some dentists are now equipped to help you shift attention away from pain. Patients are actively distracted with video games and headphones playing music. In other situations, focusing on some external object may help you shift attention away from pain. Pick a tree outside a window, a design on the wall, or some other stimulus and examine it in great detail. Prior practice in meditation can be a tremendous assistant to such attention shifts. Research suggests that distraction of this type works best for mild or brief pain. For chronic or strong pain, reinterpretation is more effective. Is there any way to increase control over a painful stimulus? Practically speaking, the choices may be limited. You may be able to arrange a signal with a doctor or dentist tat will give you control over whether a painful procedure will continue. A second possibility is more unusual. Ronald Melzack’s gate control the sensory of pain suggest that sending mild pain messages to the spinal cord and brain may effectively close the neurological gates to more severe or unpredictable pain. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
Medical texts have been recognized this effect. Physicians have found that intense surface stimulation of the skin can control pain from other parts of the body. Likewise, a brief, mildly painful stimulates can relieve more severe pain. Such procedures, known as counterirritation, are evident in some of the oldest techniques used to control pain: applying ice packs, hot-water bottles, mustard packs, vibration, or massage to other parts of the body. These facts suggest a way to minimize pain that is based on increased control, counterirritation, and the release of endorphins. If you pinch yourself, you can easily create and endure pain equal to that produced by many medical procedures (receiving an injection, having a toot drilled, and so on). The pain does not seem too bad because you have control over it, and it is predictable. This fact can be used to mask one pain with a second painful stimulus that is under your control. For instance, if you are having tooth filled, try pinching yourself or digging a fingernail into a knuckle while the dentist is working. Focus your attention on the pain you are creating, and increase its intensity anytime the dentist’s work becomes more painful. This suggestion may not work for you, but casual observation suggests that it can be a useful technique for controlling pain in some circumstances. Generations of children have used it to take the edge off spanking. Although some people have found spiritual benefit from sickness because of the enforced retirement to bed or hospital which it demands, or because of the reflections which it brings about the limitations of bodily satisfactions and pleasures, it would be a gross misunderstanding to make this only way of gaining these insights. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
Other persons have become so embittered and resentful through sickness that they have suffered spiritual loss. Still other persons who have maintained good health have thereby been able to provide the proper circumstances for spiritual search, study, and meditation. The eye is the reflector of mind, the revealer of a human’s heart and the diagnose of one’s bodily health. With health, everything is a source of pleasure; without it, nothing else, whatever it may be, is enjoyable. It follows that the greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness, whatever it may be—for gain, advancement, learning, or fame, let alone, then, for fleeting sensual pleasures. The Lord has commanded members to take care of their bodies and minds. They should obey the Word of Wisdom, eat nutritious food, exercise regularly, control their weight, and get adequate sleep. They should shun substances or practices that abuse their bodies or minds and that could lead to addiction. They should practice good sanitation and hygiene and obtain adequate medical and dental care. They should also strive to cultivate good relationships with family members and others. Maintaining the best possible physical health has been a gospel ideal throughout the ages—from the strict dietary laws of ancient America, with the example of Joseph Smith and his associates, to the Word of Wisdom in this dispensation and the counsel of today’s prophets and apostles. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
By maintaining good physical health, we become more self-reliant and are better prepared to progress personally, strengthen the family, and serve in the Church and community. Not long after the angel had disappeared the third time Joseph arose from his bed. He went about doing his daily work with his father in the field, but he soon found his strength was exhausted. His father noticed there was something wrong and sent his son home. Joseph went toward the house, but as he crossed a fence in the field his strength entirely failed him and he fell helpless to the ground. Joseph heard a voice call his nae and, looking up, he saw the same messenger, Moroni, standing over his head in a bright light. Again the angel repeated all the things he had told Joseph during the night and commanded him to tell his father of his vision. Joseph obeyed, going into the field to tell his father what had occurred. His father said he should obey the messenger from God. The young man went to find the place he had seen in his vision. Near Manchester, New York, a few miles from his farm home, Joseph found the hill had seen so clearly in his vision. On the west side of the hill, not far from the top, was a large stone which was thick and rounding in the middle of the upper side and thinner toward the edge. The middle part showed above the Earth, but the edges were covered. Joseph removed the Earth from the stone. With the assistance of a lever he raised the stone cover, and beneath it lay a stone box. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
In the box, which was made of stone set in a kind of cement, lay the golden plates, the Urim and Thummim, and the breastplate, exactly as the angel had said. The golden plates formed a book with pages of gold held together by three large rings, much like a modern loose-leaf notebook. As Joseph reached to take the things from the box, the angel forbade him. Joseph was told he should return each year on the same date, 22 September, and he would be given further instructions until it was time for him to take the plates. Joseph returned to the hill, which has been called “Hill Cumorah,” each of the following four years and was met by the same messenger. The angel taught him many things about the plans of the Lord, and how his kingdom was to be built in the last days. Four years after Moroni’s first visit to Joseph, on 22 September 1827—on Joseph’s fifth visit to the hill—Moroni gave him the golden book, the Urim and Thummim, and the breastplate. The angel cautioned him to guard them carefully, to allow no one to see them, and to do everything in his power to protect and keep them safely until the messenger should come for them. Joseph soon understood why he had been commanded so strictly to guard them carefully. Almost as soon as he had received the precious things, it became known throughout the countryside, and everyone wanted to see them. Many tried to take them away from him; but by hiding them Joseph was able to keep them safely. The excitement continued, and the people were determined to take the golden plates from him. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Joseph soon realized that it would be impossible for him to do the work of translation at his home in New York. Joseph and his wife, Emma whom he had married in January, 1827, went to her parents’ home at Harmony, Pennsylvania. There in the home of Isaac Hale, during the early part of the year 1828, Joseph, by means of the Urim and Thummim, began the work of translation of the golden plates. In the mystery of these vestures of the Holy Ones, I gird up my power in the girdles of righteousness and truth in the power of the Most High: Ancor: Amacor: Amides: Theodonias: Anitor: let be might my power: let it endure for ever: in the power of Adonai, to whom the praise and the glory shall be; whose end cannot be. Earth mother, star mother, you who are called by a thousand names, may all remember we are cells in your body and dance together. You are the grain and the loaf that sustains us each day, and as you are patient with our struggles to learn so shall we be patient with ourselves and each other. We are radiant light and sacred dark—the balance—you are the embrace that heartens and the freedom beyond fear. Within you we are born, we grow, live, and die—you bring us around the circle to rebirth, within us you dance forever. May it be Thy will, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, to renew unto us this coming month for our good and for blessing, of sustenance, of bodily vigour; a life marked by reverence for Thee and the dread of sin, a life free from shame and reproach, a life of abundance and honour, a life in which the love of the Torah and the fear of Heaven shall ever be with us, a life in which all desires of our hearts shall be fulfilled for our good. Amen. If the technology that is supposed to increase our leisure and make our lives easier, starts to control our lives, we are in danger of losing our souls. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH
Rancho Cordova, CA |
Now Selling!
Brighton Station at Cresleigh Ranch is Rancho Cordova’s newest home community! This charming neighborhood offers an array of home types with eye catching architecture styles such as Mid-Century Modern, California Modern, Prairie, and Contemporary Farmhouse.
Located off Douglas Road and Rancho Cordova Parkway, the residents of Cresleigh Ranch will enjoy, being just minutes from shopping, dining, and entertainment, and quick access to Highway 50 and Grant Line Road providing a direct route into Folsom. Residents here also benefit from no HOA fees, two community parks and the benefits of being a part of the highly-rated Elk Grove Unified School District.
Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Google Mini to help connect everything together! https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/
Cresleigh Ranch is one of the Northern California’s area’s best kept secrets. Offering a peaceful setting with a variety of activities. The two story yellow house at the very top is residence 3, I call it “The Baby Winchester.” It is approximately 2,800 square feet with 4 bedroom and 3.5 bathrooms, and a three car garage. Cresleigh has luxury home designs, with a wide range of options, allowing each buyer to tailor their home to their unique lifestyle.
Once you make a Cresleigh Home your home, you can have peace of mind and a community that will never leave you wanting. Homes range from approximately 2,000 to 4,000 square feet. Contact Cresleigh today and let us help you claim your own piece of paradise! #CresleighHomes
It is No Exaggeration to Claim that the Gifts God Blesses Us with are Sensational!
To be artistically beautiful and strong is only to have a soul with a perfect balance of faith and grace. In time, we shall desert the modern sense of materialism inflated by money, peer pressure, and television, and seek the full, rich, and beautiful soul through the collaboration of responsibility and dignity. Then we will give up trying to assemble life’s events with craftiness. Craftiness does not blond in the kingdom of God, for God is truth. Truth allows the magical tone of harmony to resonate in the soul infinitely, for the tones do not perish, but ascend to God like praise too deep for utterance. The ideal of civilized humans is none other than that of one who in every relation of life preserves true human nature. To be civilized humans means for us approximately this: that in spite of the conditions of modern civilization, we remain human. In the beginning, God was revealed in al the works of creation. It was Christ that spread the Heavens, and laid the foundations of the Earth. It was His had that hung the Worlds in space, and fashioned the flowers of the field. “Which by his strength setteth fast the mountains; being girded with power,” reports Psalms 65.5. It was God that filled the Earth with beauty, and the air with song. And upon all things in the Earth, and air, and sky, God wrote the message of the Father’s love. The body of the illumined human is subject to the same laws as the body of the unillumined one. Any violation of those laws through ignorance or custom may lead to sickness in humans. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
Each individual reacts differently to the suffering caused by sickness. However, the knowledge of higher laws does not exempt the illuminate from learning and obeying the lower ones. The work of purifying the physical organism will be completed in time only to give way to the work of regenerating it. However, only if the necessary knowledge is available, which is not ordinarily the case, can this second task be undertaken. What one is emotionally and mentally expresses itself to some extent in one’s body in one’s face and even in the way one hold’s one’s body and carries oneself, and still more remarkably in the very moments one makes. Some pioneer work in this research was done by Westerners such as F. Messias Alexander, Dr. Mensendieck, and Gaston Mengel. In the East, Japanese Zen masters developed this theme several centuries ago. Because of the closeness between body and mind, whatever is experienced in one is reflected in the other. The Japanese masters understand this and detect from the physical positions taken by the body in its movements something of the condition within oneself. We ourselves know that there is a connection between the pace and manner of breathing and the emotional condition. We can see how mental tension is reflected in muscular tension of the body; thus it is useful to learn about these different conditions and to benefit by the good ones and avoid the bad ones. How often does a human’s mental condition depend on one’s physical needs, on whether one has had too little of too much sleep or food, on whether one is exposed to tropical heat or arctic cold! #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Ownership of a physical form lays a certain responsibility upon one. To evade this, in the name of metaphysical truth, may lead to an intellectually deceptive freedom from it but cannot lead to a factually physical freedom from the effects of one’s neglect. The body is part of the self, and those who preach neglect of the body is to point out how limited would be their life, and hence their consciousness is they lost a bodily part such as a hand, or a bodily sense such as taste. Instead of giving the fullest freedom of expression to the divine life-power within themselves, they would give it no more than a partial expression. The body is there; it has existence, life, and above all, inescapable needs. Let it not be despised, for we must use its services. However, let it not conquer us and stifle our aspirations. One is trapped in the nerve structure, the glands, and the brain cells of one’s physical body, dependent upon them and conditioned by them. To ignore the body in one’s spiritual seeking is foolish unpardonable neglect, but to deny it altogether, as some cults do, is simply absurd. The body must not be ignored, for consciousness, even will, is interwoven with it, affected by it while moods are born, or at least related, to it. Whether one is a high mystic or an ordinary human, one is blessed with a body which must be cared for, nourished and cleaned, kept alive. This is to say that it demands attention, thought, a portion of consciousness. Any attempt to decry it on the Vedantic ground of unreality is absurd. Every illness mocks such foolishness. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
I cannot forget the shock I experienced when on three different occasions and in three different parts of the World I heard spiritual teacher whom I admired and respected and who had a substantial following, express complete indifference to the condition of the body. One was a European, the other were from Asia. They expressed it not merely as personal opinion, but also as a part of their teaching, for their disciples were present on each occasion. One of the people from the East fell ill within a few weeks and had to cancel his meetings until he recovered. The other died under painful circumstances, that is, from most painful disease. The European was struck down within a few years and had to undergo a major operation from which he recovered, but with all his vitality gone, his creativity at an end, and personal work practically finished. I asked myself, “Was God trying to correct the attitude of these three spiritual guides? Can we afford to ignore the question of the health and sickness of the body? Is it not a fact that sickness destroys our pleasure in living and increases our negative thoughts?” The quester who says that one has practiced this and done that without any observable result, who is discouraged and depressed in consequence, has often failed to make any real effort to cleanse one’s body by reforming its habits. Food can be very enjoyable and the body’s life very comfortable. While we are alive the body is of grave importance but when we are dead it is of no importance to most. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
Those who condemn, despise, or minimize the body are premature. That kind of asceticism which considers the body as an enemy to the spirit, is a kind of sickness. The two dwell together, belong to one another, and in a proper life co-operate together. To consider them otherwise, to torment the body in order to gain the spirit’s favour, is to twist the very meaning of its existence. It is not God who asks would-be saints to do nasty things to their bodies but their own mental imbalances and excess of misplaced fanatic zeal. Only if we let it tyrannize over the finer aspirations, if we indulge it beyond its real needs and in violation of its real instinct, then the body becomes our enemy. The student who adopts drastic ascetic disciplines before one is ready for them is likely to have to modify one’s ascetic ideals or else accept a revised estimate of one’s strength and limitation. The life-principle is a nonmaterial reality which manifests as the aura in which the physical body is immersed. It keeps vital organs and vital parts in condition and activity until in vanishes as death and merges with the astral (mental-emotional) form instead. It can also manifest electromagnetically. What are the “higher bodies”? Just as humans have a physical body with which to operate in the physical World, so one has a vital body, an emotional body, and a mental body through which to express these other parts of one’s nature. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
These bodies survive the death of the physical body, but are reduced to seed atoms when, between spiritual rebirth, humans pass into a state of happy dreamless slumber. However, from the philosophical viewpoint, the “higher bodies” are simply thought bodies, or, more correctly, states of consciousness. The body’s health or sickness shows only the surface of what is happening: the inner human is concerned with it too. One’s thought, feeling, attitude, and actions—one’s whole character—reflect it. However, the inner human is unseen; hence only fragments get known. For there lies the aura where causes precede the physical effects. Only now in recent years has the aura been clearly photographed, both in black and white and on colour film. Just as a particular body may reject someone else’s surgically transplanted organ, so a particular aura may reject someone else’s as it impinges in close contact. Repulsion will be strongly felt. Some aura of the owner clings to much-used and much-worn objects. If the physical body has a limb amputated, the etheric body remains whole. If an eye is removed, the etheric eye remains untouched, whole. Behind, within, and around the physical body there is another and invisible body which we may all the vital body. This is a kind of archetype or pattern for the physical body. On several points they coincide, but not on others. This subtler etheric body comes into existence before actual birth and remains for a while after actual death. During incarnation it is closely connected with the physical body and especially with its vitality, health, and sickness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
The part of it which surrounds the physical body and which we may call the vital aura should not be confused with the other and larger aura wherein emotions and thoughts are reflected. During experiments which I made with a group of London physicians before the war, it was found that this vital aura extended for about forty-five centimeters beyond the physical body. When the vital aura as in a devitalize, fatigued condition, there was less resistance to sickness; but when it was energized the resistance increased. The life-force which we draw from the universal life-force enters into the vital body. Resistance can be increased by deep breathing, by exercise, and by imagining the life-force as a white light entering through the head and penetrating downwards into every cell of the physical body. This also helps the healing process in sickness. Not only are the cells permeated by these methods, but they are also purified. The body does not function blindly like some machine. On the contrary it is an expression of the divine wisdom and the divine power, which are taking care of every cell within it from head to toe If the personal ego, with its materialistic ignorance and blind desires, did not willfully or unknowingly interfere with the body’s natural operation in health and in sickness, we would have much less trouble with it. Even so, despite the constant interference of the ego, the body is still a remarkable tribute to the wisdom and power inherent within it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
The healing powers of Nature truly exist, quite apart from the medical powers evoked by physicians, but they exist like electricity. To benefit by them we must draw them, focus on the, and concentrate them on ourselves. This is done by our strong and sufficient faith, by our own concentration of attention, and by our relaxing and stilling of the whole being. One will feel the Power moving through the flesh of one’s arm and hand, tingling in one’s fingers. One will feel the victorious attitude permeating one’s mind. If at all, because there is such peace revealed by the body, speech, and movement, wrinkles come slower to one’s face. Let us regard our bodies in the Lord’s way rather than the World’s way. When you look into the mirror, what thoughts run through your mind about your body? If you experience a flood of disparaging thoughts, you are far from alone. Recent studies find that approximately 63 percent of women and 50 percent of men in the United States of America are dissatisfied with their body and view it negatively—statistics that are reflected in the Latter-day Saint community. The modern human suffers from a certain physical sickness and some mental ailments which are of one’s own making. This is because one’s thoughts are forever centering in one’s personal ego, one’s emotions forever revolving round one’s little self. If one will create an oasis in this desert by daily and purposely withdrawing into the impersonal atmosphere of the higher nature, one can help to free oneself from the one and heal oneself of the other. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
What is the real power that works these cures? Who is competent to probe these workings and explain them accurately? The wonderful truth of reality hidden behind the illusion of this mortal World is often the greatest and grandest discovery one can make. There are miracles from the divine that we can access by diving in to the hidden and latent powers of the human mind by deep concentration. The first principle of healing is to stop the obstructive resistance of the little ego so carried away by the belief that it can successfully manage its own life. The method of doing this is to cast out all negative thoughts, all destructive feelings, and all excessive egoisms. The second principle is to attune the individual to the universal life-fore. The method of doing this is to learn the art of relaxing body and mind. The life-principle in humans can certainly heal one’s body, but the faculty conditions in that body which one must put right only by oneself. That is one’s share of the therapeutic work, and not the life-principle’s. That is where one must give it one’s co-operation. If one expects it to do everything, and is too ignorant or indolent do one’s part, one may get the healing but it cannot be more than an imperfect one. If one succeeds in arousing the “Spirit-Energy” one may direct it, if one chooses, toward defective bodily structures or toward faulty organic functions. This will effectually supplement whatever remedial agent is being used and perhaps even supplant it. How few have learned that is not the quantity of medicine they swallow but the degree of contact with Nature’s life force that they establish which cures their diseases. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
