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The Spirits Connected to Her Haunted Mansion
One of the many signs of someone being possessed is when one starts speaking in different voices, languages, and explaining things like you just met them that are out of context for the situation. However, scientific research has been unable to find an explanation for some well-documented speech occurrences. The so-called charismatic movement in our own country with its emphasis upon speaking in tongues has focused a great deal of attention upon this subject. Many people in Christian churches believe they are reproducing the gift of tongues reported in the book of Acts and discussed by the apostle Paul in the first letter to the believers in Corinth. The Biblical soundness of their belief lies outside the scope of this study, but we can report that scientifically conducted investigations have shown all instances of tongues-speaking to have the same characteristics wherever they are encountered. The variation between the tongues spoken in a state of hysterical frenzy among primitives is only superficially different from that practiced in a quiet, composed Christian setting. He considers that all tongues experiences are a means by which uneasy and unsatisfied people identify with the supernatural, securing psychological compensation for the spiritual vacuum in which they live. Some Christian scholars believe that added to the psychological element is the possibility that demons are involved in tongues-speaking, but results of investigations in this field are not yet conclusive. Tongues-speaking can be a language of ecstasy; that is, articulated sounds which do not constitute an actual language. Reports keep coming of an even more astonishing phenomenon—speaking a real dialect that was never learned. Hundreds of missionaries, especially those working among people in Asia, report that they often have encountered the mysterious ability of natives to speak in real languages that they never knew. These accounts come from Christian workers who represent widely divergent opinions regarding the charismatic movement. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
One of Mrs. Winchester’s staff members that worked in the greenhouses on her property, who was born and reared on the Tibetan border used to report hearing the Tibetan monks in their ritual dances speak in English with quotations from Shakespeare, with profanity like drunken soldiers, or in German and French, or in languages unknown. A maid also reported the same experiences in the mansion. Reports of this nature are so numerous and come from such reputable people that one cannot set them aside lightly. Perhaps this is the reason Mrs. Winchester installed the mysterious windows in the Grand Ballroom? Christians must not jump to hasty conclusions on such delicate and complicated subjects, but they certainly must recognize the possibility of demonic activity and exercise extreme caution in an attitude of prayerful dependence upon God. We will be able to analyze these reports far more adequately after they have been thoroughly researched by competent investigators. Research teams have found that many of the physical and psychical phenomena declared impossible by the rationalistic scientists of the early 1900’s actually do take place. Most researchers do not even pretend to have a full explanation of how or why these occurrences transpire, but Christians are aware that some of them may be the result of evil spirits who work under the control of Satan. Regarding the occultic, the believer should walk the pathway of extreme caution. One should avoid any so-called magic that claims to bestow unusual knowledge or power through a psychic gift or ritualistic performances. It goes without saying that one must keep a safe distance from any form of black magic, and that one must examine carefully the doctrinal teaching of anyone who purports to provide healing or other temporal benefits in the name of the Lord. Biblical faith is built upon trust in God and expresses itself in submission to His will. Every follower of Christ should be wary of magical cures and all outward demonstrations of allegedly supernatural power. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
As children of God, we must remember that we “walk by faith, not by sight,” reports 2 Corinthians 5.7, and that the faith through the senses. When we received Christ, we were brought into a vital union with Him, and the apostle Peter was writing to us when he said, “Who, having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and fill of glory,” reports 1 Peter 1.8. When a believer discovers the emptiness of this World’s enchantments, Satan tries to lure one into accepting his help through some form of occultism. Through these devices, the devil and his organization of evil spirits may attempt to bring defeat and misery into the lives of God’s children. Satan is unable to harm a believer, however, if that person accepts the instruction of the Bible, maintains a life of prayer, and submits oneself to God, and resists the devil. If one is hypocritical and dishonest, one will successfully resist and overcome the evil influence of Satan and his armies. The child of God must not merely say that one desires victory over sin, but must truly long for it. One’s spiritual vows and public statements must always be sincerely spoken, for the devil has no difficulty in defeating the hypocritical and half-hearted. The devil cannot effectively tempt a Christian who is actively living a joyful Christian life. Some believe that the door-to-nowhere in The Winchester Mystery House is just a wing of the mansion that was never finished, but perhaps it was a biblical metaphor. “I am the door; by me if any one enter in, one shall be saved,” reports John 10.9. It is elevated to a high level on the estate with no entrance reminds use to raise or consciousness, but by going the wrong way through the door, it may be a plunge into the pit of hades. There was once a woman who worked at Mrs. Winchester’s estate whose hand was terribly mangled by a gun explosion. Little did Mrs. Winchester know, that some men on the estate, amiable farmers, when not performing their specific functions, they were wizards, necromancers, exorcists, but above all priests, representatives of the people in offering sacrifices and making contact with the spirits. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
Over one hundred years ago, human sacrifices had been made in some places, members of the community offered up by the noblest lords, but now animal sacrifices are made. They exhort their listeners about Heaven and hell in which they firmly believe, the one a place of joy and the other of torment…They keep the register of all males born and are intimate contact with sorcerer-priests, who can read ancient manuscripts and incantations for use on all religious occasions. While working on the estate, a man of Asian decent went to the farmers and asked for medical assistance for his wife. It was a moment of weakness—but he needed help. After the wizards, sorcerer-priests, necromancers, and exorcists evaluated the grounds keeper’s wife several times, they found she was suffering a higher fever also. While making preparations to treat her, they noticed the husband cutting three little bamboo sticks about eight inches long and a quarter of an inch in diameter. Oblivious to all that was taking place around him, he silently moved across the room with these three sticks and a rice bowl. After placing a little water in the bottom of the bowl and ordering his wife to dip the fingers of her right hand in it, he waved the bowl over her prostrate body. His next act was to place the bowl on the floor and try to balance the three sticks in the center of it. While this balancing process was going on, he kept calling out the names of demons. The men of supernatural powers soon awakened to the fact that this man was preparing to call a demon out of his wife. The men of supernatural powers suggested that the man’s wife’s fever was probably due to an attack of malaria, but the man insisted that she was demon-possessed. The naming of demons continued until the name of “Lin,” and then the sticks stood on end. Upon learning this was the demon’s name, the man placed some rice in the blow and mixed it with the three sticks—a little salt was added to give it flavor. He then waved the bowl in circles over his wife and politely called out, “Please, Mr. Lin Demon, come out—come out—look at this, tasty bowl of rice—it’s for you if you’ll only come out—please, oh, please come out, Mr. Lin Demon.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