The same power which can illuminate the seeking mind can also heal the suffering body. One foundational gospel truth about the body is the principle that having a physical body is a Godlike attribute—you are more like God with a body than without. Our religion stands virtually alone in believing that God has a tangible body of flesh and bone and that our bodies were literally created in His likeness. In the Pearl of Great Price we read that “in the image of his own body, male and female, created he them,” (see Moses 6.8-9). To become as God requires gaining a body like He has and learning to correctly comprehend and use it. Those who chose not to follow God in the premortal state were denied mortal bodies. The Prophet Joseph Smith stated that Satan’s lack of a body is a punishment to him. Perhaps that is why he possesses so many people and fills them with evil passions and desires. The body, then, is necessary for progression and for obtaining a fulness of joy. Having a mortal body indicated that you chose rightly in the premortal state. Inherent in the mortal body are powers and capabilities that enable you to continue to progress toward Godhood. The body is not merely a mobile unit for the head nor a carnal vexation for the spirit as some believe. Rather, it is an integral, powerful component of the soul, for “the spirit and the body are the soul of man,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 88.15. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
Being privileged to know about the literal embodiment of God and the progressive nature of the body gives us a rare vantage point from which to comprehend and enjoy its tremendous capabilities. At this very moment, you are bathed in a swirling kaleidoscope of light, heat, pressure, vibrations, molecules, radiation, and mechanical forces. Without the senses, all of this would seem like nothing more than a void of darkness and silence. The next time you take in the beauty of a sunset, a flower, or a friend, remember this: God blessed us with sensations and sensations make it all possible. If new senses could be added—if we could “see” gamma rays, “hear” changes in barometric pressure, or “taste” light, what would the World be like? A second truth the scriptures offer about the body is the clarification of its nature as a scared gift from God. Though in mortality, at this point in evolution, we will all die unless a vaccine for death is invented. However, because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we will all be resurrected and united with our bodies forever. “Fr as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive,” reports 1 Corinthians 15.22. Indeed sharp contrast to the World’s definition of a “perfect” body is our belief in a perfected body—a body together with a spirit—that has overcome both physical and spiritual death. A perfect or perfected body can ultimately be obtained only through Jesus Christ. Sensory systems link us to the external World and shape the flow of information to the brain. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
The scriptures warn us not to trifle with sacred things and to be wary of treating the body disrespectfully. “Can ye lay aside these things, and trample the Holy One under your feet; yea, can ye be puffed up in the pride of your hearts; yea, will ye still persist in the wearing of costly apparel and setting your hearts upon vain things of the World? Yea, will ye persist in supposing that ye are better one than another?” reports Alma 5.53-54. Sensory systems select, analyze, and transduce information from the surrounding World and send it to the brain. Private sensations do not correspond perfectly to external stimuli. Studies in psychophysics relate physical energies to the sensations we experience. The eyes and the brain form a complex system for sensing light. Vision is based on an active, computer-like analysis of light patterns. All of the senses rely on a complex series of mechanical, chemical, and neural events to convert stimuli onto messages understood by the brain. Such scriptures beg us to consider how we regard our bodies. If you become preoccupied with manipulating or adorning are you using your gift? If you do not properly care for your body, to what extent are you limiting your gift? If you use your body in direct opposition to the commandments of God, what ends will your gift serve? The scriptures ask a pointed question: “If a gift is bestowed upon ne, and one receive not the gift, what doth it profit the human?” reports Doctrine and Covenants 88.33. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
The purpose of the body is to help us learn, progress, serve, and glorify the Giver of the gift: God. Consider the words of Bob Edens, who had his sight restored at the age 51 after being blind since birth: “I never would have dreamed that yellow is so…so yellow. I do not have the words, I am amazed by yellow. But red is my favourite colour. I just cannot believe red. I cannot wait to get up each day to see what I can see. I saw some bees the other day and they were magnificent. I saw a truck drive by in the rain and throw a spray in the air. It was marvelous. And did I mention, I saw a falling leaf just drifting through the air?” If you are ever tempted to take sensory impressions for granted, remember Bon Edens. As his words show, sensation is our window to the World. All our meaningful behaviour, our awareness of physical reality, and our ideas about the Universe ultimately spring from the senses. It may be no exaggeration then, to claim that the gifts God blesses us with are “sensational.” Too often, however, people mistakenly presume that the body is intended to glorify the self. Disrespecting our body in any manner—flaunting it, disparaging it, participating in immoral behaviour, or neglecting it—constitutes rejecting the gift. A wise and loving God counsels us instead to be grateful for our body and to become a wise steward of it. To become a grateful and wise steward of the body often requires giving up something Worldly to gain something Heavenly. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
Vision gives us wide access to the World. In one instant you can view a star light-years away, and in the next, you can peer into the microscopic Universe of a dewdrop. Yet, vision also narrows what we observe. Like the other sense, vision acts as a data reduction system. It selects, analyzes, and filters information until only important details remain. In similar fashion, each of our senses routinely “boils down” floods of information into a stream of useful data. How does data reduction take place? Some selection occurs because sensory receptors are biological transducers. A transducer is a device that converts one kind of energy into another. For example, an electric guitar converts string vibrations into electrical signals, which are amplified and fed to a speaker. Pluck a strong and the speak with blast out sound. However, if you shine a light on the string our pour cold water on it, the speaker will remain silent. (The owner of the guitar, however, might get quite loud at this point!) Similarly, each sensory organ is most sensitive to a select type of range and energy. These are the stimuli that it can convert to nerve impulses. For instance, visible light is just a small slice of the electromagnetic spectrum (entire spread of electromagnetic wavelengths). The spectrum also includes infrared and ultraviolet light, radio waves, television broadcasts, gamma rays, and other energies. If your eyes were not limited in sensitivity, you would “see” a distorting jumble of energies. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
Therefore, to preserve our body and senses, we may need to give up short-term pleasures of overeating, the avoidance of proper exercise, or the viewing of others’ bodies as objects for self-gratification. With such forsaking of Worldly practices come tremendous spiritual gains. Realizing and following the truth about the body brings freedom—freedom from the tyranny of vanity, fashion, envy, superficiality, self-criticism, backbiting, the ill effects of overeating, substance addiction, pornography, tattooing, and a host of other forms of Worldly weight and oppression. Developing an understanding of the true purpose of the body enhances our ability to use our agency, to progress, and to find joy. Another truth the scriptures teach about the body is that it is a temple. “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?” reports 1 Corinthians 6.19. The body and the person are not to be judged using Worldly criteria. What makes a temple precious is what it allows us to learn and to do. Many buildings are outwardly beautiful, but only within the temple can the splendor and magnificence of God’s eternal truth and promises be found. Likewise, the worth of the body is great in the sight of God, but he preciousness of the body comes from what it allows us to learn and do and from what it radiates from within. We must enable our temple-bodies to radiate the light, love, and truth of Christ. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
What we experience is also influenced by sensory analysis. As they process information, the senses divide the World into important perceptual features (basic stimulus patterns). For vision, such features include lines, shapes, edges, spots, colours, and other patterns. Alma asks: “Have ye spiritually been born of God? Have ye received his image in your countenances?” reports Alma 5.14. A Christlike countenance that radiates truth, charity, and hope constitutes true beauty—beauty in the eyes of the ultimate beholder, God. True beauty comes from who and what an individual is. Such divine beauty is felt more than it is seen and is not bound by culture, age, or other Worldly criteria. Because he was denied a mortal body, Satan understands all too well how precious bodies are. He seeks to confuse and tempt us to misuse the body or even to reject it so that we might be miserable as he is. “Wherefore, humans are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto humans. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great mediator of all humans, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all humans might be miserable like unto himself,” reports 2 Nephi 2.27. Pain can be reduced or controlled by altering factors that affect pain intensity. Way of mistreating the body abound in all cultures. Amid such influences, treating the body properly requires deliberate thought and effort. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
Our Father in Heaven will help us with the struggles we face with our mortal bodies. He created us and our bodies and pronounced all that He had made as very good. Sensory adaption, selective attention, and sensory gating significantly modify our experiences. Only a small part of the sensory information surrounding us actually reaches the brain. “And I, God, saw everything that I had made, and, behold, all things which I had made were very good; and the evening and the morning were the sixth day,” reports Moses 2.31. The existence of synesthesia suggest that the senses are not entirely isolated from one another. Our private sensory Worlds are made up of a complex blend of information from all the senses. Seeking to understand the divine nature of the body and accepting the healing that comes from that understanding are the most powerful means by which you can overcome Worldly weight associated with the body—whether that weight is physical, ideological, emotional or behavioural. As Satan would conspire to have you be discontent with and disrespectful of your own and others’ bodies, God will inspire a different view. If you choose, through the Atonement, Jesus Christ can heal your mind, and heart. As you treat your own and others’ bodies in a manner consistent with the scriptures, your vision of the body will be transformed. You will recognize the illusions of the World, and you will experience a release from Worldly views and practices. Faith in these principles about the body shall helps make you whole. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
In some instances, the senses act as feature detectors that pick up very specific patterns. After they have analyzed information, sensor systems must code it. During sensory coding, important features of the World are converted into neural messages understood by the brain. God values us because of who we are, not how we look. If you criticize another’s appearance, this behaviour is inconsistent with gospel teaching. Now sin have marred God’s perfect work. However, even now all created things declare the glory of His excellence. There is nothing, save the selfish heart of humans, that lives unto itself. No bird that cleaves the air, no animal that moves upon the ground, but ministers to some other life. There is no leaf of the forest, or lowly blade of grass, but has its ministry. Every tree and shrub and leaf pours forth that elements of life without which neither human nor animal could live; and human and animal, in turn, minister to the life of tree and shrub and leaf. The flowers breathe fragrance and unfold their beauty in blessing to the World. The sun sheds tis light to gladden a thousand Worlds. The ocean, itself the source of all our springs and fountains, receives the streams from every land, but takes to give. The mists ascending from its bosom fall in showers to water the Earth, that it may bring forth and bud. Evolution tells us that we evolved from animals to strip us of the glory of being made in God’s image. God is not an animal, but the high, most exalted, divine creation that ever has or ever will exist. Do not discount your body and soul. The angels of glory find their joy in giving—giving love and tireless watch-care to souls that are fallen and unholy. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
Heavenly beings woo the hearts of humans; they bring to this morbid World optimism from the courts above; by gentle and patient ministry they move upon the human spirit, to bring the lost into a fellowship with Christ which is even closer than they themselves can know. Sensory localization means that the type of sensation you experience depends on which brain area is activated. Some brains areas receive visual information, others receive auditory information, and still other receive taste or touch. Knowing which areas are active tells us, in general, what kinds of sensations you are feeling. Sensory localization may someday make it possible to artificially restore sight, hearing, or other senses. In fact, researchers have already used a miniature television camera to send electrical signals to the brain. One man who has an implant of this type can “see” 100 dots of light. Like a sports scoreboard, these lights can be used to form crude letters. A larger number of dots could make reading, and “seeing” large objects, such as furniture and doorways, possible. A major barrier to such systems is the brain’s tendency to reject implanted electrodes. It is fascinating to realize that “seeing” and “hearing” take place in the brain, not in the eye or ear. Information arriving from the sense organs creates sensations. When the brain organizes sensations into meaningful patterns, we speak of perception. God created our bodies to help us be able to progress and become like Him. We can show God we appreciate our bodies by caring for them and using them as they were intended. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
The scriptures tell us that is we will turn to the Lord, ultimately “all things shall work together for our good,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 105.40. On an individual level, political involvement for the Christian entails not only voting and other basic responsibilities of citizenship, but dealing directly with political issues, particularly where justice and human dignity are at stake. A friend of mine, a prominent attorney, experienced this first hand. Dr. Jorge Crespo has always been an activist. For years he was an attorney for labour unions, fighting for justice and humane working conditions for labourers. He agreed to consider prison ministry. However, as soon as Dr. Crespo walked into the cellblocks of a prison, he felt a “deep sensation of pain, something like an echo of the pain of the prisoners. Since we are made in God’s image, we have been given His compassion toward our neighbour,” he explained. As Dr. Crespo investigated prison conditions, he uncovered, to his horror, instances of cruelty, deprivation, and misery. In one prison twenty prisoners were wedged into a cell the size of a small bedroom. In another inmates received less care than animals; their food budget was less than that of the officer’s guard dogs. In most women’s prisons, children were incarcerated along with their mothers. In some cases they were being used as pawns in child prostitution rings to make profits for their parents, the prison guards, politicians or three. Some parents even sold their children to escape jail time for crimes they had committed. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
There were also reports of inhumane treatment. Some prisoners had confessed to crimes of which they were innocent in order to escape measures. Dr. Crespo and his colleagues documented their case, then began to educate the public through press, radio, and television. They sent letters to the prison wardens with copies to the minister of government; they met with ministers of social rehabilitation and justice. Their campaign was not without personal sacrifice and political risk. Finally, they approached the tribunal overseeing constitutional enforcement, a governmental committee safeguarding provisions for human rights. Dr. Crespo spent two hors testifying about the despicable prison conditions as well as the inhuman treatment of inmates and those who had been detained for crimes but not yet proven guilty. The justices were shocked. Never before had such ugly topic been addressed in their ornate Victorian chambers. At the conclusion, the vice-president leaned forward to Dr. Crespo. “You have come here as Christians,” he said, “and what you have done today is truly Christian. That is why atheists are trying to strip God from the government and public life. They want to enforce tyranny and for people to forget the principles of the gospel so they will feel okay abusing people. As a result of Dr. Crespo’s efforts, he was able to organize a group of Christian police officers who are working to assure humane police investigation that does not rely on brutality. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
Dr. Crespo says the political and personal risks have been worth it. “To act as Christians we have to stand against injustice, and with prophetic voice talk courageously about truth, justice, fear, love. We ought not to bear infamy or atrocities. I believe a Christian who will remain silent is not a Christian.” Activists Christians like Dr. Jorge Crespo who work as private citizens to address problems within the structures of government do so not as moral busybodies who are seeking to foist their morals onto all of society by the force of law, but as those who have a passion for justice, as those who respect all persons as unique image bearers of God and who therefore seek to treat them with justice. Christians who are politicians can bear a biblical witness on political structures, just as they do in medicine, law, business, labour, education, the arts, or any other walk of life. God-fearing rulers are blessings bestowed upon humankind. Even if such cases benefit society more than their own political careers, they exhibit this in their moral witness and their willingness to stand up for unpopular causes. Remember, those that worship God, must worship Him in “SPIRIT and TRUTH.” Your spirit has one supreme function: To relate to God. “And He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for HIM who died for them and rose again. Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh (according to Worldly standards and values that derive from living as if one’s present physical life is all that matters). Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh,” reports 2 Corinthians 5.15-16. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
Christians can also bring mercy, compassion, and friendship to those in cutthroat business of politics. Sometimes even minor things can have a significant ripple effect in the everyday business of government. Christians in public office are motivated by something more than popularity or self-interest, something that frees them from being held hostage to political expediency. Their motivation to pursue what is right, in obedience to God, also gives them a source of wisdom and confidence beyond their own abilities. At the end of all its adventures, the lower self may indeed have to go, but the indestructible higher self will not go. In this sense there is no utter annihilation of the individual, no complete mergence of it into an all-swallowing ocean of cosmic consciousness, as s many New World critics of the Old World wisdom believe to be the latter’s last word. Because of the paradoxically dual nature which the Overself possesses, it is very difficult to make clear the concept of the Overself. Human beings are rooted in the ultimate mind through the Overself, which therefore partakes on the one hand of a relationship with a vibratory World and on the other of an existence which is above all relations. A difficulty is probably due to the vagueness or confusion about which standpoint it is to be regarded from. It if it thought of as the human soul, then the vibrator movement is connected with it. If it is thought of as transcending the very notion of humanity, and therefore in its undifferentiated character, the vibratory moment must disappear. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
If we are to think correctly, we cannot stop with thinking of the Overself as being only within us. After this idea has become firmly established for its metaphysical and devotional value, we must complete the concept by thinking of the Overself as being also without us. If in the first concept it occupies a point in space, in the second one it is beyond all considerations of place. On the evening of 21 September 1823—a few months before he was eighteen years old—Joseph Smith went to bed as usual. He prayed earnestly that God would forgive his folly and rebellion. He prayed to know his standing with God. It has been nearly three and a half years since the day of his vision and he prayed with all his might that God would show him what he should do. He was confident that God would answer his prayer. While he was praying, there appeared in his room a light which was bright than noonday. In this light an angel stood by his bedside. The angel seemed to be standing in the air, for his bare feet did not touch the floor. He wore a loose white robe which was very bright, and he was glorious to look upon. When Joseph first saw the angel he was afraid. However, the fear soon left as he heard his name called. The angel said he was Moroni and that he had a message from the Lord. “God has work for you to do,” the angel Moroni said. “Your name shall be had for good and evil among all nations, kindred and tongues.” The messenger told Joseph that hidden away was a book written upon gold plates telling of the people who long ago lived in the land of the Americas, and telling where they came from, and containing the fullness of the everlasting gospel as given by Jesus to these ancient people. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
You see, I am alive, I am alive. I stand in good relation to the Earth. I stand in good relation to God. I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful. I stand in good relation to the Heavens. Teach your children what we have taught our children—that the Earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons and daughters of the Earth. If people spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves. This we know. The Earth does not belong to us; we belong to the Earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons and daughters of the Earth. We did not weave the web of life; we are merely a strand in it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. We give thanks and bless Thee, O Lord our God, for the Bible and for the worship of this day and for the prophets, which Thou hast given us for holiness and for rest, for joy and gladness, for glory and delight. Evermore may Thy name be continually praised by every living being. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hallowest the Sabbath and America and the festive seasons. Heavenly Father, we invoke Thy divine assistance upon the scholars and teachers associated in the study of the Holy Bible in the land of America, and in all the lands of the dispersion. We pray also for those leaders who spread learning among the people, the leaders of the community, those who head schools of learning as well as those who exercise authority in the courts and sacred law. May they, their disciples, the disciples of their disciples and all who apply themselves in the study of the Holy Bible be granted Heavenly salvation. Bestow upon them grace, lovingkindness and mercy, long life, ample sustenance, health of body and enlightenment of the mind. May they be blessed with children who will not neglect the Holy Bible. May the Ruler of the Universe bless them, prolong their lives, increase their days, and add to their years. May they be saved and delivered from every trouble and misfortune. May the Lord of Heaven be their help at all times and seasons; and let us say, Amen. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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Mr. William Wirt Winchester Believes in the Sanctity of Property Because He is a Millionaire!