Then he moved slowly toward the door and outside, sprinkling a little of the rice along the way and begging the demon to follow him. When he reached the end of the estate, he flung the remaining portion of rice as far out as he could and then returned to the house. This was too much for some of the men of supernatural magic. They were determined to find out the shenanigans behind this thing, even if it meant calling down the wrath of the gods and demons combined. They asked the fellow if her would let them try to stand those sticks on end. He smilingly gave them the go-ahead signal; but he tried and those things just would not stand. Still not satisfied, they asked the man with the injured wife if he would show them how to do it. The whole process was reverently repeated, even to the standing of the sticks when the name “Lin” was called out. However, the men of supernatural magic finally despaired of ever making those sticks stand. They asked the man where did he learn this art. He answered through a séance with Mrs. Winchester. Six scrolls of some ancient script containing incantations appeared in the Blue Séance Room, along with other radical writings. The men of supernatural magic then realized this was the employment of evil angels they were dealing with. They were dealing with the rulers of darkness of this World, and spiritual wickedness in high places. In another case at the Winchester Mansion, these men who doubled as farmers met a fifteen-year-old girl who had a disease of the eyes. She spent quite a time in an eye clinic, but in spite of the treatment she was not cured. Since medical help had failed, she turned to the men of supernatural magic. These men, using white magic, case some spells over her. Within 24 hours of the charming, the girl’s eye trouble disappeared, but thereafter she felt a terrible inner unrest. She prayed but found no peace. Later, when she visited her former eye specialist, he could only shake his head in astonishment and ask her how she had been healed. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
Although white magic has been able to heal people, some still believe it is inspired by the powers of darkness. Through white magic some may even obtain what they actually desired, and so it is often only in the effects that its true nature is revealed. The boundary between prayer and magic can be very fluid. If one is able to differentiate between the genuine and the imitation articles, it is essential to have the gift of discerning of spirits. However, whether it sails under a black, white or neutral flag, many people believe they have evidence to prove that the effect of magic in any form is the work of the devil. Yet, that is not what I believe. I have met some very nice people who claim to be witches and warlocks, and they are some of the most kindest people you will every meet. They define those that Christians, who pontificate about the bible, harass and attract and really listen and get to all sides of the story, some it makes some wonder, who is really evil? I am not saying that all Christians are bad, but the witch hunts were started by Christians, as well as lynching in the Southern states. I am not telling anyone what to believe, I am just presenting information that is fascinating. Part of being educated is to remain unbiased and be able to have a discussion, until you draw your own reasonable conclusion based on the evidence presented. If one does not have a case, or does not want to be contradicted by evidence that would prove their argument false, of course they turn to slander, harassment, and terrorism. That is what ignorant people do. They gang up and try to lie so loud to make sure no one can hear the truth they are suppressing. But as the Bible says, all things will come to the light. Everyone has things they need to deal with inside of themselves and sometimes it is more comfortable to try to find fault with others and blame others instead of taking responsibility. For instance, the dynamic of idolatry is demonism since idolatry is in reality the worship of other gods who are demons (1 Corinthians 10.20), headed by Satan the “god of this World,” (2 Corinthians 4.4). #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
Occultism involves dealing with demonic forces through fortune-telling, magic, spiritism, or religious cults, which are supposedly closely allied to idolatry. Persons who deal in the occult often discover that they have spiritistic sensitivity, extrasensory perception, or abnormal intellectual powers enabling them to engage in clairvoyance, precognition, divination, psychometry, magic, and spiritism. Dealing in the occult often results in the subjection to the powers of darkness to such a degree that the mind becomes blinded to truth, immersed in deception and error. This frequently results in acute depression with thoughts of self-destruction. However, not all emotional problems or suicidal tendencies should be attributed to occultism. However, demons can also oppress that human mind. Enslavement to demons sometimes reaches a point in which the demonic spirits harass and torment their victims. In the preceding stage of subjection, the evil spirits sporadically dominate their victims, but they do not necessarily harass them, at least not as they do in this deeper and more tragic state of oppression. Oppression in some form will be the final outcome of all who become psychically enslaved, even though some are not psychically gifted with spiritistic or magical powers. One well-attested and widely occurring form of demonic oppression is poltergeist phenomena. “Poltergeist” is German for “noisy ghost.” In such a case, the oppressed person is hounded by strange noises and sounds, such as shouts and obscene threats, rattling of chains, moaning, weeping, or piercing laughter. Dishes clatter, furniture is moved by invisible hands, and myriads of other strange happenings occur, invisibly produced by spirits connected with a haunted house where spirit activity has been practiced. Some who are oppressed continue to be tormented even though they may move to another residence. Also, common in the victims of demonism are the appearances of ghosts, specters, and monstrous phantasms. These phenomena are often explained away as hallucinations, but are well attested in occultism as spirits appearing as dwarfs, animals, dismembered parts of a human body, etcetera. At times these hideous spirits will strangle, bite, strike, or attack their victims in some way. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
Perhaps the most terrible and revolting form of demonic oppression is what is known in the history of religion as incubi and sccubae experiences. This is the assault by an unclean spirit upon its enslaved victim for the purpose of lust involving pleasures of the flesh. Both men and women have been attacked and molested by “seducing male and female demons.” Such fully established phenomena show that angelic-human union, a major cause of the flood (Genesis 6.1-4; 2 Peter 2.4; Jude 1.6-7), has its parallel in occultism today. The account of the following portent is given us in Aubrey’s Miscellanies. “When King James II first entered Dublin after his Arrival from France, 1689, one of the Gentlemen that bore the Mace before him, stumbled without any rub in his way, or other visible occasion. The Mace fell out of is hands, and the little Cross upon the Crown thereof stuck fast between to Stones in the Street. This is well known all over Ireland, and did much trouble King James himself with many of his chief Attendants”; but not doubt greatly raised the hopes of his enemies. A few years later a witch-story comes from the north of Ireland. “At Antrim in Ireland a little girl of nineteen (nine?) years of age, inferior to none in the place for beauty, education, and birth, innocently put a leaf of sorrel which she had got from a witch into her mouth, after she had given the begging witch bread and beer at the door; it was scarce swallowed by her but she began to be tortured in the bowels, to tremble all over, and even was convulsive, and in fine to swoon away as dead. The doctor used remedies on the 9th of May 1698, at which time it happened, but to no purpose, the child continued in a most terrible paroxysm; whereupon they sent for the minister, who scarce had laid his hand upon her when she was turned by the demon in the most dreadful shapes. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
She began first to rowl herself about, then to vomit needles, pins, hairs, feathers, bottoms of thread, pieces of glass, window-nails, nails drawn out of a cart or coach-wheel, an iron knife about a span long, eggs, and fish-shells; and when the witch came near the place, or looked to the house, though at the distance of two hundred paces from where the child was, she was in worse torment, insomuch that no life was expected from the child till the witch was removed to some greater distance. The witch was apprehended, condemned, strangled, and burnt, and was desired to unto the incantation immediately before strangling; but said she could not, by reasons others had done against her likewise. But the wretch confessed the same, with many more. The child was about the middle of September thereafter carried to a gentleman’s house, where there were many other things scarce credible, but that several ministers and the gentleman have attested the same. The relation is to be seen in a pamphlet printed 1699, and entitled The Bewitching of a Child in Ireland.” People in ancient times used to rely more on the spiritual, witchcraft, magic, séances, curses, potions, and meditation. Perhaps that is why there were so many more instances of supernatural things happening today. Some of these claims sound so outrageous and many of them report the same types of instances. Then today, we have all these technologies and medications and machines that we rely on and people who tell us what is actually possible and how many of these stories from the past happen to be something else explained by medication or a camera that so many people start to disbelieve in the supernatural. However, just because it can be explained by science, does not mean it is not supernatural. The Christian Bible even speaks about miracles, which are things that are supernatural. Supernatural phenomenon is real. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
However, supernatural phenomena may be less common today because land is so densely packed, so many people turn into TV and Music and digital entertainment, so they spend less time praying and tuning into nature. In the 1800s, one could life in a house and not see another person for years because there was so much space to spread out on. People had time to read books and gaze at the moon and the sky and think up inventions. By now, everyone has probably heard of the legendary Sarah L. Winchester. She is the one who built the most mysterious mansion in the World. One thing that surprises me is that no one has, as of yet, tried to duplicate or create something just as wonderful. Nonetheless, it has been said that Mrs. Winchester slept in a different bedroom every night, supposedly in order to confuse evil spirits. And it totally makes sense. Because even now, people say when bad things are happening to you, you need to figure out what you are doing to cause it and draw closer to God. Back in Mrs. Winchester’s day, the 1800s, people were into spiritualism and also believed that spirits were the source causing bad things to happen to people. So they would try to appease them to protect themselves from curses and demons and so forth. Every generation has their methods and religions and that is just how it is. Some say Mrs. Winchester also held special dinner parties for her spirit friends. Legend has it that she would serve her phantom friends on solid gold plates, offering them delicious cuisine like caviar, truffles, and pheasant stuffed with pate. The mansion’s staff was also well-fed. On a stormy night, the front of the house was dark and silent, for it was long past bedtime. It was thirteen past one, and raining like blazes. It was thirteen years ago this day that Louis Le Prince had been seen alive, for Black Knight, one of Mrs. Winchester’s mares kicked the life out of him in the house stable one morning. One could feel the present and all its dangers towering around. Staff who walked by the horse stable this day reported feeling lost, a ghost dislodged from time. Indeed, it struck many people as unusual that the lad was left for the to care for the horses by himself. It might have been a fancy stable, but there was a queer feel about the place. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
The sun was just beginning to set as they headed back to the estate. By the time they got inside, the night was as black as your hat: not a vestige of a moon, not a single star to break the uniform of darkness of the sky. With sunset a noisy blustering wind had sprung up, rattling about one of the chimneys, clashing the wet branches, and deadening the sound of cautious footfalls creeping across the paddock in the direction of the stables. The wind dropped suddenly, making the silence all the more intense by contrast with the previous roar; and through the stillness, Mrs. Winchester heard the clink of a bucket, and the sound of someone moving about in the stables. She sprang to her feet and snatched up her lantern. She thought that someone was trying to get at one of her horses, and her hand was on her father-in-law’s ivory-gripped Winchester pistol when she opened the door. So strong was the impression that she was absolutely surprised to find no sign of an intruder. The horses were perfectly quiet. Mrs. Winchester looked all around. There was certainly nothing to see, but it struck her that the air felt very cold, and she shut the door. The instant it closed behind her, a dark shadow fell across the square of light issuing from the entrance to the saddle-room. She figured it must have been the wind she heard and locked the door and went back inside. However, the butler Henry Boynton Clitz, was also suspicious. He turned the key in the lock and looked into the horse stable; then he gave a slight start, and drew quickly back. There was light inside, but where is came from would have been difficult to say. Beyond the shadow lay black and impenetrable, a wall of darkness. As he crossed the threshold Henry felt a blast of cold air sweep towards him, striking a strange chill into his very bones. Straight opposite stood a horse, and before him was an old man who appeared to be asleep. However, even in that intense stillness the tout could catch no sound of his breathing. His own heart was thumping against his ribs with the force of a sledge-hammer. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