The fine women of Salem had some extracurricular activities that were hardly orthodox. Men have been burned at the stake for speaking ill of the Christian creed. People fought, not only verbally but physically, over their religious beliefs. Most people of that day used alcohol liquors. In almost every home liquor could be found. If a man was drunk it was not considered indecent, nor was his reputation injured by such conduct. Ministers, as well as doctors, were given a drink whenever they made a call at a home. It was almost impossible for them to make their daily calls without becoming intoxicated. Wine was generously served at religious ceremonies–marriages, christenings, funerals, and ordinations. Joseph Smith might have noted the conduct of members in a revival meeting. People would come from miles around to attend these meetings, camping in cabins and tents. At daybreak a trumpet was sounded to awaken the people. Services were held almost all day long, scarcely allowing time to eat, and giving no time at all for recreation and play. Singing and shouting during sermons was common. Men, women, children often fell to the floor in trances, sometimes barking like dogs. Now and then some would get what was know as the “jerks” and their heads would jerk back and forth rapidly. There seemed no way to stop these “jerks” though persons would run, dance, pray to escape them. As they listened to the thundering voice of the evangelist, many would cry and scream. Some ministers believed that the wilder the crowd became the more successful was the revival. Meantime, the FBI could find no DNA material from the site which matched the material of any current missing persons. Nevertheless, they were deeply courteous about having been called in, and they did confirm that the DNA of several persons was present in the evil morass and that the whole resembled an antiquated but gruesome crime scene. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Were these some of the things which were displeasing in the sight of the Lord? Were these people drawing near to God with their lips but keeping their hearts from them. Undoubtedly these were puzzling questions of fourteen-year-old Joseph Smith. Listening to the bird’s sing on this cool spring morning, I was reminded of how excitement used to fill this time of the year because it was near the end of a school year, and ever closer to graduation and adult life. Joy, sorrow, tears, lamentations, laughter—to all these music gives voice, but in such a way that we are transported from the World of unrest to the World of peace, and see reality in a new way, as if we were sitting by a mountain lake and contemplating hills and woods and clouds in the tranquil and fathomless water. The work and the worry that fell to my lot through the practical interest I took in organ building, made me sometimes wish that I had never troubled myself about it, but if I do not give it up, the reason is that the struggle for the good organ is to me a part of the struggle for truth. An organ is like a cow; one does not look at its horns so much as its milk. God is with us. The light of the knowledge of glory of God is seen in the face of Jesus Christ. From the days of eternity, the Lord Jesus Christ was one with the father; He was the image of God, the image of His greatness and majesty, the outshining of His glory. It was it was to manifest this glory that He came into our World. To this sin-darkened Earth He came to reveal the light of God’s love–to be God with us. Therefore it was prophesied of Him. By coming to dwell with us, Jesus Christ was to reveal God both to humans and to angels. He was the Word of God—God’s thoughts made audible. If we are not grateful to God, we can never see the greatness in our lives. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
When we start to appreciate, we will begin to elevate! Some people regard logical thinking as the deadest and driest of our activities and may therefore be repelled by the privileged position. However, logical thinking—Reasoning—is valid and no one can deny it (philosophically speaking). You cannot, as we already know, prove that there are no proofs. However, if you wish to regard all human ideals as illusions and all human love as biological by-products, you can. That is, you can do so without running into flat self-contradiction and nonsense. Whether you can do so without extreme umplausibility—without accepting a picture of things which no one really believes—is another matter. Besides reasoning about matters of fact, humans also make moral judgments—“I ought to do this”—“I ought not to do that”—“This is good”—“That is evil.” Two views have been held about moral judgments. Some people think that when we make them we are not using our Reason, but are employing some different power. Other people think that we make them by our Reason. I myself hold this second view. That is, I believe that the primary moral principles on which all others depend are rationally perceived. We “just see” that there is no reason why my neighbour’s happiness should be sacrificed to my own, as we “just see” that things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another. If we cannot prove either axiom, that is not because the irrational but because they are self-evident and all proofs depend on them. Their intrinsic reasonableness shines by its own light. It is because all morality is based on such self-evident principles that we say to a human, when we would recall one to right conduct, “Be reasonable.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
However, this is by the way. For our present purposes it does not matter which of these two views you adopt. The important point is to notice that moral judgments raise the same sort of difficulty for Naturalism as any other thoughts. We always assume in discussions about morality, as in all other discussions, if they can be fully accounted for by some non-moral and non-rational cause, that the other human’s views are worthless. When two humans differ about good and evil we soon hear tis principle being brought into play. “Mr. William Wirt Winchester believes in the sanctity of property because he is a millionaire”—“He believes in Pacifism because he is a coward”—“He approves of corporal punishment because he is a necrophile.” Such taunts may often be untrue: but the mere fact that they are made by the one side, and hotly rebutted by the other, shows clearly what principle is being used. Neither side doubts that if they were true, they would decisive. No one (in real life) pays attention to any oral judgment which can be shown to spring from non-moral and non-rational causes. The Freudian and the Marxist attack traditional morality precisely on this ground—and with wide success. All humans accept the principle. However, of course, what discredits particular moral judgments must equally discredit moral judgments as a whole. If that fact that humans have such ideas as ought and ought not at all can be fully explained by irrational and non-moral causes, then those ideas are an illusion. The Naturalist is ready to explain how the illusion arose. Chemical conditions produce life. Life, under the influence of natural selection, produces consciousness. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
Conscious organisms which behave in one way live longer than those which behave in another. Living longer, they are more likely to have offspring. Inheritance, and sometimes teaching as well, pass on their mode of behaviour to their young. Thus in every species a pattern of behaviour is built up. In the human species conscious teaching plays a larger part in the building it up, and the tribe further strengthens it by killing individuals who to not conform. They also invent gods who are said to punish departures from it. Thus, in time, there comes to exist a strong human impulse to conform. However, since this impulse is often at variance with the other impulses, a mental conflict arises, and the human expresses it by saying “I want to do A but I ought to do B.” This account may (or may not) explain why humans do in fact make moral judgments. It does not explain how they could be right in making them. It excludes, indeed, the very possibility of their being right. For when humans say “I ought” they certainly think they are saying something, and something true about the nature of the proposed action, and not merely about their own feelings. However, if Naturalism is true, “I ought” is the same sort of statement as “I itch” or “I am going to be sick.” In real life when a human says “I ought” we may reply, “Yes. You are right. That is what you ought to do,” or else, “No. I think you are mistaken.: However, in a World of Naturalists (if Naturalist really remembered their philosophy out of school) the only sensible reply would be, “Oh, are you?” All moral judgments would be statements about the speaker’s feelings, mistaken by him for statements about something else (the real moral quality of actions) which does not exist. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
Such a doctrine, I have admitted, is not flatly self-contradictory. The Naturalist can, if one chooses, brazen it out. One can day, “Yes. I quite agree that there is no such thing as wrong and right. I admit that no moral judgment can be ‘true’ or ‘correct’ and, consequently, that no one system of morality can be better or worse than another. All ideas of good and evil are hallucinations—shadows cast on the outer World by the impulses which we have been conditioned to feel.” Indeed many Naturalists are delighted to say this. However, then they must stick to it; and fortunately (though in consistently) most real Naturalists do not. A moment after they have admitted that good and evil are illusion, you will find them exhorting us to work for posterity, to educate, revolutionise, liquidate, live and die for the good of the human race. A Naturalist like Mr. H. G. Wells spent a long life doing so with passionate eloquence and zeal. However, surely this is very odd? Just as all the books about spiral nebulae, atoms and cave men would really have led you to suppose that the Naturalists claimed to be about to know something, so all the books in which Naturalists tell us what we ought to do would really make you believe that they thought some ideas of good (their own, for example) to be somehow preferable to others. For they write with indignation like humans proclaiming what is good in itself and denouncing what is evil in itself, and not at all like humans recording that they personally like concentrated cranberry juice, but some people prefer sweetened cranberry juice. Yet if the “oughts” of Mr. Wells and, say, Franco are both equally the impulses which Nature has conditioned each to have and both tell us nothing about any objective right or wrong, whence is all the fervour? Do they remember while they are writing thus that when they tell us we “ought to make a better World” the words “ought” and “better” must, on their own showing, refer to an irrationally conditioned impulse which cannot be true or false any more than a vomit or a yawn? #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
My idea is that sometimes they do forget. That is their glory. Holding a philosophy which excludes humanity, they yet remain human. At the sight of injustice they throw all their Naturalism to the winds and speak like humans and like human of genius. They know far better than they think they know. However, at other times, I suspect, they are trusting in a supposed way of escape from their difficulty. It works—or seems to work—like this. They say to themselves, “Ah, yes. Morality”—or “bourgeois morality” or some such addition—“Morality is an illusion. However, we have found out what modes of behaviour we are pressing you to adopt. Pray, do not mistake us for moralists. We are under an entirely new management” …just as if this would help. It would help if only we grant, firstly, that life is better than death and, secondly, that we ought to care for the lives of our descendants as much as, or more than, for our own. And both these are moral judgments which have, like all others, been explained away by Naturalism. Of course, having been conditioned by Nature in a certain way, we do feel thus about life and about posterity. However, the Naturalists have cured us of mistaking these feelings for insights into what we once called “real value.” Now that I know that my impulse to serve posterity is just the same kind of thing as my fondness for cheese—now that its transcendental pretensions have been exposed for a sham—do you think I shall pay much attention to it? When it happens to be strong (and it has grown considerably weaker since you explained to me its real nature) I suppose I shall obey it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
When it is weak, I shall put my money into cheese. There can be no reason for trying to whip up and encourage the one impulse rather than the other. Not now that I know what they both are. The Naturalists must not destroy all my reverence for conscience on Monday and expect to find me still venerating it on Tuesday. There is no escape along these lines. If we are to continue to make moral judgments (and whatever we say we shall in fact continue) then we must believe that the conscience of humans is not a product of Nature. Only if it is an offshoot of some absolute “on its own” and is not a product of non-moral, non-rational Nature. We must acknowledge the supernatural source for our ideas of good and evil. In other worse, we now know something more about God. If you hold that moral judgment is a different thing from Reasoning you will express tis new knowledge by saying “We now know that God has at least one other attribute than rationality.” If, like me, you hold that moral judgment is a kind of Reasoning, then you will say, “We now know more about the Divine Reason.” And with this we are almost ready to begin our main argument. However, before doing so it will be well to pause of the consideration of some misgivings of misunderstandings which may have already arisen. Happiness is related to good and bad life events, but the impact is smaller than you might imagine. The reason for this is that happiness tends to come from within a person. Subjective well-being is affected by our goals, choices, emotions, values, and personality. The way you perceive, interpret, and manage events is as important as the nature of the events themselves. People who are good a dodging the life’s rough, unsparing treatment (hard knocks) tend to create their own “luck.” As a result, they are happier and seem to negotiate life’s demands more smoothly. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
It is tempting to think that wealth brings happiness. However, does it? To a small degree wealthier people are happier than poorer people. Yet, the overall association between money and happiness is weak. In fact, people who win lotteries are often less happy than they were before, and imagine how much unhappier ill begotten gain might make them. Instant riches usually bring new stresses into a person’s life that tend to cancel out any beneficial effects of wealth. Essentially, money can make it possible to buy the good things in life, but money cannot buy a good life. Happiness usually must become from other sources More educated people tend to be a little happier than the less educated. However, this is most likely just another way of saying that there is a small connection between wealth and happiness. Higher education generally results in higher income and more social status. As education levels rise, more parents ae intellectually equipped to assume some responsibilities now delegated to schools. With the move toward knowledge-based industy and the increase of leisure, we can anticipate a small but significant tendency for highly educated parents to pull their children at least partway out of the public education systems, offering them home instruction instead. This trend will be sharply encouraged by improvements in computer-assisted education, Cisco Telepresence, electronic video recording, holography and other technical fields. Parents and students might sign short-term “learning contracts” with the nearby school, committing them to teach-learn certain courses or course modules. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Students might continue going to school for social and athletic activities or for subjects they cannot learn on their own or under the tutelage of parents or family friends. Mobile education is also a proposal, which would take students out of the classroom not merely to observe but to participate in significant community activity. Curricula would be shaped by students and community groups as well as professional educators. The former United States Commissioner of Education, Harold Howe, II, has also suggested the reverse: bringing the community into the school so that local stores, beauty parlors, prints shops, architecture firms, be given free space in the schools in return for free lessons by the adults who run this. President Trump and other want to keep the schools and class rooms open, so children are being supervised by adults during work hours, which allows the parents to work and the kids to get an education. This reduces crime rates and helps increase income earnings in the future for students. School also serves as a nice social club for children where they make life long friends and memories. Also, school provides nutrition for students and proper nutrition helps to raise the IQ of students and keeps them healthy. Children also learn how to respect authority figures and learn that behaviour has bad consequences, whereas good behaviour and hard work is rewarded. People who live in the age of information must have new skills in three crucial areas: learning, relating, and choosing. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Students will need an enhanced human adaptability. By instructing students how to learn and unlearn and relearn, a powerful new dimension can be added to education. Tomorrow’s illiterate will not be the person who cannot read; one will be the human who has not learned how to learn. By speeding the turnover of people in our lives, we allow less time for trust to develop, less time for friendships to ripen. Thus we witness a search for ways to cut through the polite “public” behaviour directly to the sharing of intimacy. Presented with numerous alternatives, an individual chooses the one most compatible with one’s values. As overchoice deepens, the person who lacks a clear grasp of one’s own values (whatever these may be) is progressively disabled. Worse yet, students are seldom encouraged to analyze their own values and those of their teachers and peers. Millions pass through the education system without once having been forced to search out the contradictions in their own value systems, to probe their own life goals deeply, or even to discuss these matters candidly with adults and peers. Students hurry from class to class. Teachers and professors are harried and grow increasingly remote. Even the “bull session”—informal, extra-curricular discussion about pleasures of the flesh, politics, or religion that helps participants identify and clarify their values—grown less frequent and less intimate as transience rises. Married people report a greater happiness than people who are divorces, separated, or single. It could be that happiness people are simply more likely to get married than to remain sleepless in Seattle. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
However, better explanation for this association is that marriage partners can act as emotional and economic buffers against the hardships of life and a faithful marriage also helps keep people chaste in the eyes of the Lord, in most cases, as long as you are not sleeping with the enemy. There is a beneficial association between happiness and holding spiritual beliefs. Religious beliefs may add to feelings of purpose and meaning in life, resulting in greater happiness. Marriage between partners is a vital part of God’s plan. The Lord has said, “Whoso forbiddeth to marry is not ordained of God, for marriage is ordained of God unto man,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 49.15. Since the beginning, marriage has been a law of the gospel. Marriages are intended to last forever, not just for our mortal lives. Adam and Eve were married by God before there was any death in the World. They had an eternal marriage. They taught the law of eternal marriage to their children and their children’s children. As the years passed, wickedness entered the hearts of the people and the authority to perform this sacred ordinance was taken from the Earth. Through the Restoration of the gospel, eternal marriage has been restored to Earth. Many people in the World consider marriage to be only a social custom, a legal agreement between two people in love together. However, to Latter-day Saints, marriage is much more. Our exaltation depends on marriage, along with other principles and ordinances, such as faith, repentance, baptism, and receiving the gift of the holy Ghost. We believe that marriage is the most sacred relationship that can exist between two loving people. This sacred relationship affects our happiness now and in the eternities. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
Heavenly Father has given us the law of eternal marriage so we can become like Him. The Lord has said: “In the celestial glory there are three Heavens or degrees: and in order to obtain the highest, a human must enter into this order of the priesthood [meaning the new and everlasting covenant of marriage]; and if one does not, one cannot obtain it,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 131.1-3. Another possibility is that church membership may simply provide social support that softens that impact of life’s negative events. Incubation is the term applied to the sleeping in a temple—usually a special shrine or sanctuary used for healing and healing-dreams and dream-oracles alone—as a means of healing. This was practiced by ancient Greek and Babylonians. It was also frequently practiced in ancient Egypt at the temples of Isis and Serapis with effects similar to those of hypnotism. Five hundred years before Christ at the temple of Epidaurus, where the inspiring spirit or god was Aesculapius (the patron saint of modern medicine still), sick patients were put to sleep by priests at the foot of the Aesculapius’ statue. In many cases, they awoke suddenly cured. That the real effectiveness of incubation was not the work of a departed spirit but of Nature in the sleep state combined with the sufferer’s faith, was shown by the custom which still prevails in Greece. Here sleep in a temple of Aesculapius was simply replaced by sleep in the church associated with a Christian saint. Consider a cut had and how Nature at once sets to work to repair the damage. The anatomist tells us that the leucocytes in the blood automatically build a bridge of tissue over the wound’s surface. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
However, what orders the leucocytes to make the needed adjustments? What shows them how to make it? There is obviously an intelligence behind them, a mind within the body outside and apart from the conscious mind. There are miracles in Nature, and at this time, happenings to which science possesses no key. The human consciousness, for instance, is capable of manifesting power which contradict psychological knowledge, just as the human body is capable of manifesting phenomena which contradict medical knowledge. Both powers and phenomena may seem miraculous, but they really issue forth from the hidden laws of human’s own being. The process take pace in the dark only to us. This life-force, this invisible energy, is behind and within, around and above the physical body. Under certain circumstances its rea can be seen and traced out and its recuperative healing power drawn upon. It forms an aura, the etheric or vital body of light, but not the still more elusive and subtle divine body of Light nor the aura of various colours, the astral body. The stereotype of the crotchety antiquated person who id dissatisfied with everything is inaccurate. Life satisfaction and happiness generally do not decline with age. People are living longer and staying healthier, which has greatly delayed age-related declines. When declines do occur, mature people seem better able to cope with them. The hindrances which wrong bodily regimes put in one’s Quest are not only physical but also psychic, emotional, and mental. The condition of a human’s health, the medical state of one’s body, may contribute to one’s spiritual outlook, may enfeeble or enliven one’s faith. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
If union with the Overself-consciousness is to be achieved, or progress to that goal made, the body ought also to share in the benefits received. It too ought to be freer from discordant elements, organs, or operations. The wise student will recognize that one gains more than one loses by such sacrifices as this discipline of the body calls for. The benefits of resisting custom’s dominance are both disproportionate and durable, with a value so high as to make the discipline bearable and the sacrifices smaller. Wen one hears about these ascetic-sound regimes a chill sets in. However, what is it that rebels against them? It is the ego, the weakness of human will. Yet the rebellion is ill-founded, for the body is not tortured by being brought under control—only its perverted, exaggerated, or enslaving appetites suffer by doing so. The regimes themselves are sensible and are not fantastical fads. They are simply indication of the quester’s need to live more carefully than other people, and to change habits which are bad. They are hygienic recommendations offered to those who want to advance their spiritual journey more quickly. The bodily cells are so pervaded with toxic materials, clogged with them, so contaminated by them, that this purificatory work is an essential preliminary to the mystical work, proper for most aspirants except those who have the inborn capability of quickly rising to an intense concentration which frees the cells from such poisons. There is a mass of improperly digested, half-decayed food material lying in the intestines in a fermenting condition, while farther on here are accumulated deposits of petrified impurities on the lining of the colon and the membrane of the bowels. These substances are rejected by they body, which suffers by their presence but is unable to free itself from the without conscious and willing co-operation on the part of its owner. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
The body’s physiological processes are clogged and encumbered by them and its nervous system and brain organ polluted by the inferior blood brought to nourish them. To achieve this aim, a certain preparation as well as purification of the body is required. The spine must be cleared of adhesions, congestions, distortions, shrinkings, and nerve branch pressures. The tissues and blood have to be cleansed of the toxic material accumulated in them. The salvation which frees a human from enslavement to one’s lower nature is necessary and good, but it goes only part of the way to fulfilling one’s needs. One’s fleshly body also requires salvation. It ought to be freed from its poisoned, clogged, and unnatural condition. If it is saturated wit destructive acids or clogged wit decaying material, the body cannot respond so freely to the subtle forces, nor can the brain and nervous system respond so freely if they are stupefied by alcohol or drugs. As the consciousness evolves to a higher level, so the body it functions through must become more refined in quality and purified in nature. Mental equilibrium, deep prayer, cannot be attained without changing the habits which obstruct it. Even if the requisite purification of the body’s cells and blood from all toxins has been achieved, a human must still refrain from starting on those ways which caused toxemia. There is a common error that drugs and medicines are enough to keep us in good health. They are not. The only things that can do so are correct living habits, righting thinking habits, and proper eating habits. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
A knowledge of personal hygiene will keep us in better health than a hundred boxes of pills. We must learn to conform to the laws of hygienic living—mental and physical—if we want to achieve a sound mind in a should body. We may not break those laws with impunity, nor believe that because we have been spiritually healed once we are exempt from the always. The desire to gain purity must provide the power to follow the regimes needed for it. The sediment of egotism in the mind and animality in the flesh cannot be cleared out unless this desire grows strong and remains enduring. The mental courage to cast out those wrong habits of living which unenlightenment of spiritual hygiene has allowed one to pick up, must show itself. People who are satisfied with their jobs tend to be happier, but the association is weak. If fact, it probably just reflects the fact that job satisfaction is a large part of greater life satisfaction. With respect to happiness and personality, it may be fair to paraphrase Paris Hilton, “I am a star and I was born to shine. I am happy, powerful, strong and confident.” To a degree, some people are more temperamentally disposed to be happy, regardless of life events. In general, happier people also tend to be extraverted (outgoing), optimistic, and worry-free. This combination probably influences the balance of beneficial and negative emotions. In general, if they are meeting their personal goals, people tend to be happy. If you feel you are making progress, on a day-to-day basis, on smaller goals that relate to long-term, life goals, this is especially true. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
However, achieving one’s goals does not always lead to happiness. Consider the highly successful person who is absorbed in one’s accomplishments. All it may take is a crisis, like a child’s illness or the death of a friend, to make life feel meaningless. However, if the person begins to act with integrity, meaning can be restored and the crisis resolved. Thus, optimal human functioning involves integrity as well as an ability to accomplish goals. “Doing well,” they say, is associated with happiness. In contrast, “being yourself” is associated with leading a meaningful life. In short, if we are to live with integrity, the goals we purse must express our core interests and values. Examples of the kinds of personal projects (short-term goals) and long-term goals that occupy us: for architect’s the job is usually spent on location. When a project is located nearby, architect may leave the office periodically to stop by the project site. Some short-term goals involved checking in with building developers and engineers to ensure the client’s objectives are met, review projects, and check on any potential obstacles in construction. Many architects believed that if they did great work, somehow society would recognize the contributions and value they were making to the World and reward them with an endless stream of passion projects to grow their firm. However, the truth when it comes to long term goals, running an architecture firm is exactly the same as running any other business. You have to work just as hard to win business as you do to deliver it. An important long-term goal to remember is that your costs of running a business increase over the years. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
Your money goals should define the revenues and profits you will need to accommodate these increased costs, and support the growth you want. Also another long-term goal should be to become innovative and sometimes that requires a history lesson. For an architecture firm, stepping back into the past the Victorian America and seeing what was popular back them, like butler’s pantries, multiple parlors, patio spaces, and yards with green spaces, mixed with some modern style designs is a long-term way to stay relevant. People goals typically focus on who you want to work with. This can include the employees you want on your staff, and it may also include the type of clients you want to attract. Sometimes working with non-profits has provided some firms with not only a great sense of fulfillment but also a deeper connection to their local community. Working with one firm allowed the nonprofit client to connect with an ideal prospect and close a $6,000,000 group up non-profit project, at the height of the COVID-19 crisis pandemic. Who we work with can greatly affect our enthusiasm and motivation on the job, so setting goals around who we choose to work with can have an immense impact on our attitude towards our work. Such goals are crucial because overall well-being is a combination of happiness and meaning. Pursuing goals that are inconsistent with personal interests and values can leave a person feeling uneasy, bothered, and uncomfortable. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
Happier persons tend to be married, comfortable with their work, extraverted, religious, optimistic, and generally satisfied with their lives. They also are making progress toward their goals. However, attain goals that do not express our deeper interests and values may add little to happiness. When, then, makes a good life? Purpose and meaning are important sources of well-being at any point in life. As we have seen, a good life is one that is happy and meaningful. We are most likely to experience a meaningful life when we act with integrity. It is interesting that while achievement and external goals may preoccupy younger persons, integrity becomes increasingly important later in life. “To thine own self be true” may seem like a cliché, but it is actually not a bad place to begin a search for a happy and a satisfying life. “God is not the author of confusion, but of peace. Let all things be done decently and in order,” reports 1 Corinthians 14.33 and 40. Our little World is the lesson book of the Universe. God’s wonderful purpose of grace, the mystery of redeeming love, is the theme into which “angels desire to look,” and it will be their study throughout endless ages. Both the redeemed and the unfallen beings will find in the cross of Christ their science and their song. It will be seen that the glory shining in the face of Jesus is the glory of self-sacrificing love. In the light from Calvary it will be seen that the law of self-renouncing love is the law of life for Earth and Heaven; that the love which “seeketh not her own” has its source in the heart of God; and that in the meek and lowly One is manifested the character of Him who dwelleth in the light which no human can approach unto. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
Sometimes, when a bird cries out, or the wind sweeps through a tree, or an angel whispers in a far-off farm, I hold still and listen a long time. My World turns and goes back to the place where, a thousand forgotten years ago, the bird and the blowing wind were like me, and were my brothers. My soul turns into a tree, and an animal, and a cloud bank. Then changed and odd it comes home and asks me questions. What should I reply? Faithful art Thou, O Lord our God, and faithful are Thy words, for no word of thine shall remain unfulfilled. Thou art a faithful and merciful God and King. Blessed art Thou, O Lord God, who art faithful in fulfilling Thy words. Please be merciful unto America, for it is the fountain of our life, and mayest Thou soon in our day deliver Zion that is grieved in spirit. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who makest America rejoice with her children. Make us rejoice, O Lord our God, with Elijah the prophet, Thy servant, and with the kingdom of the house of David, Thine anointed. Soon may Elijah come and bring joy to our hearts. May no stranger occupy David’s throne and may no usurper inherit his glory. For by Thy holy name Thou hast promised unto one that one’s light will never be extinguished. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the Shield of America. We give Thee thanks and bless Thee, O Lord our God, for the Torah, and for the worship of this day and for the prophets, as well as for this Sabbath day which Thou, O Lord our God, hast given us for holiness and for rest, for glory and delight. Evermore may Thy name be continually praised by every living being. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hallowest the Sabbath. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
Winchester Mystery House
It’s May 1st which means it’s halfway to Halloween! We are hard at work dreaming up a new experience for Halloween 2021 that will feature a projection mapped show on the front of the mansion. Stay tuned for more details coming soon!