Henry felt his flesh creeping with a sensation of fear that was almost sickening. Fear? Yes, that was the word; he was horribly afraid. And of what? Of a weak old man, for whom he would have been more than a match single-handed, and they were two to one. What a fool he was, to be sure! With desperate effort he pulled himself together and went forward, his eye warily fixed on the silent figure. Neither man nor horses moved. As Henry moved forward, he heard a low chuckling laugh. The man was looking at him. The gleaming eyes fixed on him with a sort of mesmeric power. His face fastened on the figure, taking in every item of the quaint dress, the high gill collar and ample bird’s eye stock, the drab coat and antiquated breeches and gaiters. His mouth was open, but for the life of him he could not speak. He was waiting in the helpless fascination of horror to see the face of a man who had been dead and buried for thirteen years. Slowly, like an automaton, that strange watcher turned his head. The square, resolute mouth was open as if to speak; the shrunken skin was a greenish yellow color, like the skin of a corpse; along the temple ran a dull black mark in the shape of a horse’s hoof; but the eyes burned like two living coals, as they fixed themselves on the face of the terrified publican. Next, Henry heard the crash of a lantern on stones and the sound of Louis’s flying feet, and an awful terror came upon him, a great fear, which made his teeth chatter in his head and curdled the blood in his veins. The place seemed full of an unnatural light—black flames. The air was foul with the horrible odors of decay. Above all, Henry felt the fearful presence of that which was neither living nor dead—the semblance of a man whose human body had for thirteen long years been rotting in the grave. It was not living, but it moved. Its cold, shining eyes were looking into his, were coming near. There was no mistaking the look of that helpless body, the limp flaccidity of those outstretched arms. “He’s dead,” said Henry, as he turned up the white face. Its coat was wet with—something. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
It was blood. But it was strange there should be no marks of violence about him, and yet he looks as if he had died hard. And truly, the dead man’s face was terrible in its fixed expression of mortal fear. The eyes were staring and wide open, the teeth clenched, a little forth hung about the blue lips. It was a horrid sight. Henry locked the door on the corpse until the police could arrive, and spent the remainder of the night in the butler’s pantry. However, when the Henry awoke, he could throw very little light on the matter. There was no one in the horse stables. No body, no foul odor, no broken lanterns. Just the horses and an old noose in one of the empty stalls. Whatever happened remain a mystery. The old living soul who knew the truth held her tongue. Mrs. Winchester simply told him, “Leave it to other staff members and never set foot in that cursed place. The poor boy is dead, and there is no reason for me to get myself mixed up in the business.” Demons can cause physical ailments such as dumbness (Matthew 9.32-33), blindness (Matthew 12.22), and various other defects and deformities (Luke 13.11-17). In all such cases medical and psychiatric treatment are of no avail, because the cause is demonic. Only be dealing with the spiritual causes of the malady can it be cured. Besides actual sickness, demons can cause speech and behavior abnormalities. In demon possession, which is an extreme form of enslavement and oppression, the speech and behavior abnormalities appear in greatly accentuated form with such violent physical manifestations as retching, screaming, blaspheming, cursing, foaming at the mouth, convulsions and display of tremendous physical strength. So completely does the demonic spirit gain mastery that one takes over the body of the victim and speaks through it with one’s own voice and language, which may be completely foreign to the language of the demonized. Sometimes evil spirits endanger humans’ temporal safety by exercising a certain control over natural forces. “I’ve covered my brother completely (That bump on the right is his knee) I will dig him out when I am ready to find how he liked it, you see.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
Tickets are almost sold out for tonights Flashlight Tours! 👀🔦 March 5th & 12th nights still have availability – hurry and purchase before they are all gone! You don’t want to miss this 👻
I’ll bet you wonder whether poor Whitney’s race is run. I hate to keep you guessing, but I must have my fun. 🎟 link in bio. https://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/
REGARDLESS OF VACCINATION STATUS, ALL PERSONS IN SANTA CLARA COUNTY MUST WEAR FACE COVERINGS AT ALL TIMES WHEN INDOORS. WHILE THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA LIFTED THE UNIVERSAL MASK MANDATE AS OF FEBRUARY 16, 2022, SANTA CLARA COUNTY MASK MANDATES ARE STILL IN EFFECT UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.
Time Belongs to God Alone and it is Worth More than Money
The person who does not read good books has no advantage over the person who cannot read them. The American Airlines 757 airplane was approaching the Rocky Mountains on a flight from Boston to Los Angles when a passenger called Michael Tighe’s, arm and head, suddenly lurched into the aisle. His wife, a nurse, who was sitting alongside him, immediately knew something terrible was about to happen. Mr. Tighe’s heart had begun beating erratically, failing to send an adequate blood supply to his brain. Mr. Tighe, sixty-two, was at the edge of death when flight personnel appeared with a laptop-sized device. Attaching electrical leads to his body, they shocked him—once, twice, several times—and literally brought him back to life, making him the first person to be saved in-flight by a defibrillator. It has been installed on the plane only two days earlier. Like the human heart, societies and economics, too, are subject to premature beats, local tachycardias, fibrillations and flutters, as well as “chaotic” irregularities and paroxysms. While this had long been true, the uneven, ever accelerating pace of change and continual de-synchronization that comes with it may now be pushing us toward temporal incoherence—without a defibrillator on board. When our institutions, companies, industries, and economy are out of sync with one another, what happens to us as individuals? If we are, indeed, running faster and panting harder, where will it end? How did we get chained to time and speed in the first place? Start here with a point made earlier that in less affluent societies, ancient China or feudal Europe for example, people were not generally paid hourly wages. As slaves, serfs or sharecroppers, they typically received or kept some fraction of what they actually produced. Work time, as such, did not directly translate into money. Add to that the facts that weather, the limitations of human and animal energy, and extremely primitive technology all set upper limits on human productivity, no matter how many hours a less affluent family might work. The result was a relationship to time remarkably different from our own. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
As late as the fourteenth century in Europe, according to French historian Jacques Le Goff, clerics were sill preaching that time belong to God alone and therefore must not be sold. Selling work for time was almost as bad as usury—the selling of money for interest. And as far as the fifteenth-century Franciscan monk Bernardino of Siena was concerned, humans were not even supposed to know how to tell time. The industrial revolution changed all that. Fossil fuels and factories smashed the agrarian limitations on human productivity. Clocks and watches made it possible to monitor and measure time more accurately. And how long or fast you worked did make a difference. Second Wave employers, in hopes of maximizing output, sped up assembly lines of paid piecework to squeeze additional muscle power from workers. And based on the “time is money” formula, factory workers came to be paid by the hour. Which explains why the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics still typically measures “labor productivity” in terms of output per hour. The early modernizers went further, forging another link in the chain that inextricably bound wealth to time. The New World gradually did away with traditional anti-usury laws and legitimized interest payments based on time. This was ultimately followed by a vast expansion of other time-based payments by consumers, corporations and, above all, governments. In this way, the pricing of labor and the pricing of money both became increasingly based on time. Introduced separately and gradually, these twin changes were momentous. They meant that the same individual as worker, as consumer, as borrower, lender and investor became chained to time as never before. Workers grumbled about the rat race. Artists, writers and filmmakers satirized it, as did Fritz Lang in his scenes of workers and clocks in his amazing film Metropolis (1927) and Charlie Chaplin in his classic Modern Times (1936). However, the chains of time only tightened over the years as punch clocks and time-based Taylorite. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
Temporal incoherence is often seen in modern times because of globalization and international business. With countries like China being 13 hours ahead of America, it means in most cases they are often a day ahead. And while we are sleeping, they are waking up. So some business people will need to be up at 1am or 2am to do deals with China and prepare to get their projects in a day ahead to make sure they are delivered on the day expected. With everything moving at rapid pace, Americans needs to sometimes be ahead one or two days, so this often means there are no weekends, it is just a constant cycle of business everyday of the month. Nonetheless, even today some employers in call centers and factory-style offices equipped with the latest Third Wave technologies continue to use Second Wave methods of management. Counting an employee’s keystrokes or calls per hour, they apply the traditional speed-up methods of the old-line textile mill or auto assembly line. The pace of life—not just at work—is in for a jolting further acceleration. Acceleration has clicked into ultra-drive and an avalanche of words has been devoted to elaborations by others. An entire new vocabulary of terms—“twitch speed,” “hurry sickness,” “time deepening,” “Internet time,” “digital time,” “time famine”—reflects the accuracy of that early forecast. Today millions feel harassed, stressed out and “future shocked” by the compression of time. London’s Evening Standard reports the unsurprising arrival of therapists who specialize in helping “rushaholics” to slow down. We hate to wait. The epidemic of attention deficit disorder among American kids may be chemical rather than cultural in origin, but it perfectly symbolized the growing refusal today to defer gratification as the future speeds up. However, if businesses necessarily want instance gratification, faster and larger returns and even automated services to reduce conversation and speed up transactions, why do we blame kids for wanting the same? However, this chemical reaction combined with the loss of patients due to having anything and everything at one’s fingertips has created a perfect formula for addictive tendencies and poor impulse control. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
The inability to control impulses leads to short term pleasure and reduces the ability to reach one’s highest potential. One recommendation is that when you do give in to instant gratification for something, spend time reflecting on how it made you feel and whether you want to make decisions that way in the future. Yet also remember the demand for instant gratification is everywhere. Consumers expect to find the services, products, and information that they want quickly and easily. As it stands, 60 percent of women say they do not have enough free time and 60 percent feel guilty for spending the free time they have on themselves. Around the World, multi-tasking and multi-focus replace single-minded concertation as an entire generation grows up in a culture and an economy moving from sequential to simultaneous processing. Even when some people have a long-term injury or sickness, they are still training themselves and focusing on a project like it is their job because no one knows what the future holds, so it is best not to set around like a vegetable, you have to train yourself for something and keep your mind sharp so you can participate in intelligence conversations. If and when you recover, people will be impressed by how much you know and the ways you can contribute to conversations and projects. This may give you an advantage over others who have more experience and a better education on paper. A lot of people like to hire people based out how they feel about a person because when you can see someone is knowledge able, trustworthy, possesses important skills, and are loyal, that is the type of person you want to take a risk on. Corporations are not faceless giants, behind that name are several people who have staked lot of money, in hopes of making more. And if you see intelligent and are business friendly, that will go a long way. However, it is also good to make sure you are truly ready for paid labor, because a physically or mentally unprepared employee can cost a firm hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars if they breakdown. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
People are all processing more and more input at faster and faster rates and are bored with anything they regard as slow, so that is important to keep in mind. A person can get approved for a mortgage, car loan, credit card, or personal loan within seconds. They can find out the results of medical examinations, with detailed results in minutes. All these pressures for speed explain why a covey of “time management” consultants and shelfload books offer advice on how to reschedule our days and relate time to our personal priorities. Yet all this advice scarcely touches on the less obvious reasons for the speed-up of life. Several forces have been converging to drive the acceleration needle off the gauge. The 1980s and ‘90s saw a global shift toward liberal economics and hypercompetition. Combine that with the eighteen-month rate of semiconductor-chip power and you get near-instantaneous financial transactions. (Currency traders can find out about a trade within two hundred milliseconds of its completion.) Put differently, behind all of these pressures is the historic move to a wealthy system whose chief raw material—knowledge—can no move at nearly real-time speed. We live at a pace so hyper that the old law that “time is money” needs revision. Every interval of time is now worth more than money than the last one because, in principle if not in practice, more wealth can be created during it. In turn, all this changes our personal relationship to the deep fundamental of time. In yesterday’s work World, time was packaged in standard lengths. “Nine-to-five” became the template for millions of U.S. workers. Half an hour or an hour for lunch were the norm, along with so many days of holiday time. Labor contracts and federal laws made overtime expensive for employers and discouraged deviance from standard time packages. These standard time packages spread from the factory throughout the rest of life as well. Paralleling the factory, virtually all industrial-age offices also set fixed, standardized schedules. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