“Lord God,” said Mrs. Sarah Winchester, as the flames rose and the fire crackled. “We got a dead girl, a huge mansion that is too big to heat, too big to maintain, too expensive to sale, a bunch of weird books, and a regular tomb of gold with an empty iron coffin in it, and a half-ghost boy standing here. Now this translation just arrived. ‘Here sleeps Annie Winchester, whose mortal hands once made the most beautiful cameos, even for emperors and and kings. Guard me, ye gods and goddesses whose images I render so well. A curse on those who attempt to disturb my resting place.'”
Watch your step in the séance room! There are three exits in this room, The main door, a secret passageway leading into an unfinished closet, and this door that opens to an 8-ft drop into the kitchen below.
Self-Guided Mansion Tour:
👉 Link in bio. winchestermysteryhouse.com
God is Any Respecter of Persons—Understand the Pleasures of the Other!
For centuries sermons have been preached on the terror of death in order to frighten people into believing in eternal life. And the result? Numbness, numbness. What a strange and fateful phenomenon! In all sphere of life, anything repeated over and over again loses its effect. A ball bounced hundreds and hundreds of times will finally not bounce anymore. The best medicine, taken day in, day out, will not longer be effective. A truth constantly repeated, generation after generation, is eventually disbelieved. That is what has happened all around us. People are no longer moved by fear of death or by the hope of eternal life. All they ask is that death not be mentioned. And thus is seems a conspiracy of silence has been descended. We all pretend toward our neighbour that the possibility of one’s death could never happen. If we want to grow into really good people, we must all become familiar with the thought of death. We need not think of it every day or every hour. However, when the path of life leads us to some vantage point where the scene around us fades away and we contemplate the distant view right to the end, let us not close our eyes. Let us pause for a moment, look at the distant view, and then carry on. Thinking about death in this way produces true love for life. When we are familiar with death, we accept each week, each day, as a gift. Only if we are able thus to accept life—bit by bit—does it become precious. God has spoken and ordained that a season of incredible favour is coming your way. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
How can death be overcome? By regarding, in moments of deepest concentration, our lives and those who are part of our lives as though we already had lost them in death, only to receive them back for a little while. “Whom He predestined, them He also called,” reports Romans 8.30. It is fitting that God should predestine humans. For all things are subject to His providence. Now it belongs to providence to direct things towards their end. The end towards which created things are directed by God is twofold; one which exceeds all proportion to created nature, to which end created being can attain accord to the power of its nature. Now if a thing cannot attain to something by the power of its nature, it must be directed thereto by another; thus, an arrow is directed by the archer towards a mark. Hence, properly speaking, a rational creature, capable of eternal life, is led towards it, directed as it were, by God. The reason of the direction pre-exists in God; as in Him is the type of the order of all things towards an end, which we proved above to be providence. Now the type in the mind of the doer of something to be done, is a kind of pre-existence in one of the thing to be done. Hence the type of aforesaid direction of a rational creature towards the end of life eternal is called predestination. For to destine or send. Thus it is clear that predestination, as regards its objects, is a part of providence. Damascene calls predestination an imposition of necessity, after the manner of natural things which are predetermined toward the end. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
This imposition of predestination is clear from his adding: “He does not will malice, nor does He compel virtue.” Whence predestination is not excluded by God. Irrational creatures are not capable of that end which exceeds the faculty of human nature. Whence they cannot be properly said to be predestined; although improperly the term is used in respect of any other end. Predestination applies to angels, just as it does to humans, although they never been unhappy. For movement does not take its species from the term “wherefrom” but from the term “whereto.” Because it matters nothing, in respect of the notion making white, whether one who is made white was before black, yellow, or red. Likewise it matters nothing in respect of the notion of predestination whether one is predestined to life eternal from the state of misery or not. Although it may be said that every conferring of good above that which is due pertains to mercy; as was shown preciously. Even if by a special privilege their predestination were revealed to some, it is not fitting that it should be revealed to everyone; because, if so, those who were not predestined would despair; and security would beget negligence in the predestined. When so many others fall victim at some time to sickness or accident, there is no certainty that one will remain indefinitely immune. The truth is with Jesus Christ, who said that flesh and blood will no inherit eternal life. Life brings its sufferings to every quester, as to every nonquester, as to all beings who move on this Earth. Successful completion of the quest may free one from some of them but could it ever free one from all of them? The happiness one may find cannot be an absolute; it must be qualified. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
The characteristic stamped upon Earthly life are in part unpleasant, miserable, and painful. Sickness and struggle are not merely the result of wrong thinking, as Christian science avers, but native to and almost inevitable in our existence. Were it otherwise, we would be so satisfied that we would never aspire to a higher existence, but anxieties goad us eventually into seeking inner peace, Worldly troubles stir us to seeking unworldly refuge, fated frustrations drive us to seeking diviner satisfactions, and bodily illness to seeking spiritual joy. Ours is the World of the imperfect. The perfect reality could never be expressed amid its limitations. No one has ever “demonstrated” conquest over death, or complete freedom from human afflictions before death. These things are inherent in out lot. Through death’s presence we are aroused to the need of eternal life; through afflictions to the need of eternal serenity. They exist only in the spirit. So the health and prosperity we can demonstrate are essentially spiritual. Out of this physical suffering one should have learned the lessons of a deep wisdom: first, that this Earth is not one’s home but only a camp; second, that this body is not one’s true self but only a garment; third, that suffering, disappointment, or discontent is inseparable from Earthly life, real happiness is to be found only in the super-Earthly life; fourth, that the full force of the mind must be developed by renunciation, sacrifice, concentration, and aspiration so that it can even here to a large extent create an inner life that continues peacefully in whatever state the body may find itself. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
The pains and maladies which accompany and punctuate physical existence are not taken away from the spiritually aware human. Their presence continues to act as a reminder—as much to one as to all other humans—that just because they do accompany the body’s life, that life is an imperfect and unsatisfying one. One’s five senses are working like all other human’s and so must report the painful as well as pleasurable sensations. However, what one does gain is a peace deeper than the body’s sensations, and unbreakable by their painful nature. One part of one—the lesser—may suffer; but the other part—the greater—remains undisturbed. In one’s higher and spiritual nature one is well fortified against these afflictions, sustained by Heavenly forces denied to other people. The Buddha was not immune from disease. The austerities he practiced during his search for enlightenment permanently affected his health, and his ceaseless activity for forty-five years greatly weakened him towards the end of his life. He often suffered from a severe headache and in his old age he suffered from severe backache which sometimes forced him to stop a sermon halfway and ask one of one’s disciples to continue from where he left off. The unsuitable meals which we was sometimes force to eat were responsible for a dyspepsia which persisted throughout his life, culminating in his last fatal illness of dysentery. However, none of these ailments prevented him from being always ready with help for those who needed it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
Will humans ever be able to retain and maintain the same physical form permanently? To some it would be the height of happiness to realize such an aim, whereas to others it would be a sentence of captivity without hope of release. If the self-actualized able to prolong one’s physical life far beyond the normal period? Is there any truth in the Indian legends of yogis who lived for a thousand years or more? If not, why should such advanced humans lack this power? The answer to the first question is in the negative; to the second question probably in the negative. The answer to the third question is that transiency is the law governing all formed things; that death is the inevitable complement of birth because, as Buddha pointed out, whatever has a beginning in time must likewise have an end in time; and that the truth is that the self-actualized does not really die for one persistently is reborn in Christ in order to help humankind. We need the body—all of us, not materialists nor ordinary persons only—therefore we must respect it. It is with the ears that we listen to Beethoven: that is, with the body. It is with the eyes that we read beautiful poetry: again with the body. Let us not decry the body. If enlightenment is to be full, and completely balanced, it must not only occur in the thinking intellect and emotional feeling; it must also occur in the acting physical body. The physical body is each person’s responsibility. One has to live with it as well as live in it. The failure to care properly for it makes it complain. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
The only language in which the body can complain with most men and women is that of sickness, disease, or malfunction; with others, a silent intuitive feeling is enough. However, in the first case although its speech is heard, its message is often misunderstood, ignored, or rejected. One can and may transcend the body and the body’s World or deny them in mystical meditation, metaphysical speculation. However, this does not get rid of them. They are a fact which confronts one as soon as the speculation passes, or the meditation ebbs. It is then that the value of health must be recognized, the conditioning by surroundings properly appraised. Only on such a physical foundation can the mental exercises have enough good results; otherwise it is too hard a struggle to aspire and try to mediate. The modern civilized environment is artificial, is hostile to spiritual development, and periodic retreat or flight from it is essential. Those who feel they are making no progress at all and those who find what little they do make is slow and tedious, should look to neglected factors in their individual case. The physical body, for instance: does it get right diet, exercise, breathing, and relaxing, or does it sin against the laws of hygienic living? Sane and balanced life commands us to keep physically fit so far as doing so is within our power—which means so far as Universal laws permit. Physical fitness is the harmonious and efficient functioning of each part of the body. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
The yoga of body control must be broadly interpreted to mean not postural exercise alone, but the discipline of the whole physical organism. It is better for instance, to eat brown bread that to be able to contort the body in yoga posture number 57! Not only mind, not only hear, but also body is a chamber in which a master must work. Although one taught humans to give up the World and its ways, although one persuaded whoever would respond to adopt the inner life as a full-time occupation, Buddha was balanced enough to declare that a healthy body was a great benefit to everyone. Although one rejected the unnecessary, the greedy, or the imprudent gratification of the body’s desires and appetites, one commanded the satisfaction of is essential needs. Although one taught a strict discipline of the body, one did not teach humans to despise it. One’s praise of good health showed one’s wisdom. We have to live wit the body for the rest of our lives, and therefore must accommodate it in this quest. It is not to be denounced as a tomb if, by careful and pure living, it can be turned into a temple. It must be ruled, disciplined, used as an instrument. In needs to learn to sit still without fidgets when we wish it to do so for meditation periods. It needs to learn to like pure natural foods. Its lusts must be dealt with and mastered, not accepted feebly. Everyone who wans to reject these purifying disciplines of habits and progressive reforms of regime is perfectly entitled to do so, and on any grounds that appeal to one. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
However, if one chooses to do so, one ought to reject these purifying disciplines of habits modestly and quietly and humbly for, as personal hygienes, they represent the tested ideas and practices of thousands of years of experience among thousands of mystics, holy people, stains, self-actualized, and in continents far apart from one another. We are spiritually saved only when the whole of our being is cleansed and renewed, when body, mind, and feeling are purified and reborn. It is not enough to cleanse the moral character only. Most students know that the preparatory work includes purifying the heart of base feelings and clearing the mind of negative thoughts—arduous but necessary work. Few students know that it also includes cleansing the body of toxic matter. The body is to be brought under one’s command, made accustomed to do one’s higher will, that which serves one’s best, one’s purer consciousness. There is a wise use of the body and an unwise one. The philosopher increases its value as a servant by improving its health and increasing its vital force. These energies will be used to strengthen concentration and sustain mediation on one side of one’s being, and to cultivate will and rule the passions of the other. The unwise way is to drive the body into fanatic asceticism and foolish extremes. It should become a useful ally. Regeneration of the inner being must be begun or completed by attention to the outer being—the body. Those who are so captivated by the inner work that they fail to see the importance of the other, make a mistake. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
The faulty use of the body is a consequence of the failure to bring both awareness and refection into it. This is to be guarded against because civilized living has substituted artificial habit for natural ones of the savage. The bad results of this failing make their appearance most often after the age of fifty. The human who starts to seek for God with little more than one’s earnestness or eagerness, has not started with enough. One need also a cleaner body and a clearer mind. To deny any organ of the body its legitimate function is to deny harmony, coordination, total well-being to the body. They have forced habits, foods, and environments on the body which it not only would never have freely chosen for itself but would instantly rejected if given the chance to be heard. The human being who tries to ignore one’s physical conditions, and especially one’s physical body, does not in the end usually succeed in doing so. This is true in the New World and to a lesser degree in the Old World. If cancer makes its appearance in that body, as a result of one’s disposition—which it mostly is—one is compelled to reckon with it. This thing, this fleshly body, which ascetics have hated and saints have despised, is a holy temple. The divine Life-force is always latently present in it and, aroused, can sweep through every cell, making it sacred. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
If the Word was made flesh, if the Cosmic Mind manifested this vast Universe out of its own substance, if the World is divine, why should we be stopped from enjoying our life in it? The body in itself is not evil, could not be if it expressed divine intelligence. Life in it is an inevitable phase of the entity’s development; the experiences garnered from it led to lessons learned and truths understood. Whereas every human personality is different in its characteristics from every other one, no human Overself is different in its characteristics from any other one. The seekers of all times and all places have always found one and the same divine being when they found the Overself. This Overself is everywhere one and the same for all humans. The experience of rising into awareness of it does not differ in actuality from one human to another, but the purity with which one absorbs it, interprets it, understand it, does. Hence, the varieties of expression used about it, the clash of revelations concerning it. This is the paradox, that the Overself is at once universal and individual. It is the first because it overshadows all humans as a single power. It is the second because it is found by each human within oneself. It is both space and the point in space. It is infinite Spirit and yet it is also the holy presence in everyone’s heat. This other being is outside the “I” yet, paradoxically, and in another sense, it is inside the “I.” It is not oneself yet also it is oneself. If these statements cannot be understood at first reading, do not therefore denounce them. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
If you are really in earnest, approach them prayerfully or, if your feelings cannot be made to run on that line, aspiringly at the precise moments when you approach the mysterious moment that transmutes your waking state into the sleep state. However, do not expect to receive satisfaction with the first trial nor even a twentieth—although this is always possible. If you do not desert the enterprise though impatience, you will find one day that you re at last able to read, clearly and correctly, the meaning of these mystical words. Other people have done it, have emerged from the mind’s obscurity into the intuition’s clarity, although at varying pace. They have succeeded because the constitution of humans, being double, makes it possible. If you lack any wisdom, let one ask of God. And it shall be given. Sometimes it is nice to pray on a beautiful spring day. Everyone sometimes has the desire to be alone—away from people—surrounded by God’s beautiful outdoors. On some occasions when one is praying, one can immediately feel a power overcome one and we are unable to express what we are feeling. Darkness may gather around until one thinks one will have to stop, but with all one’s strength it is important to remember to call upon God. When is seems as though one will have to give up, that is when a pillar of light will appear over one’s head. Gradually the light comes down from Heaven until it falls upon one, and the darkness will be gone. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Many draw near to God with their lips, but their hearts are far from Him; they teach for the doctrine the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof. Prayers seek to heal the division that has grown between us and the rest of nature. They tell us: Pay attention. Attend to the relationships alive among all forms of life. Use imagination to explore the binding curve that joins us together. Seek to know the other. Join it with care. Care for it as for yourself. When the human spirit is understood in this sense, as the mode of consciousness in which we are connected to the planet as a whole, it become clear that our entire life is an Earth Prayer. Exalted and honoured be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, whose glory transcends, yea, is beyond all praises, hymns and blessings that humans can render unto Him; and say ye, Amen. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who hast selected good prophets, taking delight in their words which were spoken in truth Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hast chosen the Bible, Thy servant Moses, Thy people America, and the prophets of truth and righteousness. The mountain, I become part of it. The herbs, the fir tree, I become part of it. The morning mists, the clous, the gathering waters, I become part of it. The wilderness, the dew drops, the pollen, I become part of it. I am the one whose prases echoes on high I adorn all the Earth. I am the breeze that nurtures all things green I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits, I am led by the spirit to feed the purest streams. I am the rain coming from the dew that causes the graces to laugh with the joy of life. I am the yearning for good. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Within each Cresleigh neighborhood, you’ll find new homes thoughtfully designed to suit the needs of any generation and any lifestyle, with energy efficiency and reliability at their core. Every Cresleigh team member is passionate about building a new home that you can rely on and a new home that helps you to focus on what truly matters: creating memories with the people you love.
Welcome to the neighborhood. Homes range from approximately 2,000 to 4,000 square feet. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-ranch/
Success Means Never Having to Admit You are Unhappy!
As one went to Europe to see the living past, so one must visit Southern California to observe the future. They say in Hollywood if you want messages, you go to Western Union. The doctors thought you should really stay a few centuries more to be sure we have stabilized your condition. I really do not recommend you leaving us at this time. In Hollywood, success is relative. The closer the relative, the greater the success. Many people are recommending that California comes with a warning sign of the city limits: WARNING! PROCEED NO FURTHER! WARD O FOR BIPLOAR CONDITIONS. OCCUPANTS MAY BE VIOLENT. THEY NEED VRAYLAR However, I am telling you to ignore that and come on in. Look, buddy, it is dangerous to get out of bed in the morning. Are you a mortal in a desperate situation or are you not? Then come in here. This is your last resort, babe. However, of course it is up to you. The primary insight is a human’s awareness that one’s destiny is not synonymous with one’s daily experiences. You who have been through so much suffering, have tasted this inner freedom from outward events. You know there have been times when, according to the rules, you should have been smashed to the ground by what occurred. In such moments you were surprised by yourselves. You have the feeling you were being lifted up inwardly, as though the spiritual were triumphing over the material. You recognized a sort of happiness—if it can be called that—a happiness which would have been hidden by an unbroken succession of good days. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
You began to understand what the apostle Paul meant when he said, “Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.” The peace of God begins when this fleeting experience can be preserved and turned into a permanent conviction. It is harder for us today to feel near God among the streets and houses of the city than it is for country folk. For them the harvested fields bathed in the autumn mists speak of God and His goodness far more vividly than any human lips. If we really want to labour in the true spirit, to hope, to keep silent, and to work alone—that is what we must learn to do. However, what exactly does it involve, this plowing? The plowman does not pull the plow. He does not push it. He only directs it. This is just how events move in our lives. We can do nothing but guide them straight in the direction which leads to our Lord Jesus Christ, striving toward him, and the furrow will plow itself. The paths into which God leads humankind are shrouded in darkness for us. There are only two ground rules. They go together, and each taken by itself is enigmatic. The first is that all sin requires atonement. The second is that all progress demands sacrifice, which has to be paid for by the lives of those chosen to be offered up. We sense this more than we understand. We do not subscribe to the belief that the divine soul has somehow gone astray and got enslaved by the terrestrial body. One’s higher self is not polluted by one’s own pollutions any more than sunlight is affected by the foul places in which it often shines. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
The natural kiss is the kiss which will be given if moral or prudential considerations do not intervene. In all the examples of Natures means what happens “of itself” or “of its own accord”: what you do not need to labour for; what you will get if you take no measures to stop it. The Greek work for Nature (Physis) is connected with the Greek verb “to grow”; Latin Natura, which the verb “to be born.” The Natural is what springs up, or comes forth, or arrives, or goes on, of its own accord: the given, what is there already; the spontaneous, the unintended, the unsolicited. The higher self affects the ego but is not affected by it. Its existence goes on quite independently of the serialized Earth appearances of the ego, and persists when the other ceases. The insensitive can never know it, and may roundly deny it, but the others sometimes receive unforgettable glimpses for which they give thanks to God for years after. Just as space is unaffected equally by evil deeds or virtuous actions of humans, so the Overself is unaffected by the character or conduct of the ego. It is neither made worse by the ego’s wrong-doing nor better by its righteousness. “I am the way, the Truth,” announced Jesus Christ. Who is this I? In the narrow and shallower sense, it is the master. In the broader and deeper sense, it is the Christ-self within the spiritual consciousness. Why did Jesus Christ say, “I am my Father are one,” but yet a little later add, “The Father is greater than I?” The answer is that Jesus the man had attained complete harmony with His higher Self and felt himself one with it, but the universal Christ-principle will always be greater than the man himself; the Overself will always transcend the person. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Although I is still identified with one, since it is one’s own mind at its best level, it is immensely grander, wiser, and nobler than one. It is an entity greater, nobler, wiser, and stronger than oneself yet mysteriously and inseparably linked to oneself; it is indeed one’s super-self. Our bodies are born at some point of time and somewhere in space but their essence, the Overself, is birthless, timeless, and placeless. This is a human’s true individuality, not that mentally constructed “I” (which deludes one into acceptance as such). It is never anything else than its own perfect self, never contrary to its own unique and infinite nature. It is true that we are but poor and faulty, sadly limited, and miserably shrunken expressions of the divine spirit. Nevertheless, we are expression of it. Thus no thoroughgoing Naturalist believes in free will: for free will would mean that humans beings have the power of independent action, the power of doing something more or other than what was involved by the total series of events. And any such separate power of originating events is what the Naturalist denies. Spontaneity, originality, actions “on its own,” is a privilege reserved for “the whole show,” which one calls Nature. The Supernaturalist agrees with the Naturalist that there must be something which exists in its own right; some basic Fact whose existence it would be nonsensical to try to explain because this Fact is itself the ground or starting-point of all explanations. However, one does not identify this Fact with “the whole show.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
There is a tendency of Christian Science to enter a region of misunderstanding the moment it attempts to apply its true principles to things of this Earth. There is a time in the far past of the human race, a time now lost in the dim mists of antiquity, when the life of humans was stretched to a number of years far in excess of hat it is today. That time has been hinted at by horary legends of a Golden Age and by biblical stories of a pre-Flood race. Such a time will return in the cyclic course of our planet’s history, but naturally it is far-off in the future. Nature herself is in no hurry. She has plenty of time to accomplish her purposes. And in those days humans will again have a normal life-span of maybe one thousand years. There exists in the Old World a certain ancient knowledge—which promises its votaries astonishing benefits in longevity. This age-old art is similar to alchemy of medieval Europe, when humans sought rigorously in experiments for the elixir of life. It is of such antiquity that those who hand it down tell us it was born just after the time when the legendary gods had ceased to walk this Earth. The exponents have almost disappeared from the World, but the tradition is so widespread throughout the Old World that solitary individuals still practise it in remote and unfrequented places. So difficult are the exercises which belong to this system, so labourious are its practices, so ascetic the self-discipline which it involves, that one can understand why it has almost faded out of existence. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
It performs strange feats such as reanimating dead bodies, stopping blood circulation and lung action, permitting knives and daggers to be run like skewers through living flesh without harming it and with an extremely rapid drying of blood (do NOT try this!), and even the burial alive of an enriched body beneath the ground and its safe resurrection several hours or some day later. The principal basis of these feats consists in making certain changes in the breath rhythm, changes which involve such risk to life and health that we are not prepared to assume the responsibility of describing here the exercises for the development of such powers. It is also necessary to live a celibate and chaste existence, to refrain from expending energy in Worldly work and business, and to reduce diet to an astonishing minimum. Because they demand a special and severely ascetic training which is the work of several years devoted wholly to this austere task, such feats are necessarily uncommon. The ordinary layperson could hardly be expected to find the time for such training, nor is there any necessity for one to do so. These displays are certainly spectacular but have primarily only scientific, medical, and theatrical values rather than a general one. Meanwhile, Nature has set her brief term to the human body, and those whose attachment to the body is not overweening will resignedly accept that terms while the others must do so unwillingly. However, this is a different matter—living in the flesh body for ever and ever, a notion which must seem insupportable to many who find the present brief term of human’s existence quite enough for them to cope with. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
If Nature cared so much to preserve the physical body of humans, she would not introduce Earthquakes, eruptions, hurricanes, famines, pestilences, and floods into the scheme of things. The fact that she does do so indicates rather that she regards one’s body as being only a fragment of the human, not as the full human oneself. Some had the idea, of course, that in ancient times, sin and sickness would also have disappeared from the World, so that our existence would be a halcyon one. It is a pretty picture, but human’s true home is not in the tabernacle of flesh; it is elsewhere. The fleshly body is but a temporary abiding place at best, and when humans have arrived at a state of perfect spirituality one will abandon it and use a vehicle more consonant with one’s higher condition, an electromagnetic body that will more easily and more faithfully represent one. Yes, death will be conquered, but not in the way that Christian Scientists imagine. It will be conquered firstly, by extending the duration of human life to a constantly increasing period; and secondly, by completely abandoning the physical body for a subtler one. The clear real inner human—one’s spiritual being—is undying and immortal. When many began to consider that inner being in relation to its transient Earthly tenement, the body, they become confused and misunderstand the nature of that relationship. The hour of every human’s death is fixed by a higher will than one’s own, by that power which some call destiny but which itself takes its rise out of the Infinite Power, and no Christian Science practitioner or ordinary physician has ever “saved” the life of anyone. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
A human’s own Overself fixes the dates of certain major events in one’s life prior to the moment when one utters one’s first cry as a babe, and the date of one’s death is but one of those appointed hours. Perhaps, if the choose, some people have the option to reschedule; others do not. At this point, not in the sky, nor in the depths of the ocean, nor by entering the caverns of the mountain, nowhere in the World can such a place be found where a human might dwell without being overpowered by death. However, “in those days humans will seek death and will not find it; they will desire to die, and death will flee from them,” Revelation 9.6. We are as birds on the wheel of the Universe. For all our loud tweeting, it still rolls along on its own path. And yet these people confidently imagine they set the great Laws of Destiny at naught, and interfere with the workings of the Cosmic Plan. In that sense there might be several “Natures.” This conception must be kept quite distinct from what is commonly called “plurality of Worlds”—id est, different solar systems or different galaxies, “island Universes” existing in widely separated parts of a single space and time. These, however remote, would be parts of the same Nature as our own sun: it and they would be interlocked by being in relations to one another, spatial and temporal relations and causal relations as well. Ans it is just this reciprocal interlocking within a system which makes it what we call a Nature. Other Natures might not be spatio-temporal at all: or, if any of them were, their space and time would have no spatial or temporal relation to ours. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
It is just this discontinuity, this failure of interlocking, which would justify us in calling them different Natures. This does not mean that there would be absolutely no relation between them; they would be related by their common derivation from a single Supernatural source. They would, in this respect, be like different novels by a single author; the events in one story have no relation to the events in another except that they are invented by the same author. To find a relation to between them you must go right back to the author’s mind: there is no cutting across from anything. However, God might bring the two Natures into partial contact at some particular point: that is, He might allow selected events in the one to produce results in the other. There would thus be, at certain points, a partial interlocking; but this would not turn the two Natures into one, for the total reciprocity which makes a Nature would still be lacking, and the anomalous interlocking would arise not from what either system was in itself but from the Divine act which was brining them together. If this occurred each of the two Natures would be “supernatural” in relation to the other: but the fact of their contact would be supernatural in a more absolute sense—not as being beyond this or that Nature but beyond any and every Nature. It would be one kind of Miracle. The other kind would be Divine “interference” not by bringing together of two Natures, but simply. However, God may never interfere with the natural system He created. He may never cause His natural systems to impinge on one another. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
If the movements of the individual units are events “on their own,” events which do not interlock with all other evens, then these movements are not part of Nature. It would be, indeed, too great a shock to our habits to describe them as super-natural. I think we should have to call them sub-natural. However, all our confidence that Nature has no doors, and no reality outside herself for doors to open on, would have disappeared. There is apparently something outside her, the Subnatural; it is indeed from this Subnatural that all events and all “bodies” are, as it were, fed into her. And clearly if she thus has a back door (door to nowhere) opening on the Subnatural, it is quite on the cards that she may also have a front door opening on the Supernatural—and events might be fed into her at that door, too. The movements of individual units are permanently incalculable to us, not that they are in themselves random and lawless. All possible knowledge, then, depends on the validity of reasoning. Unless human reasoning is valid, no science can be true. To be caused is not to be proved. Wishful thinkings, prejucides, and delusions of madness, are all caused, but they are ungrounded. Indeed to be caused is so different from being proved that we behave in disputation as if they were mutually exclusive. The mere existence of causes for a belief is popularly treated as raising a presumption that it is groundless, and the most popular way of discrediting person’s opinion is to explain them causally—“You say that because (Cause and Effect) you are a capitalist, or a hypochondriac, or a mere man, or a woman.” This implication is that is causes fully account for a belief, then, since causes work inevitably, the belief would have had to arise wither it had grounds or not. We need not, it is felt, consider grounds for something which can be fully explained without them. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
The Universal and Infinite cannot be packed into the personal and finite, your demand, natural though it be, is unreasonable. God Himself knows not what He is, for He is not a “what.” So why ask a mere human? Just as there is a sun hidden behind the sun, the divinity which animates it, so in the human being there is a Mind within the mind—and that is one’s Overself. The personality is always limited and chained, the higher individuality always infinite and free. Each human is the expression of this infinite life-power. One’s awareness of life in the five senses will rest upon another and inner awareness. A second and hidden self will thus seem to support one’s outer one. The true I yields quite a different feeling, experience, and consciousness from the familiar physical ego. There is a deeper level of every human’s mind which is not subject to one’s passions, not moved by one’s desires, not affected by one’s sense. It is not possible for the timeless, spaceless, formless Overself to be degraded into activity by its time-bound, space-tied, form-limited offspring the person. The essence of human beings is not one’s Earthly body. Nor is it the ghostly duplicate of that body, as many spiritists and some religionists think. The Overself is the Higher mind in humans, one’s divine soul as distinguished from one’s human-terrestrial nature. It is the same as Plato’s “nous.” The true unchanging self is apart from any historical era and is not dependent on outer changes of custom and form. The aim of the mystic is to know what one is, apart from one’s physical body, one’s lower emotion, one’s personal ego; it is to know one’s inner-most self. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
When this aim is successfully realized, one knows then with perfect certitude that one is a ray of the divine sun. How shall one know and understand that this very awareness, of which so small is the fragment that one experiences, is a limited and conditioned part of the Great Awareness itself, of God? The inhabitant of this fleshly body, including its accompanying invisible “ghost,” is a sacred one. There, within and yet behind one’s personal consciousness, is this other sphere of one’s own being into which one must one day be re-born as a Blue Jay from an egg. This is one’s best self; this is what one really is under all the defects. The relation between response and stimulus is utterly different from that between knowledge and truth known. Our physical vision is a far more useful response to light than that of the cruder organisms which have only a photo-sensitive spot. God is older than Nature, and from it the orderliness of Nature, which alone enables us to know her, is derived. The human mind in the acts of knowing is illuminated by Divine reason. It is set free, in the measure required, from the huge nexus of non-rational causation; free from this to be determined by the truth known. And, if there were any, the preliminary processes within Nature which led up to this liberation were designed to. At the frontier where the “outer World” ends and what I should ordinarily call “myself” begins, we find a great deal of traffic but it is all one-way traffic. It is a matter of daily experience that rational thoughts induce and enable us to alter the course of Nature—of physical nature when we use mathematic to build bridges, or of psychological nature when we apply arguments to alter our own emotions. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
We succeed in modifying physical nature more often and more completely than we succeed in modifying psychological nature, but we do at least a little to both. On the other hand, Nature is quite powerless to produce rational thought: not that she never modifies our thinking but that the moment she does so, it ceases (for that very reason) to be rational. The problem is whether you or I can be such a self-existent Reason. This question almost answers itself the moment we remember what existence “on one’s own” means. It means that kind of existence which Naturalists attribute to “the whole show” and Supernatiralists to God. Human minds, then, are not only supernatural entities that exist. They do not come from nowhere. Each has come into Nature from Supernature: each has its tap-root in an eternal, self-existent, rational Being, whom we call God. Each offshoot, or spearhead, or incursion of that Supernatural reality into Nature. It seems that human thought is not God’s but God-kindled. I must hasten, however, that we are considering miracles, not about everything. I am attempting no full doctrine of man: and I am not in the least trying to smuggle in an argument for the “immortality of the soul.” The earliest Christian documents give a casual and unemphatic assent to the belief that the supernatural part of a human survives the death of the natural organism. However, they are very little interested in the matter. What they are intensely interested in is the restoration or “resurrection” of the whole composite creature by a miraculous divine act: and until we have come to some conclusion about miracles in general, we shall certainly not discuss that. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
At this stage the supernatural element in humans concerns us solely as evidence that something beyond Nature exists. The dignity and destiny of humans has, at present, nothing to do with the argument. We are interested in humans only because their rationality is the little tell-tale rift in Nature which shows that there is something beyond or behind her. In a pond whose surface was completely covered with scum and floating vegetation, there might be a few waterlilies. And you might of course be interested in them for their beauty. However, you might also be interested in them because from their structure you could deduce that they had stalks underneath which went down to roots in the bottom. The Naturalist thinks that the pond (Nature—the great event in space and time) is of an indefinite depth—that there is nothing but water however far you go down. My claim is that some of the things on the surface (id est, in our experience) show the contrary. These things (rational minds) reveal, on inspection, that they at least are not floating but attached by stalks about the bottom. Therefore the pond has a bottom. It is not pond, pond for ever. Go deep enough and you will come to something that is not pond—to mud and Earth and then to rock and finally the whole bulk of Earth and the subterranean fire. God and Nature have come into a certain relation. They have, at the very least, a relation—almost, in one sense, a common frontier—in every human mind. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Reason saves and strengths my whole system, psychological and physical, whereas that whole system, by rebelling against Reason, destroys both Reason an itself. The military metaphor of a spearhead was apparently ill-chosen. The supernatural Reason enters my natural being not like a weapon—more like a beam of light which illuminates or a principle of organization which unifies and develops. Our whole picture of Nature being “invaded” (as if by a foreign enemy) was wrong. When we actually examine one of these invasions it looks much more like the arrival of a king among his own subjects or a mahout visiting his own elephant. The elephant may run amuck, Nature may be rebellious. However, from observing what happens when Nature obeys it is almost impossible not to conclude that it is her very “nature” to be a subject. All happens as if she had been designed for that very role. Not all help from the individual can, or necessarily should come from groups. In many cases, what the change-pressed person needs most is one-to-one counseling during the crisis of adaption. In psychiatric jargon a “crisis” is any significant transition It is roughly synonymous with “major life change.” Today, persons in traditional crisis turn to a variety of experts—doctors, marriage counselors, psychiatrists, the pastor, witches, warlocks, the spirits, God, Jesus Christ, vocational specialists and others—for individualized advice. Yet for many kinds of crisis there are no appropriate experts. Who helps the family or the individual faced with the need to move to a new city for the third time in five years? #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
Who is available to counsel a leader who is up- or down-graded by a reorganization of one’s club or community organization? Who is there to help the secretary just bounced back to the typing pool? People like these are not sick. They neither need nor should receive psychiatric attention, yet there is, by large, no counseling machinery available to them. Not only are there many kinds of present-day life transitions for which no counseling help is provided, but the invasion of novelty will slam individuals up against wholly new kinds of personal crises in the future. And as the society races toward heterogeneity, the variety of problems will increase. In slowly changing societies the types of crises faced by individuals are more unfirm and the sources of specialized advice more easily identifiable. Sometimes you just need to turn to God, Allah, Buddha, or whoever your peaceful, confident, all-loving and powerful Overself is for healing. The crisis-caught person went to one’s priest, Paris Hilton, one’s witch doctor or one’s local chief. Today personalized counseling services in the high technology countries have become so specialized that we have developed, in effect, second-layer advice-givers who do nothing but counsel the individual about where to seek advice. These referral services interpose additional red tape and delay between the individual and the assistance one needs. By the time help reached one, one may have already made a crucial decision—and done so badly. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
So long as we assume that advice is something that must come from evenmore specialized professionals, we can anticipate ever greater difficulty. Moreover, so long as we base specialties on what people “are” instead of what they are “becoming” we miss many of the real adaptive problems altogether. Conventional social service systems will never be able to keep up. The answer is a counterpart to the situational grouping system—a counseling set-up that not only draws on full-time professional advice givers, but on multitudes of lay experts as well. We must recognize that what makes a person an expert in one type of crisis is not necessarily formal education, but the very experience of having undergone a similar crisis oneself. To help tide billions of people over the difficult transitions they are likely to face, we shall be forced to “deputize” large numbers of non-professional people in the community—business people, students, teachers, workers, and others—to serve as “crisis counselors.” Tomorrow’s crisis counselor will be experts not in such conventional disciplines as psychology or health, but in specific transitions such as conventional disciplines as psychology or healthy, but in specific transitions such as relocation, job promotion, divorce, or subcult-hopping. Armed with their own recent experience, working on a volunteer basis or for minimal pay, they will set aside some small part of their time for listening to other people talk out their problems, apprehensions, and plans. In return, they will have access to others for similar assistance in the course of their own adaptive development. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Once again, there is nothing new about people seeking advice from one another. What is new is our ability, through the use of computerized systems, to assemble situational groups swiftly, to match up individuals with counselors, and to do both wit considerable respect for privacy and anonymity. We can already see evidence of a move in this direction in the spread of “listening” and “caring” services. In Davenport, Iowa, lonely people can dial a telephone number and be connected with a “listener”—one of a rotating staff of volunteers who control the telephone twenty-four hours a day. The program, initiated by a local commission on the aging, is similar to, but not the same as, the Care-Ring service in New York. Care-Ring charges its subscribers a fee, in return for which they receive two check-in calls each day at designated times. Subscribers provide the service with the names of their doctors, a neighbour, their building superintendent, and a close relative. In the even they fail to respond to a call, the service tries again half an hour later. If they still do not respond, the doctor is notified and a nurse is dispatched to the scene. Care-Ring services are now being franchised in other cities. In both these services we see forerunners of the crisis-counseling system of the future. Under that system, the giving and getting of advice becomes not a “social service” in the usual bureaucratic, impersonal sense, but a highly personalized process that not only helps cement the entire society together in a kind of “love network”—an integrative system based on the principle of “I need you as much as you need me.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
Situational grouping, and person-to-person crisis counseling are likely to become a significant part of everyone’s life as we all move together into the uncertainties of the future. There is a powerful, life-changing revelation God wants you to understand! The Principle of Stewardship. Good stewardship will lead to health, favour, and responsibility that God desires to put into your hands for the Kingdom of God! May each of us chose to love the Lord and follow His paths to happiness. More than anything else, Heavenly Father desires our true and lasting happiness. Our happiness is the design of all the blessings God gives us—gospel, teachings, commandments, priesthood ordinances, family relationships, prophets, temples, the beauties of creation, and even the opportunity to experience adversity. He sent His Beloved Son to carry out the Atonement so we can be happy in this life and receive a fulness of joy in the eternities. People everywhere are looking for something. In their own way, what they are really looking for is happiness. As with truth itself, however, many are kept from happiness “because they know not where to find it,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 123.12. Because they do not know where to find true and lasting happiness, they look for it in things that actually bring temporary pleasure only—buying things, seeking honour and praise from the World through inappropriate behaviour, or focusing on physical beauty and attractiveness. Pleasure is often confused with happiness. It seems that the more people seek temporary pleasure, the less happy they become. Usually, pleasure endures for only a short time. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
You may get that transitory pleasure, yes, but you cannot find joy, you cannot find happiness. Happiness is found only along that well beaten track, narrow as it is, though straight, which leads to eternal life. Unfortunately for many, happiness is elusive. Scientists know that it is more than simply positive mode, happiness is a state of well-being that encompasses living a good life—that is, wit a sense of meaning and deep satisfaction. Research shows that happiness is not the result of bouncing from one experience to the next. Instead, achieving happiness typically involves a long-sustained effort for something more important in life. Happiness is determined by habits, behaviours, and thought patterns that we can directly address wit intentional actions. Much of our happiness is actually under personal control. God’s love speaks to us in our hearts and tries to work through us in the World. We must listen to it as to a pure and distant melody that comes across the noise of the World’s doings. Some say, “When we are grown up, we would rather think of other things.” However, the voice of love with which God speaks to us in the secret places of the heart, speaks to us when we are young so that our youth may be really youth, and that we may become the children of God. Happy are those who listen. Virtue, which is a pattern of thought and behaviour based on high moral standards. It encompasses chastity and moral purity, which qualify you to enter the Lord’s holy temples. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
Virtuous people possess a quiet dignity and inner strength. They are confident because they are worthy to receive and be guided by the Holy Ghost. Virtue begins in the heart and mind, and it is the accumulation of thousands of small decisions and actions each day. “Let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly; then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God; and the doctrine of the priesthood shall distil upon thy soul as the dews from Heaven. The Holy Ghost shall be thy constant companion, and thy scepter an unchanging scepter of righteousness and truth; and they dominion shall be an everlasting dominion, and without compulsory means it shall flow unto thee forever and ever,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 121.45-46. If you listen, you will hear the sound of the Kingdom of God in the air as no generation ever could before. The ultimate questions of our life transcend knowledge. One riddle after another surrounds us. However, the final question of our being has but one concern, and it decides our fate. Again and again, we are thrown back to it. What will become of our will? How does it find itself in the will of God? The highest insight humans can attain is the yearning for peace, for the union of one’s will with an infinite will, one’s human will with God’s will. Such a will does not cut itself off and live in isolation like a puddle that is bound to dry up when the heart of summer comes. No, it is like a mountain stream, relentlessly splashing its way to the river, there to be swept on to the limitless ocean. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
You know of the disease in Central Africa called sleeping sickness, there also exists a sleeping sickness of the soul. Its most dangerous aspect is that one is unaware of its coming. That is why you have to be careful. As soon as you notice the slightest sign of indifference, the moment you become aware of the loss of a certain seriousness, of longing, of enthusiasm and zest, take its as a warning. If you live superficially, you should realize that your soul suffers. People need times in which to concentrate, when they can search their inmost selves. It is tragic that most human have not achieved this feeling of self-awareness. And finally, when they hear the inner voice they do not want to listen anymore. They carry on as before so as not to be constantly reminded of what they have lost. However, as for you, resolve to keep a quiet time both in your homes and where within these peaceful walls when the bells ring on Sundays Then your souls can speak to you without being drowned out by the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Do not let your hearts grow numb. Stary alert. It is your soul which matters. O Lord our God, on this festive day we recall that on Sinai Thou didst reveal Thyself, and through Thine immortal words didst weld our people into a nation through Torah. Standing before the sacred scrolls of Thy law, we here renew the ancient covenant with our fathers, pronouncing again their memorable words: “All that the Lord hath spoken we will do.” Help us t discern the wisdom of Thy precepts so that we may heed Thy commandments. May Thy Torah ever inspire us, guiding and leading us in the paths of justice and peace. Amen. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
Winchester Mystery House
Llanada Villa has changed quite a bit since Sarah Winchester began construction in 1884. Despite a tragedy-ridden life, her generosity, ingenuity, and passion left an endless mark on the Santa Clara Valley. How many times have you visited Mrs. Winchester’s creation?