Schools, meanwhile, prepared future generations of factory workers by submitting children to a similar time discipline. In America, kids in their conspicuous yellow buses were unwittingly being prepared to commune to work on time. Inside, the school bells rand and the children were (and still are) marched through a sequence of standard-length classes. By contrast, today’s emergent economy, for which those schoolchildren are being misprepared, runs on radically different temporal principles. It is, we are fragmenting yesterday’s standard time packages as we shift from collective time to customized time. Put differently, we are moving from impersonalized to personalized time in parallel with the moves toward personalized products and markets. Now, consider some incidents of pleasures of the flesh and marriage in a more “privileged” and more “underprivileged” situation. For the first, we can return to the remarkable boom in early marriages and child bearing occurring especially among the economically privileged who previously would have married late. No doubt this has been partly due to the war and the Cold War, clinging to life and clutching to something safe in an era of anxiety. However, it seems to be also partly a strong reaction to drift toward formlessness which these young persons could observe in their own parents. These young-marrying, contemporaries or juniors of the Hipster Generation, have often expressed themselves as follows: “My highest aim in life is to achieve a normal healthy marriage and raise healthy [non-neurotic] children.” On the face of it, this remark is preposterous. What was always taken as a usual and advantageous life-condition for work in the World and the service of God, is now regarded as an heroic goal to be striven for. Yet we see that it is a hard goal to achieve against the modern obstacles. Also it is a real goal, with objective problems that a human can work at personally, and take responsibility for, and make decisions about—unlike the interpersonal relations of the corporation, or the routine of the factory job for which the worker could not care less. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
However, now, suppose the young man is achieving this goal: he has the wife, the small kids, the suburban homes, and the labor-saving domestic devices. How is it that it is the same man who uniformly asserts that he is in a Rat Race? Either the goal does not justify itself, or indeed he is not really achieving it. If marriage and children are the goal, perhaps the truth is a man cannot really achieve it. It is not easy to conceive of a strong husband and father who does not feel justified in his work and independent in the World. Correspondingly, if he is running a Rat Race, his wife feels justified in the small children, but does she have a man, do the children have a father? Into what World do the small children grow up in such a home? If its personnel are married and have homes responsibilities, it is advantageous to the smooth function of the organized system. (Exempli gratia, it is much harder for them to act up and quit.) However, the smooth functioning of the organized system may not be advantageous to the quality of marriage and the fatherhood. It is a troubling picture. On the one hand, early marriage is excellent and promising, especially in the probable case that both the young people have had experience in pleasures of the flesh and could have others, and they have chosen the marriage as a reasonably steady and jealousy-free alternative. And having children early is admirable, rather than delaying for the empty reasons that middle-class people used to give. On the other hand, to take on such early responsibilities indicates an early resignation: the marriage seems partly to be instead of looking ambitiously for a worth-while career. If the highest aim in life is to achieve a normal marriage and raise healthy children, we can understand the preoccupation with Psychology, for the parents do not have much activity of their own to give rules to the family life. The thousands of happy marriages, then, have the touching dignity of evangelical tracts, as is indeed their tone; they teach how to be saved, and there is no other way to be saved. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
On the children is lavished an avalanche of attention. They cannot possibly reward so much attention, and the young father, at least, soon gets pretty bored and retires to his Do-It-Yourself. Now it used to be said that middle-class parents frustrate the children more, to meet high standards, but the frustration is acceptable because it leads to an improved status, esteemed by the children; the lower classes, on the contrary, are more permissive; nor would the discipline be accepted, because the father is disesteemed. What then is the effect, in the ranch houses, if the discipline is maintained, because the standard is high, but the status is disesteemed, first by the father himself, who talks cynically about it; then by the mother, who does not respect it; then by the growing children? Is it possible to maintain and pass on a middle-class standard without belief in its productive and cultural mission? I wonder if we are not here describing the specific genesis of a Hipster Generation: young men who cannot break away from the father who has been very good to them, but who simply cannot affirm father’s values; and there are no other dominant social values to compensate. If this is the case, where now there are thousands of these young men, there will be hundreds of thousands. The organized system is the breeding ground of a Hipster Generation. Now, after the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, the moral pursuits and other reformers focused on the age of women of the evening. In England, the age of consent was far too early. Grown men eagerly sought out undeveloped girls, knowing they had nothing to fear from the law. Some were a class of men who are disgraced in every society because the mates they choose are far, far too young for anyone to consider, and this was because in many cases they wanted to protect themselves from diseases, which virgins did not carry. In consequence, a supply of very young girls, often spurious virgins, came onto the market to become women of the evening. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
The opposition to changing this was powerful and persistent. Many legislators were themselves unrepentant brothel habitues and resisted all efforts to modify the legislation. In 1875, they relented slightly and raised the age of consent to thirteen. Moral reformers saw this as a cynical reaffirmation of the double standard. Underclass women over the age of thirteen remained virtually unprotected, and men of all classes considered them fair game. For an entire decade, nothing changed while the spotlight was on the Contagious Diseases Acts. Then in 1875, the Herculean efforts of reformers and a crusading journalist named William Thomas Stead convinced the reluctant lawmakers to raise the age of consent to a more “acceptable” sixteen. Mr. Stead was the son of a Congregational minister and the doting father of six children. At the age of sixty-two, he went down on the Titanic, quietly reading in the first-class smoking room, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee on a doomed journey to a peace conference. In his prime, Stead used his editorship of The Pall Mall Gazette to research and expose flaws and inequalities in his society. His grandstanding journalistic campaign on behalf of ruined young girls was startlingly unorthodox. Frist, he found a London police officer willing to be quoted about how abysmally the law protected girls. When Mr. Stead inquired, “Is it or is it not a fact that, at this moment, if I were go to the proper [brothels] houses, well introduced, the keeper would, in return for money down, supply me in due time with a maid—a genuine article, I mean, not a mere women of the evening tricked out as a virgin, but a girl who had never been seduced?” The police source replied without a moment’s hesitation, “Certainly.” Having established the situation surrounding his issues, Mr. Stead proved his point in a manner that went far beyond investigative-reporting techniques. Through a brothel-keeper, he actually negotiated with certain Mrs. Armstrong, an alcoholic mother, to purchase her virginal daughter Eliza (a pseudonym for Lily), “a bright, fresh-looking little girl, who was thirteen years old last Christmas.” Mr. Stead and Mrs. Armstrong struck a deal, and Eliza was his for the price of five pounds. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