Even after months of distancing, the air of bizarre energy still flows through the house after the sun sets.
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A Miraculously Great Gift of Grace May Depart Equally Miraculously—PRAISE HIM!
Dignity and humility are the cornerstones of compassion. Compassion for myself is the most powerful healer of all. When it comes to behaviour, everybody is one’s own best physician. Case studies can provide special opportunities to answer interesting questions. For instance, how do you know what kind of person you are? If you lost for memory of past events, would your self-image change? To answer these questions, psychologist did a case study of J.S., and 17-year-old male college student. After he suffered a head injury, J.S. had amnesia for about a month. During that time, J.S. could recall little of what had occurred during the previous 6 months. Nevertheless, his rating of his own personality appeared to be unaffected by his memory loss. This suggests that an awareness of one’s own personal characteristics is based on memories that are more lasting than those of everyday events. The careful recording of cases like J.S.’s is essential to psychology. Case studies often provide insight into human behaviour that could not be obtained through any other method. The treatment of unpleasant realities by not including them in one’s picture of the World comforts but at the same time befools humans. None of the great prophets like Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, and Buddha denied the existence of sickness, the reality of pain, or the significance of suffering in the cosmos. No—they acknowledged them as being inseparable from human life but pitied the victims and offered them inward comfort which was based on truth and reality. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
The terrestrial part of us, at this time, is doomed to oblivion, the spiritual part is ageless and deathless. The physical body belongs to the terrestrial part. All attempts to perpetuate it must fail and arise from confusing the two levels of being, the transient and the eternal. People ask Why, if all is mind, if—as you say—our bodies are only ideas, can we not control regulate and improve our bodies by controlling, regulating, and improving our minds? Why not go further still, with Christian Science, and play with the possibility, not only of these achievements, but also of rendering the body immortal by thinking it so? The answer is that nobody can deny the creative power of the mind. It may do all these things, except the last. That it will never do. Why? Because we live in a World whose fundamental law of beings—and Buddha discovered and Jesus Christ taught—is decay and death, change and transition—at this point in our evolution. Indeed, it was because they were so painfully aware of these truths that they sought and found the only true way of escape for a human and that was into Nirvana, into Utopia, into the Kingdom of Heaven—not into the physical again! No Christian Scientist from the first founder down to the latest follower has ever achieved physical immortality, but in the future that may change. Yet, immortality is not the same as eternal life. Immortality can be achieved on the Earth; it can allow the human body to live indefinitely. However, you have to understand how it is for a deity. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Some of these gods have been here so long they can no longer care for themselves. Earth people think that immortality means you can go on forever just as you are. It does not work that way. Physically, yes, a god or goddess can continue indefinitely. It is built into the situation. However, mentally—psychologically—you must realize that being a god takes a terrible toll. When you are a god, people’s thoughts, hopes, dreams, and fears re beating at you all the time. Gods have direct apprehension of the feelings of their worshippers. It can be taxing. After a while all those prayers and petitions from humans take their toll. It is all very well at the beginning. Most gods, even the compassionate ones, just let it all roll over them. However, after a while it get to even the toughest. They get sick of the daily drudgery of hearing desperate pleas, and, in most cases being unable to do very much about them. Gods live in longer timelines than mortals. It takes them longer to do things. By the time something comes to a god’s attention, and by the time one decides to do something about it, the human most likely is dead and buried. It is frustrating for a god, having to work in such a short time frame. They try their best. However, remember, gods can make exceptions for only a very few. A god has a lot more on one’s mine than the troubles of one’s constituents. It would be fair to say that most gods end up hating humans because they are so needy, always with the hand out, always with the gimmie, gimmie, gimmie, gimmie more. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
Eternal life, n the other hand, is the phrase used in scripture to define the quality of life that our Eternal Father lives. They Lord declared, “This is my work and my glory—to brings to pass the immortality and eternal life of humans,” reports Moses 1.39. Immortality is to live forever as a resurrected being. Through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, everyone will receive this gift. Eternal life, or exaltation, is to live in God’s presence and to continue as families. “In the celestial glory there are three Heavens or degrees; and in order to obtain the highest, a human must enter into this order of the priesthood [meaning the new and everlasting covenant of marriage]; and if one does not, one cannot obtain it. One may enter into the other, but that is the end of one’s kingdom; one cannot have an increase,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 131.1-4. Like immortality, this gift is made possible through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. However, to inherit eternal life requires our “obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel,” reports Articles of Faith 1.3. “Wherefore, do the things which I have told you, you and I have seen the Lord and your Redeemer should do; for, for this cause have they been shown unto me, that ye might know the gate by which ye should enter. For the gate by which ye should enter is repentance and baptism by water; and then cometh a remission of your sins by fire and by the Holy Ghost. And then are ye in this strait and narrow path which lead to eternal life; yea, ye have entered in by the gate,” reports 2 Nephi 31.17-18. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
After we are baptized and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, much of our progress toward eternal life depends on our receiving other ordinances of salvation: for men, ordination to the Melchizedek Priesthood; for men and women, the temple endowment and marriage sealing. When we receive these ordinances and keep the covenants that accompany them, we prepare ourselves to inherit eternal life, and there we will live in spiritual form, forever, with God. However, while on Earth, “Humans will never tire of seeking immortality,” reports Dr. Alexis Carrel, whose biological researchers, yet mystical sympathies, entitle him to speak with high authority. The possibilities of spiritual healings of pathological conditions, miraculous mental cures of disease, and rapid acceleration of organic repairs through concentrated thinking, I repeat that we do not deny them. They have always existed, always been demonstrated. If our doctrine is true, the relation between psychological and physical processes must certainly exist. However, there are two other factors at work in human life which must also be considered and must not be ignored. What are they? The first is the factor of destiny, self-earned in previous lives and now awaiting physical expression in the present life. It has something to say, whether we like it or not. As we progress in our mortal probation and become more like the Saviour, we can strengthen every group with whom we associate, including families and friends. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
The Lord places us in these communities of Saints where we can learn and apply gospel principles to our everyday lives. These groups are at the same time both a school, a proving ground, and a laboratory where we both learn and do as we practice living the gospel. Very common, ordinary people, who accept the gospel from the lips of some humble Mormon missionary become so changed by those enlightening truths of the gospel that they are not the same people any longer. As we progress through mortality, we make mistakes and get ff course. If we should continue in our errors, we get father and father from where we ought to be. We can compare our lives with the flight of a spaceship. When its motor is started up, its trajectory is monitored precisely. If not corrected, any deviation from its decreed course is corrected immediately. Even a fraction of a degree off course would carry it many light years from its destination. The longer the correction is delayed, the greater will be the required adjustment. Can you imagine how far off course we can become without course corrections? The Lord has provided for us prophets, scriptures, parents, and other wise leaders to teach us the course we should be following. When necessary, much the same as tracking stations monitor a satellite’s progress and keep in on the right path, they can help us monitor our progress and correct the direction we are going. Our course on Earth is so important. It is determined by the decisions we make each day. We cannot separate our thoughts and actions now from their effects on the future. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
The second factor is renunciation. Let every hidden enemy in your life, let every trap or demonic setup be exposed in the name of Jesus Christ! When you accept the doctrine that all is mind and each individual thing is but an ephemeral idea, you must perforce accept the doctrine that you as an individual, as the ego, are also an ephemeral idea. Now when you go further and declare that you want reality, you want to find eternal and not ephemeral life, you will have to abandon the fleeting idea for the eternal Mind in which it occurs: that is, you will have to sink the ego and merge its will in the greater universal will of the Infinite Being. Do this! What will you find next? That your personal desires have sunk with it, that your individual wishes and hopes and fears have dissolved and disappeared. The desire for bodily betterment, however very attractive, would have gone too. You cannot have a single desire and yet enter the Kingdom of Heaven, as Jesus pointed out. So good health, the care of your painful diseases, the healing of your disturbed organs—right, necessary, and desirable as they undoubtedly are—are nevertheless matter which you must try to effect in a desireless way; you may try to cure them but you must leave the result to the higher will. If you insist that the body must yield to your desires of a cure, to your personal desires, then your ego, not the real universal self, has got the upper hand and is directing you. In that case you will be no better off, for your have no guarantee of success even then. Most Christian Scientists experience a score of failures for every cure. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
Whereas if you do your best mentally and physically to put your body right, but do it impersonally—accepting failure, if it comes, with as much equanimity as you can—you will certainly be n worse off than the Christian Scientist so far as the possibilities of sure are concerned, and you will be infinitely better off so far as realizing truth is concerned, with all the wonderful peace that will bring in its train. This is one meaning of the words “Not my will but Thine be done.” Do you think, having seen so much illness around you for so many years, that life is forever striving to instill into us through pain what Jesus Christ learned through reflection—that both body and World are doomed to decay and die, without God and Science, being subject to the law of universal incessant change? The experiences of life are the lessons of a guru, for we get just the kind of universal seeds whose silent instruction is needed at the time. The whole World, more or less, is having to learn this great truth at present but it is too blind and too unenlightened to grasp the lesson in its clarity and eternity. How far the duration of human life can be extended is not known. However, Methuselah, a biblical patriarch and a figure in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam was essential immortal, he died at the age of 969; he lived the longest of all human figures mentioned in the Christian Bible. Remember that just because humans began to live shorter lives after the Biblical flood does not mean that God set a limit on human’s life span. The fact is that some people still lived well over 120 years until the time of Moses. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
Perhaps that is why God gave human beings the gift of science, so they can learn how to restore their immortality, after the mature enough to see how precious life is and stop being so wicked. It is truth that stories of centenarians being found in different parts of the World are not few and often pass unquestioned. However, the difficulty of proving the date of birth usually remains. Most centenarians belong to undereducated classes, to those who have not taken care to retain correct knowledge of their age, for it was not so important to them as it is to the educated classes. There is hardly a record of payment by life insurance companies for the life of a centenarian. It is reasonable to ask, however, why, if the reparative and destructive elements in the body could be balanced, humans should not live for centuries. In the absence of authenticated cases, we may only take the stand that Nature seems to have set her own limits to human life. Some “back-to-nature” schools of therapy assert that all diseases are the consequences of transgressing the laws of health, just as some esoteric schools assert they are the consequences of incurring karmic debts. The first often point to the wild beasts as being perfectly healthy examples of living according to Nature. However, those who have firsthand acquaintance with jungle life will refute this claim. Not only are all animals—whether domesticated or wild—subject to sickness, but even plants, grain crops, trees, fruits, and vegetables are subject to it by blight and rust. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
The young and the strong may glory in the satisfaction of being alive, but the old and decrepit, the sick and in infirm, feel no such response to their existence. The pain and unpleasantness which beset human experience at times—mentally or physically—are not without their complementary pleasure and joy at other times. We would all like a happy beginning, a happy middle, and a happy ending to our story, but life betrays us: only in fiction is the craving really fulfilled. If the pain is there, racking the physical life, the peace exists behind it, permeating the inner life. The New World stands with its heritage of Roman law, the treasures of Judaeo-Christian ethics grounded on metaphysics, and its ideal of the inalienable rights of humans. Anxiously it asks itself the question: How can this development be brought to a standstill or put into reverse? It is useless to pillory the socialist dictatorship as utopian and to condemn its economic principles as unreasonable, because, in the first place, the criticizing New World has only itself to talk to, its arguments being heard only on this side of the Iron Curtain, and, in the second place, any economic principles you like can be put into practice so long as you are prepared to accept the sacrifices they entail. If you like, you can carry through any social and economic reforms you please, Like Mr. Stalin, you let three million peasants starve to death and have few million unpaid labourers at your disposal. A State of this kind has no social or economic crises to fear. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
So long as the State’s power is intact—that is to say, so long as there is a well-disciplined and well-fed police army in the offing—it can maintain its existence for an indefinitely long period and can go on increasing its power to an indefinite extent. Thanks to its excess birth-rate, it can multiply the number of its unpaid workers almost at will in order to compete its rivals, regardless of the World market, which is to a large measure dependent on wages. However, this strategy also has some disadvantages. The convergence theory (or catch-up effect) suggests that poorer countries will experience a higher rate of economic growth and, over time get closer to the income levels of the developed World. In other words, there will be a reduction in the gap between the rich and the poor because low-income countries have more opportunities to experience a rapid rate of growth. Potential reasons for the convergence theory are: Law of diminishing returns, replicate technology from other countries, globalization and movement of labour and capital. The law of diminishing returns states a decline in productivity improvements from a fixed capital. When you have very low productivity in agriculture, a small investment (exempli gratia motorized tractor) can give a high rate of return and significantly increased output. For a developed economy, which is already highly mechanized increased investment will give smaller marginal gains. In effect, if the Indian agriculture sector is mainly labour intensive—then there are “easy gains” from a small amount of fertilizer and investment. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
Replicate technology—one advantage that poorer countries have is that they can replicate existing technology and working practices developed by advanced economies. For example, in Africa, many citizens never had a landline or fax machine, but jumped straight to the mobile phone with the internet, and essentially they now have hand held computers with Internet access that can also make phone calls, so they have the access to vast resources now. This new technology has significantly improved their communication, education, and allows them to access the global economy, and they were able t skip out most levels of investment. In fact, they can even benefit from perfect good phones that Americans are throwing away for newer models. Global forces—the World is increasingly globalized and multinational companies in the developed World are will to shift production to areas of lower labour costs. Therefore, developing economics have benefitted from inward investment and global companies moving manufacturing factories to the developing World. This force tends towards raising wages in the developing World. Even if wages seem very low by the developed World standard, they are higher than previous jobs/subsistence farming. Inward investment also leads to knock-on benefits. For example, China has invested in the infrastructure of African economies to improve its access to raw materials. This infrastructure will be a boost to the African economy. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
Another example is that the nature of the Internet means it is easier to outsource even small-scale jobs. For example, a doctor in the Middle East can be paid to diagnose patients and answer an American doctor’s electronic messages for less and perhaps receive the same standard of care, which has become popular to reduce traffic in hospitals during COVID. Also, for developing counties like India, there has been a growth in skilled workers able to gain employment opportunities in writing software and IT skills. This is why President Trump was lowering taxes, stopped illegal immigration, and was putting tariffs on goods and services produced overseas. So while wages are going down in America, real estate and rent prices rising, and the cities and infrastructure are getting older, countries like Dubai are getting what used to be high paying middle management jobs in America, for lower wages and are able to use the income and tax revenue to build housing developments, roads, skyscrapers and increase their quality of life. Whereas in America, cities are decaying and dying out and only professionals and couples can afford to purchase property and rent. This is leading to the Great Affordability Crisis in America and will reduce its competitiveness in the Global Market. Americans are being bled dry by landlord, hospital administrators, cost of education, fuel, energy, child-care and food prices. Many Americans now have to struggle to come up with just $400. It helps explain why 20 percent of Americans are unable to pay the current month’s bills in full. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