However, before he paid the entire sum, Mr. Stead had the girl’s virginity professionally certified by Madame Mourez, an abortionist/midwife, whose skills in pronouncing upon the physical evidences of virginity is generally recognized in the profession. After a brief examination, Madame Mourez issued a written certificate of virginity. She was even moved to exclaim to Mr. Stead, who she assumed was about to deflower young Eliza, “She is so small, her pain will be extreme. I hope you will not be too cruel with her.” With his certified virgin in tow, Mr. Stead stepped firmly off the path of acceptable journalistic practice and into a netherworld of quasi-criminality, morally justified, tactically sound, but legally indefensible. Mr. Stead instructed his brothel-keeping agent to take Eliza to a house of solicitation on Regent Street. There, despite her extreme youth, she was admitted without question, Mr. Stead reported. She was also undressed and put to bed, quieted with chloroform purchased from Madame Mourez, the abortionist, who had enthusiastically recommended it for deflowering virgins. Mr. Stead then entered Eliza’s room, closing and locking the door. Silence. Then, with a scream like the bleat of a frightened lamb,” the drowsy child, “in accents of terror, ‘There’s a man in the room! Take me home—oh, take me home!’” Eliza need not have worried. She was in no danger of being assaulted by physical force. She was merely the sacrificial lamb in Mr. Stead’s blazing crusade to reform the age-of-consent laws. Once his cautionary drama had been played out and documented, Mr. Stead arranged for Eliza’s passage out of merciless England to France. Then her sat down at his desk and penned his account of Eliza’s adventure. “The Maiden Tribute of Babylon” caused a sensation. “An Earthquake has shaken the foundations of England,” proclaimed the bishop of Truro. Ironically, Mr. Stead soon replaced Eliza as principle victim of the expose. He was charged, convicted, and condemned to three months in prison for exporting a minor without parental consent. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
Mr. Stead responded bitterly. “What else could one expect?” he declared, given that the very legislators he had hoped to prod into reform were themselves patrons of Mrs. Jeffries’s brothel in Chelsea or Berthe’s on Milton Street. Despite this, Mr. Stead’s revelations created an outpouring of public outrage, including a four-hundred-thousand-name petition that, unrolled, was two and a half miles long. The legislators, secret clients of brothels or not, caved in and raised the age of consent to sixteen. Though women over sixteen remained unprotected against predatory males, this legislation was nonetheless a heavy blow to England’s historically entrenched double standard. It is clear to see money is not the root of all evil. Today, hard-won laws in North America and much of Europe have established a measure of equality that has deeply eroded the most blatant manifestations of the double standard. Feminists of both genders keep vigilant watch to ensure the old ways of thinking, acting, and legislating do not creep back into use, at least in the law. However, even now, remnants linger on. Randy young men still sow their wild oats, but the girls they sow them with are often times unchaste, sometime chaste. Yet, the double standard is eroding, but chastity still bears a woman’s face. Now, while interviewing for the job of editor, Frederick said, “This may sound self-serving, but I am extraordinarily gifted. I am certain that I will do great things in this position, that I and the newspaper will soon set the standard for journalism in this city. The committee was impressed. Certainly, Frederick’s credential were strong, but even more important, his self-confidence and boldness had wowed them. A year later, many of the same individuals were describing Frederick differently—arrogant, self-serving, cold, ego-maniacal, draining. He had performed well as editor (though not as spectacularly as he seemed to think), but that performance could not outweigh his personality. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
Colleagues below and above him had grown weary of his manipulations, his emotional outbursts, his refusal every to take the blame, his nonstop boasting, and his grandiose plans. Once again, Frederick had outworn his welcome. To be sure, Frederick had great charm, and he knew how to make others feel important, when it served his purposes. Thus he always had his share of friends and admirers. However, in reality they were just passing through, until Fredrick would tire of them or feel betrayed by their lack of enthusiasm for one of his self-serving interpretations or grand plans. Or until they simply could take Frederick no longer. Bright and successful though he was, Fredrick always felt entitled to more than he was receiving—to higher grades at school, greater compensation at work, more attention from girlfriends. If criticized even slightly, he reacted with fury, and was certain that the critic was jealous of his superior intelligence, skill, or looks. At first glance, Frederick seemed to have a lot going for himself socially. Typically, he could be found in the midst of a deep, meaningful romantic relationship—one in which he might be tender, attentive, and seemingly devoted to his partner. However, Frederick would always tire of his partner within a few weeks or months and would turn cold or even mean. Often he started affairs with other women while still involved with the current partner. The breakups—usually unpleasant sometimes ugly—rarely brought sadness or remorse to him, and he would almost never think about his former partner again. He always had himself. Each of us has a personality—a unique and enduring pattern of inner experiences and outward behaviour. We tend to react in our own predictable and consistent ways. These consistencies, often called personality traits, may be the result of inherited characteristics, learned responses, or a combination of the two. Yet our personalities are also flexible. We learn from experience. As we interact with our surroundings, we try out various responses to see which are more effective. This is a flexibility that people who suffer from a personality disorder usually do not have. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