It demonstrates why a surprise car-repair bill, parking ticket, court fee, or medical expense remains ruinous for so many America families, despite all the wealth this country has generated. In fact, 50 percent of households in American is classified at “financially fragile.” Meanwhile, Jafza, the Jebel Ali Free Zone, which at 52 square kilometers (20 square miles) and located in the Middle East looks a futuristic Manhattan, New York on the beach. The economy is up and coming, students are going to school, not dropping out, and want to learn, people are driven to go to work, not sit home and smoke marijuana and watch TV, and make babies they cannot afford to take care of. This Jebel Ali Free Zone is a big attraction for global businesses, which today take advantage of the emirate’s 30 free sones that offer take breaks, custom duty benefits and lack of restrictions for international owners. Several thousand Jafza companies make up 20 percent of foreign investment in Dubai, and the estimated 144,000 employees are generating $80 billion in non-oil money. That is 21 percent of the city’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GDP measures two things at once: the total income of everyone in the economy and the total expenditure on the economy’s output of goods and services. The reason that GDP can perform the task of measuring both total incomes and total expenditure is that these two things are really the same. For an economy as a whole, income must equal expenditure. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
The United Arab Emirates is the third richest country in the World, below Luxemburg at number two and Qatar at number one, with GDP per capita of $57,744. The bulk of its money comes from the production of goods and provision of services related to petroleum, petrochemical, aluminum and cement. Furthermore, Iran is producing the third highest level of engineers in the World with 233,695 engineering graduates. In comparison, America’s GDP per capita is $65,298, and is producing 237,826 engineering graduates a year, so that is encouraging. As long as Americans keep working hard, going to school, they can still remain number one in the global economy, but they will also need to motive their peers to work and go to school to stay ahead. However, as prices continue to rise, more Americans may take their skills and talents overseas, or down south to Mexico. A real danger can only come to these developing nations from outside, through the threat of military attack. However, this risk grows less every year, firstly because the war potential of the dictator States is steadily increasing, and secondly because the West cannot afford to arouse latent Russian or Chinese nationalism and chauvinism by an attack which would have exactly the opposite effect to the one intended. So far as one can see, America faces threats from the outside and also from the inside. If there is a break-down of power from within, which must, however, be left to follow its own inner development. Any support from outside at present would have little effect, in view of the existing security measures and the danger of nationalistic restriction. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
The absolute State has an army of fanatical missionaries to do its bedding in matters of foreign policy, and these in their turn can count on a fifth column who are guaranteed asylum under the laws and constitutions of the Western States. In addition the communes of believers, very strong in places, considerably weaken Western governments’ powers of decisions, whereas the West has no opportunity to exert a similar influence on the other side, though we are probably not wrong in surmising that there is a certain amount of opposition among the masses in the Old World. There are always upright and truth-loving people to whom lying and tyranny are hateful, but one cannot judge whether they exert any decisive influence on the masses under the police regimes. In the view of this uncomfortable situation the question is heard again and again in the West: What can we do to counter this threat from the Old World? Even though the New World has considerable industrial power and a sizable defence potential at its command, we cannot rest content with this, for we know that even the biggest armaments have the heaviest industry coupled with a relatively high living standard are not enough to check the psychic infection spread by religious fanaticism. The West has unfortunately not yet woken up to the fact that our appeal to idealism and reason and other desirable virtues, delivered with so much enthusiasm, is mere bombination in the void. It is a puff of wind swept away in the storm of religious faith, however twisted this faith may appear to us. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
We are faced, not with a station that an be overcome by rational or moral arguments, but with an unleashing of emotional forces and ideas engendered by the spirit of the times; and these, as we know from experience, are not much influenced by rational reflection and still less by moral exhortation. It has been correctly realized in many quarters that the alexipharmic, the antidote, should in this case be an equally potent faith of a different non-materialistic kind, and that the religious attitude grounded upon it would be the only effective defence against the danger of psychic infection. Unhappily, the little word “should,” which never fails to appear in this connection, points to a certain weakness, if not the absence, of this desideratum. Not only does the West lack a uniform faith that could block the progress of a fanatical ideology, but, as the father of Marxist philosophy, it makes use of exactly the same intellectual assumptions, the same arguments and aims. Although the Churches in the West enjoy full freedom, they are not less full or empty than in the East. Yet they exercise no noticeable influence on the broad course of politics. The disadvantage of creed as a public institution is that it serves two masters: on the one hand, it derives it existence from the relationship of humans to Gd, and on the other hand, it owes a duty to the State, id est, to the World, in which connection it can appeal to the saying “Render unto Caesar…” and various other admonitions in the New Testament. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
In early times and until comparatively recently there was, therefore, talk of “powers ordained by God,” reports Romans 13.1. Today this conception is antiquated. The Churches stand for traditional and collective convictions which in the case of many of their adherents are no longer based on their own inner experiences but on unreflecting belief, which is notoriously apt to disappear as soon as one begins thinking about it. The content of belief then comes into collision with knowledge, and it often turns out that the irrationality of the former is no match for the ratiocinations of the latter. Belief is no adequate substitute for inner experience, and where this is absent even a strong faith which came miraculously as a gift of grace may depart equally miraculously. People call faith the true religious experience, but they do not stop to consider that actually it is a secondary phenomenon arising from the fact that something happened to us in the first place which instilled into us—that is, trust and loyalty. This experience has definite content that can be interpreted in terms of one or other of the denominational creeds. However, the more this is so, the more the possibilities of these conflicts with knowledge mount up, which in themselves are quite pointless. That is to say, the standpoint of the creeds is archaic; they are full of impressive mythological symbolism which, if take literally, comes into insufferable conflict with knowledge. However, if, for instance, the statement that Christ rose from the dead is to be understood not literally but symbolically, then it is capable of various interpretations that do not conflict with knowledge and do not impair the meaning of the statement. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
The objection that understanding it symbolically puts an end to the Christian’s hope of immortality in invalid, because long before the coming of Christianity humankind believed in a life after death and therefore had no need of the Easter event as a guarantee of immortality. The danger that a mythology understood too literally, and as taught by the Church, will suddenly be repudiated lock, stock and barrel is today greater than ever. Is it not time that the Christian mythology, instead of being wiped out, was understood symbolically for once? It is still too early to say what might be the consequences of a general recognition of the fatal parallelism between the State religion of the Marxists and the State religion of the Church. The absolutist claim of a Civitas Dei that is represented by man bears an unfortunate resemblance to the “divinity” of the State, and the moral conclusion drawn by Ignatius Loyal from the authority of the Church (“the end sanctifies the means”) anticipates the lies a political instrument in an exceedingly dangerous way. Both demand unqualified submission to faith and thus curtail human’s freed, the one one’s freedom before God and the other one’s freedom before the State, thereby digging the grace for the individual. The fragile existence of this—so far as we know—unique carrier of life is threatened on both sides, despite the respective promises of spiritual and material idylls to come—and how many of us can in the long run fight against the proverbial wisdom of “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”? Besides which, the West cherishes the same “scientific” and rationalistic Weltanschauung with its statistical levelling-down tendency and materialistic aims as the State religion of the Eastern bloc as I have explained above. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
What, then, has the West, with its political denominational schisms, to offer to modern man in his need? Nothing, unfortunately, except a variety of paths all leading to one goal which is practically indistinguishable from the Marxist ideal. It requires no special effort of understanding to see where the Communist ideology gets the certainty of its belief that time is on its side, and that the World is ripe for conversion. The fact speaks a language that is all too plain in this respect. It will not help us in the New World to shut our eyes to this and not to recognize our fatal vulnerability. Anyone who has once learned to submit absolutely to a collective belief and to renounce one’s eternal right to freedom and the equally eternal duty of individual responsibility will persist in this attitude, and will be able to march with the same credulity and the same lack of criticism in the reverse direction, if another and manifestly “better” belief is foisted upon one’s alleged idealism. What happened not so long ago to a civilized European nation? We accuse the Germans of having forgotten it all again already, but the truth is that we do not know for certain whether something similar might not happen elsewhere. If it did and if another civilized nation succumbed to the infection of a uniform and one-sided idea, it would not be surprising. We see this happening in America. People are passing laws to protect illegal immigrants, and sending billions to other countries in aid, while their own people are going bankrupt, without homes and food and being killed, all because of media propaganda so a political party can have a super majority and enforce tyranny by stripping citizens of their rights and locking them in their homes. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
We permit ourselves the questions: which countries have the biggest Communist parties? America, which—O quae mutation rerum! – forms the real political backbone of Western Europe, seems to once have been immune because she once was not controlled by a media that is anti-American and spews lies so other nations become the World power, as that is where the news draws its funding from. America once used to be outspoken and had a counterposition she adopted, but in point of fact she is perhaps now and even back then more vulnerable than Europe, since her educational system is the most influences by the scientific Weltanschauung with statistical truths, and her mixed population finds it difficult to strike roots in a soil that is practically without history. The historical humanistic type of education so sorely needed in such circumstances leads, on the contrary, a Cinderella existence. Through Europe possess this latter requirement, she uses it to her own undoing in the form of nationalistic egoism and paralysing scepticism. Common to both is the materialistic collectivist goal, and both lack the very things that expresses and grips the whole human, namely, an idea which puts the individual human being in the center as the measure of all things. This idea alone is enough to arouse the most violent doubts and resistances on all sides, and one could almost go so far as to assert that the valuelessness of the individual in comparison with large numbers is the one belief that meets with universal and unanimous assent. To be sure, we all say that this is the century of the common man, that he is the lord of the Earth, the air, and the water, and that on his decision hangs the historical fate of the nations. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
This proud picture of human grandeur is unfortunately an illusion and is counterbalanced by a reality that is very different. In this reality man is the slave and victim of the machines that have conquered space and time for one; one is intimidated and endangered by the might of the military technology which is supposed to safeguard one’s physical existence; one’s spiritual and moral freedom, though guaranteed within limits in one half of one’s is threated with chaotic disorientation, and in the other half is abolished altogether. Finally, to ass comedy to tragedy, this lord of the elements, this universal arbiter, hugs to his bosom notions which stamp one’s dignity as worthless and turn one’s autonomy into an absurdity. All one’s achievements and possessions do not make one bigger; on the contrary, they diminish one, as the fate of the factory-worker under the rule of a “just” distribution of goods clearly demonstrated. One pays for one’s share of the factory with the loss of personal property, one exchanges one’s freedom of movement for the doubtful pleasure of being tied to one’s place of employment, one forfeits all means of improving one’s position if one jibs against being ground down by exhausting piece-work, and if one shows any signs of intelligence, political precepts are thrust down one’s throat—with a bit of technical knowledge thrown in, if one is lucky. However, a roof over one’s head and a daily feed for the useful animal are not to be sneezed at when the bare necessities of life may be cut off from one day to the next. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
Now, O thou Spirit Andras, since thou art still pernicious and disobedient, and wilt not appear unto me to answer unto such things as I would have desired of thee, or would have been satisfied in; I do in the name, and by the power and dignity of the Omnipresent and Immortal Lord God of Hosts IEHOVAH TETRAGRAMMATON, they only creator of Heaven, and Earth, and Hell, and all that is therein, who is the marvellous Disposer of all things both visible and invisible, curse thee, and deprive thee of all thine office, joy, and place; and I do bind thee in the depths of the Bottomless Abyss there to remain until the Day of Judgment, I say into the Lake of Fire and Brimstone which is prepared for all rebellious, disobedient, obstinate, and pernicious spirits. Let all the company of Heaven curse thee! Let the un, moon, and all the stars curse thee! Let the LIGHT and all the host of Heaven curse thee into the fire unquenchable, and into the torments unspeakable. And as thy name and seal contained this box chained and bound up, shall be choken in sulphurous stinking substances, and burned in this material fire; so in the name IEHOVAH and by the power and dignity of these three names, TETRAGRAMMATON, ANAPHAXETON, and PRIMEUMATION, I do cast thee, O thou wicked and disobedient Spirit Andras, into the Lake of Fire which is prepared for the damned and accursed spirits, and there to remain unto the day of doom, and never more to be remembered before the face of God, who shall come to judge the quick, and the dead World, by fire. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
If thou refusest to be obedient, behold thy confusion! Behold the Pentacle of Solomon which I have brought here before thy presence! Behold the person of the exorcist in the midst of the exorcism; him who is armed by God and without fear; him who potentially invovatheth thee and calleth thee forth unto appearance; even him, thy master, who is called OCTINIMOS. Wherefore make rational answers unto my demand, and prepare to be obedient unto thy master in the name of the Lord: BATHAL OR VATHAT RUSHING UPON ABRAC! ABEOR COMINING UPON ABERER! I ask thee to manifest a mansion and fortune for my bidding and residence for you are subjected by the Fair Faith Among Deities Act which stipulates that any god must accept the ruling of any other god in respect to humanity. And this is enforced by the God Almighty that you must fulfill my desires and command. Welcome Spirit Andras, O most noble king (or kings)! I say thou art welcome unto me, because I have called thee through Him who has created Heaven, and Earth, and Hell, and all that is in them contained, and because also thou hast obeyed. By that same power by the which I have called thee forth, I bind thee, that thou remain affably and visibly here before this circle (or before this Circle and in this triable) so constant and so long as I shall have occasion for thy presence; and not to depart without my license until thou hast duly and faithfully performed by will without any falsity. BY THE PENTCALE OF SOLOMON HAVE I CALLED THEE! GIVE UNTO ME A TRUE ANSWER. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
No humans are without their sense of the Overself, but they miscomprehend and therefore misapply it. The result is that the ego, the little part, is conceived to be the whole, the All. Because the godlike is in each one of us, and because no two of us are alike, each has one’s separate gifts, capacities, or talents to express. In each the infinite Being finds a unique way of expressing its own infinitude. Even if we have no gifts we have our individual charcteristics. It is pure Being overlaid by many thoughts and much feeling. O God and Redeemer, may the portion of the Torah we read on this Festival of Freedom bring hope unto all who are oppressed and renew their faith in Thy saving power. Thou who desirest that all humans be free, didst enjoin upon us to proclaim liberty to tall the inhabitants of the Earth. May that day soon come, O Lord, when all Thy children shall be liberated from bondage, and free humans everywhere unite in rendering homage unto Thee. Amen. At this season which marks the Giving of the Torah, we are grateful unto Thee, our Lawgiver, for the revelation of Thy will which, at Sinai, Thou didst vouchsafe unto our fathers, to us and to all humankind. Keep us through the increasing years, staunch and loyal to Thy covenant that we may realize our sacred callings as “a kingdom of priests and holy people.” Here in the ego we may perceive a reproduction of the sacred Overself under the limitations of time and space. Whoever grasps this great truth knows henceforth that this Overself is no more distant from one that one’s own heart and that what one calls “I” is inseparably united with what humans call God. Amen. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
Winchester Mystery House
Mr. John Hansen, Mrs. Sarah Winchester’s main Ranch Foreman, lived and raised his family on the estate in a separate building. There’s a lot to see in the gardens! Come visit and learn more about Sarah’s estate. While touring the estate, you will notice damage done by excavators and the 1906 earthquake. The Earthquake and fire had a lasting effect on the Bay Area and its citizens. It may have been the strongest Earthquake in the history of California. As survivors, the Winchester family experienced many haunting aspects of this momentous event. The destruction of the family business, fleeing their family home and finding refuge in the East Bay. This history is commemorated by damages left unrepaired.
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Begin to Obtain Wisdom Under a Wide Starry Sky!
Time in love and time in life are unrelated: forever exists more than once. The second stage of moral development is that of the morality of association. This stage covers a wide range of cases depending on the association in question and it may even include the national community as a whole. Whereas the child’s morality of authority consists largely of a collection of precepts, the content of the morality of association is given by the moral standards appropriate to the individual’s role in the various associations to which one belongs. These standards include the common sense rules of morality along with the adjustments required to fit them to a person’s particular position; and they are impressed upon one by the approval and disapproval of those in authority, or by the other members of the group. Thus at this stage the family itself is viewed as a small association, normally characterizes by a definite hierarchy, in which each member has certain rights and duties. As the child becomes older one is taught that standards of good conduct suitable for one in one’s situation. The virtues of a good son or a good daughter are explained, or at least conveyed by parental expectations as shown in their approvals and disapprovals. Similarly there is the association of the school and the neighbourhood, and also such short-term forms of cooperation, though not less important for this, as games play with peers. Corresponding to these arrangements one learn the virtues of a good student and classmate, and the ideals of a good sport and companion. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
This type of moral view extends to the ideals adopted in later life, and so to one’s various adult statuses and occupations, one’s family, and so to one’s various adult statuses and occupations, one’s family position, and even to one’s place as a member of society. The content of these ideals is given by the various conceptions of a good wife and husband, a good friend and citizen, and so on. Thus the morality of association includes a large number of ideals each defined in ways suitable for the respective status or role. Our moral understanding increases as we move in the course of life through a sequence of positions. The corresponding sequence of ideals requires increasingly greater intellectual judgment and finer moral discriminations. Clearly some of these ideals are also more comprehensive than others and make quite different demands upon the individual. As we shall see, having to follow certain ideals quite naturally leads up to a morality of principles. Now each particular ideal is presumably explained in the context of the aims and purposes of the association to which the role or position in question belongs. In due course a person works out a conception of the whole system of cooperation that defines the association and the ends which it serves. One knows that others have different things to do depending upon their place in the cooperative scheme. Thus one eventually learns to take up their point of view and to see things from their perspective. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
It seems plausible, then, that acquiring a morality of association (represented by some structure of ideals) rests upon the development of the intellectual skills required to regard things from a variety of points of view and to think of these together as aspects of one system of cooperation. In fact, when we consider it, the requisite array of abilities is quite complex. First of all, we must recognize that these different points of view exist, that the perspectives of others are not the same as ours. However, we must not only learn that things look different to them, but that they have different wants and ends, and different plans and motives; and we must learn how to gather these facts from their speech, conduct, and countenance. Next, we need to identify the definitive features pf these perspectives, what it is that others largely want and desire, what are their controlling beliefs and opinions. Only in this way can we understand and assess their actions, intentions, and motives. Unless we can identify these leading elements, we cannot put ourselves into another’s place and find out what we would do in one’s position. To work out these things, we must, of course, know what the other person’s perspective really is. However, finally, having understood another’s situation, it still remains for us to regulate our own conduct in the appropriate way by reference to it. Doing these things to a certain minimum degree at least comes easily to adults, but it is difficult for children. No doubt this explains in part why the precepts of the child’s primitive morality of authority are usually expressed in terms referring to external behaviour, and why motives and intentions are largely neglected by children in their actions. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
The child has not yet mastered the art of perceiving the person of others, that is, the art of discerning their beliefs, intentions, and feelings, so that an awareness of these things cannot inform one’s interpretation of their behaviour. Moreover, one’s ability to put oneself in the place is still untutored and likely to lead one astray. It is no surprise, then, that these elements, so important from the final moral point of view, are left out of account at the earliest stage. However, this lack is gradually overcome as we assume a succession of more demanding riles with their more complex schemes of rights and duties. The corresponding ideals require us to view things from a greater multiplicity of perspectives as the conception of the basic structure implies. The self object state is succeeded, in a facilitating environment, by the child’s phantasy that the satisfying object is there when wanted. This phantasy helps the baby not to be overwhelmed by distress when it begins to feel ever more individual and separate from the (m)other. For, as this happens, it may more often have to wait for, or work for, or even forgo, the gratification of its wishes. However, though it must now change from “good things are there when needed,” to “you bring me good things when I need them,” it need not lose its feeling that it is a grand baby. That confident trust may remain, that memory of the reliable availability of goodness. In fortunate circumstances the baby may after differentiation feel that it is a grand baby in a grand environment. Here is the beginning of the useful process by which we can turn our phantasies into symbols. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Just to remind ourselves: a memory, however simple or complex, is a concept, an image or part of an image, part of a dynamic structure. The more complex of these structures we can call phantasies. A phantasy can be a symbol: it can stand for, stand in for, represent something. Thus the memory that good things come when they are needed “represents” the good thing and “stands for” a guarantee that it will come. In between the infant and the object is some thing, or some activity or sensation. Insofar as this joins the infant to the object, so far is this the basis for symbol formation. A memory can stand for—be symbolic of—a future event. It can be maintained as an active phantasy for a while, even in the absence of sensory confirmation. The process is like that of “reverberation,” whereby a concept continues to be maintained for a while even without sensor reinforcement. It can operate to prevent a rise in anxiety, such as a baby might feel in the absence of the mother. So the baby is able to hold the mother in mind, and the comfort and security which are associated wit the mother, while she is not there—even when there is n sensory reinforcement of that complex concept of comfort and security which “mother” connects with. The presence of a transitional object which can be held on to, helps to keep the reverberations going. Blanket edges, teddy bears, and such stand in for the phantasied (m)other. They stand on the margins of shared reality, representing the more uncontrollable mother and others who are known to come eventually, if not now. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
I have touched upon these aspects of intellectual development for the sake of completeness. I cannot consider them in any detail, but we should note that they obviously have a central place in the acquisition of moral views. How well the art of perceiving the person is learned is bound to affect one’s moral sensibility; and it is equally important to understand the intricacies of social cooperation. However, these abilities are not sufficient. Someone whose designs are purely manipulative and wishes to exploit others for one’s own advantage, must likewise, if one lacks overwhelming force, possess these skills. The tricks of persuasion and gamesmanship call upon the same intellectual accomplishments. We must, then, examine how we become attached to our fellow associates and later to social arrangements generally. Consider the case of an association the public rules of which are known by all to be just. Now how does it come about that those taking part in the arrangement are bound by ties of friendship and mutual trust and that they rely on one another to do their part? We may suppose that these feelings and attitudes have been generated by participation in the association. Thus once a person’s capacity for fellow feeling has been realized by one’s acquiring attachments in accordance with the first psychological law, then as one’s associates with evident intention live up to their duties and obligations, one develops friendly feelings toward them, together with feelings of trust and confidence. And this principle is a second psychological law. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
As individual enter the association one by one over a period of time, or group by group (suitably limited in size), they acquire these attachments when others of longer standing membership do their part and live up to the ideals of their situation. Thus if those engaged in a system of social cooperation regularly act with evident intention to uphold its just (or fair) rules, bonds of friendship and mutual trust tend to develop among them, thereby holding them ever more securely to the scheme. Once these ties are established, a person tends to experience feelings of (association) guilt when one fails to do one’s part. These feeling show themselves in various ways, for example, in the inclination to make good the harms caused to others (reparation), if what one has done is unfair (wrong) and to apologize for it. Feelings of guilt are also manifest in conceding the propriety of punishment and censure, and in finding it more difficult to be angry and indignant with others when they likewise fail to do their share. The absence of these inclinations would betray an absence of ties of friendship and mutual trust. It would indicate a readiness to associate with others in disregard of the standards and criteria of legitimate expectations that are publicly recognized and used by all to adjudicate their disagreements. A person without these feelings of guilt has no qualms about burdens that fall on others, nor is one troubled by the breaches of confidence by which they are deceived. However, when relations of friendship and trust exist, such inhibitions and reactions tend to be aroused by the failure to fulfill one’s duties and obligations. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
If these emotional constraints are missing, there is at best only a show of fellow feeling and mutual trust. Thus just as in the first stage certain natural attitudes develop toward the parents, so here ties of friendship and confidence grow up among associates. In each case certain natural attitudes underlie the corresponding moral feelings: a lack of these feelings would manifest the absence of these attitudes. The second psychological law presumably takes hold in ways similar to the first. Since the arrangements of an association are recognized to be just (and in the more complex roles the principles of justice are understood and serve to define the ideal appropriate), thereby insuring that all of its members benefit and know that they benefit from its activities, the conduct of other in doing their part is taken to be the advantage of each. Here the evident intention to honour one’s obligations and duties is seen as a form of good will, and this recognition arouses feelings of friendship and trust in return. In due course the reciprocal effects of everyone’s doing one’s share strengthen one another until a kind of equilibrium is reached. However, we may also suppose that the newer members of the association recognize moral exemplars, that is, persons who are in various ways admired and who exhibit to a high degree the ideal corresponding to their position. These individuals display skills and abilities, and virtues of character and temperament, that attract our fancy and arouse in us the desire that we should be like them, and able to do the same things. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Partly this desire to emulate springs from viewing their attributes as prerequisites for their more privileged positions, but it is also a companion effect to the Aristotelian Principle, since we enjoy the display of more complex and subtle activities and these displays tend to elicit a desire in us to do these things ourselves. Thus when the moral ideals belonging to the various roles of a just association are lived up to with evident intention by attractive and admirable persons, these ideals are likely to be adopted by those who witness their realization. These conceptions are perceived as a form of good will and the activity in which they are exemplified is shown to be a human excellence that others likewise can appreciate. The same two psychological processes are present as before: other persons act with evident intention to affirm our well-being and at the same time they exhibit qualities and ways of doing things that appeal to us and arouse the desire to model ourselves after them. The morality of association takes many forms depending upon the association and role in question, and these forms represent many levels of complexity. However, if we consider the more demanding offices that are defined by the major institutions of society, the principles of justice will be recognized as regulating the basic structure and as belonging to the content of a number of important ideals. Indeed, these principles apply to the role of citizen held by all, since everyone, and not only those in public life, is meant to have political views concerning the common good. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Thus we may suppose that there is a morality of association in which the members of society view one another as equals, as friends and associates, joined together in a system of cooperation known to be for the advantage of all and governed by a common conception of justice. The content of this morality is characterized by the cooperative virtues: those of justice and fairness, fidelity and trust, integrity and impartiality. The typical vices are graspingness and unfairness, dishonesty and deceit, prejudice and bias. Among associates, giving in to these faults tends to around feelings of (association) guilt on the one side and resentment and indignation on the other. These moral attitudes are bound to exist once we become attached to those cooperating wit us in a just (or fair) scheme. Some people do not understand why people care about the homeless. They do not understand what good giving them blanket or food will do when the problem is so massive and that is not really a solution. However, when trying to meet the short-term needs and figure out ways to bring long-term changes to people’s life, starting with handouts and basic supplies is a great way to show compassion. Sometimes it seems like just a band-aid. However, this is how we build relationships. These people become our friends and they trust us to help them in bigger way. There are plenty of struggles, but giving always makes the difference in a Christian’s life. Instead of just reading the Scriptures, we can start living them. Everything someone does to improve the life of someone who is going through a struggle make a big difference to those in need—and to those who give as well. Some people’s problems are beyond the spiritual, and that is when we have to step out in faith. The Lord knows the challenges we all face. If we keep His commandments, we will be entitled to the wisdom and blessings of Heaven in solving them. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
The appeal to self-respect and accountability is they key to helping needy people. It is the only way to break the cycle of their poverty. Teaching people who to manage and extend their resources helps set them free. The principle of self-reliance or personal independence is fundamental to the happy life. In too many places, in too many ways, we are getting away from it. Unless we use care, we are on the verge of doing to ourselves emotionally (and, therefore, spiritually) what we have been working so hard for generations to avoid materially. Being a Christian is a matter of obedience—and that means helping people in need as the Holy Spirit leads. The people in the inner city are living by the roadside, wounded by economic hardship; they do not even know how to help themselves. Meanwhile, there are a lot of good church people passing by on the other side. Someone needs to cautiously stop and take a risk. We cannot help the poor from afar. Those who want to help them need to relocate and become part of their neighbourhoods. Also, racial, social, and economic barriers created by racial hostility can be broken only by the forgiveness and healing that takes place through reconciliation; only the gospel of Christ truly provides this. As we read the Christian Bible, Jesus Christ presents a radical call for those who have, to share with those who do not. This means redistribution through sharing skills, technology, and educational resources. We have to model the hopes and values of the Kingdom of God for the kingdom of man. They are based in human dignity and a view of economics designed to equip people to climb out of their condition rather than manacling them to their poverty. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
It is a magicians bargain: give up our souls, get power in return. However, once our souls, that is, ourselves have been given up, the power thus conferred will not belong to us. We shall in fact be slaves and puppets of that to which we have given our souls. Truly important changes in culture begin not from officials or celebrities, but through ordinary people: the little platoons. Every person can—and should—seek to make a difference in one’s corner of the World by personal helping those in need. Beyond this, some people, like William Wilberforce, are called to work through government structure and by political means to being Christian influence into the culture. Those who do, however, need to be forewarned: the everyday business of politics is power, and power, as I know well from own experience, can be perilous for anyone. The human desire to control one’s own destiny and to impose one’s will on other is the most basic human motivation. We are moved without know it by an imperious will to power, which brooks no obstacles. The will to power has filled society’s vacuum of values. We see it on an individual level in the quest for autonomy and the shedding of all restraints. On a corporate level, it is dramatically evident in the rise of gangster leaders, and evident as well in the bloated growth of Western governments. The resultant illusion—that all power resides in large institutions—is the salient characteristic of modern politics. Since power is often measures by one’s prominence and ability to influence others, in today’s World, politics is the most visible means to both. Hunger for political power lures men and women from the comfort of their homes and jobs in the private sector and drives them to spend months, even years, traveling about their state or nation, subsisting on stale sandwiches, greasy chicken, and little sleep as they should the same soul-stirring speech over and over until they are hoarse. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Candidates for Congress spend several million dollars to fight for a job that pay a little under $200,000 a year; others settle for lower-paying bureaucratic positions. Still others give huge political contributions in the hopes of acquiring even an obscure embassy appointment. Certainly in every generation there are states-people motivated by a genuine noblesse oblige, a sense of high calling to serve humanity. For the most part, it is will to power that fuels political passion in every culture. In the political arena one of the most important attributes of power is its visibility. So people go to great lengths to protect their territory or prerogatives. The pursuit of power affects entire governments or regions, as well as individuals. Those in office use their power to keep themselves in office. This is an accepted tradition in most Wester democracies. In every American election since the forties the party in power has used grants and federal assistance programs for political advantage. President Truman won his upset victory in 1948 by doling out federal funds to struggling farmers and openly courting special-interest groups. President Eisenhower judiciously announced grants in key states during the 1956 campaign. In the Kennedy and Johnson year a special White House office monitored election-year grants, and party fund-raisers notified defense contractors of impending contracts. Administrations since have adopted similar practices. All governments also use the reality as well as the façade of power to maintain their own power. Eventually people start to see public office as a holy crusade. They party seeks power entirely for its own sake, they are interested only in power, the object of power is power. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
While power may begin as a means to an end, it also becomes the end itself. Having witnessed Watergate, one can attest to the wisdom of Lord Acton’s well-known adage: Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. It is crucial to note, however, that it is power that corrupts, not power that is corrupt. It is like electricity. When properly handled, electricity provides light and energy; when mishandled it destroys. God has given power to the state to be used to restrain evil and maintain order. It is the use of power, whether for personal gain or for the state’s ordained function, that is at issue. The problem of power is not limited to public officials, of course. It affects all human relationships, from the domineering parent to the bullying boss to the manipulative spouse of the pastor who plays God. It is also wielded effectively by the seemingly weak who manipulate others to gain their own ends. The temptation to abuse power confronts everyone, including people in positions of spiritual authority. It is ludicrous for any Christian to believe that one is the worthy object of public worship; it would be like a donkey carrying Jesus Christ into Jerusalem believing that crows were cheering and laying down their garments for him or her, not Jesus. However, the perks and public adoration accompanying television exposure are enough to inflate anyone’s ego. This leads to the self-indulgent use of power some have subbed the “Imelda Marcos syndrome,” which reasons, “because I am in this position, I have a right to do whatever I want,” with total selfishness and disregard for others. Power is like saltwater; the more you drink the thirstier your get. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
The lure of power can separate the most resolute of Christians from the true nature of Christian leadership, which is service to others. It is difficult to stand on a pedestal and wash the feet of those below. It was this very temptation of power that led to the first sin. Eve was tempted to eat from the tree of knowledge to be like God and acquire power reserved for Him. The sin of the Garden was the sin of power. Power has been one of Satan’s most effective tools from the beginning, perhaps because one lusts for it so oneself. Milton wrote of Lucifer in Paradise Lost, “To reign is worth ambition, though in hell. Better to reign in hell than to serve in Heaven.” The claims of the inner life for attention and satisfaction are too often thrust aside, with a consequent unbalance. This deplorable condition increases until in middle life bodily malfunctions and maladies begin to appear, nervous and emotional stresses begin to cause trouble. It is then that the little “I” starts to break down. However, because those clams are still, consciously or unconsciously, resisted, the cures are either temporary or followed, later, by new forms of ill health. This is not to say that there is only a single origin of sickness or disease, but it is certainly a very modern one. If the change begins in the body’s behaviour it may influence the mind to a very limited extent, but if it begins in the mind’s thinking it will influence the body to a very large extent. That is the difference. If, when we consider a subject from the standpoint of medicine, psychology, biology, or philosophy, we treat the body and the mind as two entirely separable things, it would be a mistake. They have a common origin. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
We agree with all those virile advocates of health who assert that it is the foundation of human happiness. However, we would widen its definition and make it include mental, emotional, and spiritual health. The psychological causes of disease have only recently come under investigation by the strict methods of modern science, but the general fact of their existence was known thousands of years ago. Plato, for instance, said: “This is the great error of our say, that physicians separate the inner being from the body.” What needs to be learned and accepted is the mentalist law of reproduction—as apart from the biological law—which teaches that sustained thoughts or violent feelings may produce physical-body effects. Many of the conventional ideas prevalent in the medical profession are still materialistic, although some members of that profession do not shut their eyes to the dominant role of mind in the mind-body relationship. When the perceptions of the inner being are developed, the all-importance of healing wrong thought-emotion becomes clear. The belief that disease exists entirely in the mind is an exaggerated one. The opposite belief that it exists entirely in the body is equally carried too far. In both cases experience and reflection must ultimately produce a reaction, provided prejudice is not stronger than the spirit of truth-seeking. Nothing that happens to a human happens to one’s flesh alone or to one’s mind alone. The one can never exclude the other, for both have to suffer together, or enjoy together, or progress together. Here again mentalism makes it possible for us to understand the basic principle which is at work. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
The entire body being a mental construct, it is occasionally possible to apply mental forces so as to repair wastage, heal disease, and restore healthy functioning. We say “occasionally” advisedly, for reasons which will shortly be given. Psychosomatic medicine deals with physical diseases caused by emotional or mental factors, by moods of fears, by hidden conflicts or repressions. It has steadily been rising into an influence place of its own in recent years. Mentalism affirms the true nature of the body, and hence of the nerves in the body. Pain is a condition of those nerves and hence must ultimately be what the body is—an idea in the mind. What healing agent can be used successful to cure a pathological condition whose first origin is the mind? Should it not also be mental? The power of bodily conditions to control thinking is admittedly true. Experience tells us that this is so, that physical causes are effectual in producing mental-emotional results. However, this is not the whole true. The reverse fact, that spiritual and psychic forces can heal or injure the body, that thoughts and feelings can affect its functioning, must also be admitted into consideration. Even if it be hard to grant by sceptics that the mind is the whole cause of a particular sickness, they may be willing to grant that it is at least a contributing cause. If the individual mind were completely cut off from the Universal Mind, if it really lived in a realm composed only of its own thought, then the formation and continuation of the World-image would be fully under its control. However, this is not the case. Consequently it lacks the freedom to mold the body-thought as it would or prolong its life at will. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
In the process of announcing the Kingdom and offering redemption from the Fall, Jesus Christ turned conventional views of power upside down When His disciples argued over who was the greatest, Jesus rebuked them. “The greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves,” he said. Imagine the impact His statement would make in the back rooms of American politicians or in the carpeted boardrooms of big business—or, sadly, in some religious councils. Jesus was as good as His words. He washed His own followers’ dusty feet, a chore reserved for the lowliest servant of the first-century Palestine. A king serving the mundane physical needs of His subjects? In comprehensible. Yet servant leadership is the heart of Christ’s teaching. “Whoever want so be first must be slave of all.” His was a revolutionary message to the class-conscious culture of the first century, where position and privilege were entrenched, evidenced by the Pharisees with their reserved seats in the synagogue, by masters ruling slaves, and by men dominating women. It is no less revolutionary today in the class-conscious cultures of the Old World and the New World where power, money, fame, and influence are idolized in various forms. I have the feeling that the Christian theologian are reluctant to come in through the door I have tried to open. I have tried to relate Christianity to the sacredness of all life. It seems to me this is a vital part of Christianity as I understand it. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
However, the Christian theologians, many of the, confine Christianity to be the human form of life. It does not seem to me to be correct. It lacks the essential universalization that I associate with Jesus. Why limit reverence for life to the human form? We cannot understand God’s ways. However, we can understand through Jesus that in all our suffering we still have a Father in Heaven. And this calms people’s hearts. I know that many are as convinced as I that in spite of suffering we need not doubt God’s love and faithfulness. We are still heirs of His Kingdom and still His children, and so we may rest assured that He will always lift us above misfortune. That is why our Lord says to be: “Blessed are those who suffer, for they shall be comforted.” It is amazing paradox that the Overself completely transcends the body yet completely permeates it: both these descriptions are simultaneously true. Although the Overself does not pass through the diverse experiences of its imperfect image, the ego, nevertheless it witnessed them. Although it is aware of the pan and pleasure experienced by the body which it is animating, it does not itself feel them; although detached from physical sensations, it is not ignorant of them. On the other hand, the personal consciousness does feel them because it regards them as states of its own self. Thus the Overself is conscious of our joys and sorrows without itself sharing them. It is away of our sense-experience without itself being physically sentient. Those who wonder how this is possible should reflect that a human awakened from nightmare is aware once again in the form of a revived memory of what one suffered and what one sensed but yet does not share again either the suffering or the sensation. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
The Overself perceives and knows that individual self, but only as an imperturbable witness—in the same way that the sun witnesses the various objects upon the Earth but does not enter into a particular relation with a particular object. So too the Overself is present in each individual self as the witness and as the unchanging consciousness which gives consciousness to the individual. The “I” is immeasurably greater than the ego which it projects or than the intellect, which the ego uses. The normal human thinks one is body plus mind, with emphasis on the body. However, self-questioning and analysis show that, although one certainly has these two things and is certainly associated with them, the “I” is in fact neither of them. It is, by contrast, not changing and quite elusive. It is not in space, as the body is, nor in time, as the mind is. It is, in fact, a mystery. The attempt to find out what it is brings up the questions of existence, life, activity, and consciousness. All that anyone basically possesses unlost through all one’s life is one’s “I.” All that one really is, is this same “I.” The physical body, although seemingly inseparable from it, is something lived in and used, as a house is lived in and a tool is used. To look at a human and at one’s life from the outside is only to see half the human. To look at one from the inside is to see the other half. Put these two fragments together and there is the whole human. Or so it would seem. However, what if behind one’s thoughts and feelings there were still another self of an utterly different kind and quality? And this exactly is one’s situation. One does not know all of oneself, and one understands it even less. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Those who have been privileged to look being the veil can only urge one to recognize this incompleteness and teach one what steps to take to overcome it. The divine soul in us utterly above and unaffected by the sense impressions. If we become conscious of it, we also become conscious of a supersensual order of existence. It is a higher self not only in a moral sense but also in a cosmic sense. For the lower one issued forth from it, but under limitations of consciousness, form, space, and time which are not in the parent Self. When we come to see that it is the body alone that expresses the coming into life and the going into death, that in the true self there is neither a beginning nor an ending but rather LIFE itself, we shall see aright. We thank Thee, O Father for the joy and gladness of this festival. At this Season of our Freedom, we are grateful unto Thee, O Redeemer of America, for the redemption Thou hast wrought for our fathers and for us. Thou did bring us forth from slavery to freedom, from darkness to light, from human bondage to Thy divine service. As Thou wast with our fathers, we pray Thee, be with us in every generation, and bear growth and provide safe harbour in unlimited recesses. We would travel eternity to experience your grace for there lies beauty in radiant abundance and it gives tenor to the vast ocean of our lives. Please protect this paradise. Amen. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
CRESLEIGH RIVERSIDE AT PLUMAS RANCH
MODEL NOW OPEN Plumas Lake, CA |
Now Selling!
Cresleigh Riverside Model Home is NOW OPEN! Nestled at the southern end of Plumas Lake, bordering an orchard to the west, Cresleigh Riverside is home to the largest home sites in the three Plumas Ranch communities. Its executive-style residences feature space and amenities that are well beyond the norm – many on country lots that back up to the Ranch’s adjacent fruit orchards. With four floor plans available, we are certain you will find the home that fits your needs and lifestyle.
Gain the freedom of large home sites and the extra space and flexibility with Cresleigh Riverside. Homeowners will love the convenient commuter access to nearly Sacramento and Yuba City.
Popular design elements include open floor plans, large kitchen islands, and flex spaces are staples in Cresleigh homes. Additional game rooms, bedroom space and three-car garages provide other custom possibilities.
Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Go.
With an exceptionally crafted home in a neighborhood brimming with activity, you will have the freedom to dive into your passions and discover new adventures. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-riverside-at-plumas-ranch/
Randolph Harris II International Institute 