A personality disorder is an inflexible pattern of inner experience and outward behaviour. The pattern is seen in most of the person’s interactions, continues for years, and differs markedly from the experiences and behaviours usually expected of people. Frederick seems to display such a disorder. For most of his life, his narcissism, grandiosity, outburst, and insensitivity to others have been excessive and have dominated his functioning. The rigid traits of people with personality disorders often lead to psychological pain for the individual and social or occupational difficulties. The disorders also bring pain to others. Witness the upset and turmoil experienced by Frederick’s co-workers and girlfriends. Personality disorders typically become recognizable in adolescence or early adulthood, although some start during childhood. These are among the most difficult psychological disorders to treat. Many sufferers are not even aware of their personality problems and fail to trace their difficulties to their inflexible style of thinking and behaving. Approximately 9 to 13 percent of all adults may have a personality disorder. Disorders of long standing that usually start before adulthood may continue into adulthood. More acute disorders that often begin as a noticeable change in a person’s usual behaviour are, in many cases, of limited duration. People with avoidant personality disorder, who fearfully shy away from all relationships, may be prone to develop a social phobia. That is why, even though 64 percent of students, sometime in their grade school career want to be homeschooled or transferred, parents make them stay in the schools they are in so they can become social and confident adult. Another point while we are on the topic of school, detention is a really great program. If kids did not have responsibilities, did not have to play sports or work, for those performing below standards, think how much reward they would get from staying after school and reading a chapter they did not complete or finishing up a worksheet. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
Nonetheless, diagnoses of personality disorder can easily be overdone. We may catch glimpses of ourselves or of people we know in the descriptions of these disorders, and we may be tempted to conclude that we or they have a personality disorder. In the vast majority of instances, such interpretations are incorrect. The cluster of “odd” personality disorders consists of paranoid, schizoid, and schizotypal personality disorders. People with these disorders typically display odd or eccentric behaviors that are similar to but not as extensive as those seen in schizophrenia, including extreme suspiciousness, social withdrawal, and peculiar ways of thinking and perceiving things. Such behaviours often leave the person isolated. Some clinicians believe that these personality disorders are actually related to schizophrenia, and they call them schizophrenia–spectrum disorders. In support of this idea, people with these personality disorders often qualify for an additional diagnosis of schizophrenia of have close relatives with schizophrenia. Of course, such findings may simply reflect the difficulty of distinguishing these personality disorders from schizophrenia, rather than some kind of direct relationship between them. Clinicians have learned much about the symptoms of the odd personality disorders but have not been so successful in determine their causes or how to treat them. In fact, people with these disorders rarely seek treatment. Now, what the scientists have done with atomic energy is to destroy the atom, the stud which God made and used to make the Universe. They have released destructive forces into the World and degenerative forced along with them among humankind. Even the peaceful commercial use of nuclear energy in reactor-installations brings these evils among us and the precautionary safeguards fail to overcome them. Human intellect, when not balanced by intuitive feeling and when directed by one’s wild and egoistic impulses, can only lead one to self-destruction in the end. In total sense, this will not be permitted by the World-Mind. Therefore, its course will be hindered and on oneself restrained as soon as the time is appropriate. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
The physical starvation or privation which afflicts so many millions in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas is deplorable but the spiritual starvation or moral degeneration which afflicts many more is really a worse evil. This idea may seem strange, even repulsive, to most people. For its truth can become evident only after carefully thinking out the causes and consequences of both situations, although it is evident in a flash to those who have enough intuitive insight. There is a grimmer prospect than overpopulation. By destroying their home, humans as a species are destroying themselves, not to mention animals and plants who will pass with them. If this planet dies a new one will be born, yes, but one will carry the moral guilt. In an unsympathetic society, what is deep in a human heart may be deliberately denied expression and not allowed to come out. The large cities have become large blots on humankind’s inner life and outer health. They are marvels of ingenious arrangements but monstrosities of nervous strain and psychoneurosis. Their inhabitants follow an artificial existence under the delusion that it is human existence. Everything within them is abnormal yet custom and cowardice, ignorance and selfishness have proclaimed it normal. The air is filled with chemical poisons by travelling vehicles and factories and industrial plants. Their water flows through miles and miles of sediment-lined pipes. Their food is stale, devitalized, adulterated, and often disease-breeding. The unnatural living and high tension of millions of city-prisoned people exposes them to physical and nervous sickness. It becomes harder with each year for the inhabitants of modern London or modern New York to achieve this gentle receptiveness to intuitive spiritual moods. If its industrial constructions have turned wandering streams into foul gutters, green fields into filthy slums, and pleasant valleys into mean joyless streets, science had not served the World. Worse is the poisoned air and food, the mechanized worker. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
In destroying woods and forests, in building over glades and dells, humans have been destroying one of their principal resources of spiritual welfare. The message which their loveliness and silence could give is lost; the benefit to feeling and thought is not received. Battlement in the face of the World problem produces inertia and paralyses initiative. We are all suffering the evil effects of dispersed radioactivity even now. The dosage is mall but cumulative, worsening with every year that passes. An exhausted people may become too tired to believe in anything or to hold on to principles, may live from moment to moment in weary opportunism. Despite delusions about their progress in conquering Nature all humans are still controlled by Nature’s higher laws. Violation of those laws always brings suffering but the present-day violation will bring disaster. An ethically blinded World may not perceive the actuality and factuality of Universal Law. However, there is no other God pulling historic stings than the Universal Laws of retribution and re-adjustment. And let us not forget that this destiny is not an arbitrary tyrannical power; it is self-earned by the nations as by individuals and thus self-called into operation. The sufferings it brings to peoples are really the reactions of their own near or remote deeds. They are visited by the consequences of their own making. Universal Laws work on their own time to set straight all crooked things, not in ours. Nevertheless we can sometimes see it move quickly enough to teach a vivid lesson both to those who suffer its consequences and those who observe that suffering. Because sufficient people were unable or unwilling to learn the proper lessons of the first World War, they had to suffer the consequences of this failure in a worse form—the second World War. If the latter’s lessons are in turn also left unlearned, then those consequences will come in the worst possible form—a Third and Atomic World War. When a civilization becomes so mechanized or brutalized or sensualized or materialized as to be quite insensitive to the higher values of life, it invokes its own slow passing away or abrupt disappearance. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
When we are aware of the Earth’s processes, seeing ourselves as parts of a whole, we learn to let go of the need to control life. We are reminded to accept the inevitable cycles of green and dry, birth and death, cold and warm, emptiness and fullness, light and dark, that characterize the events and activities of our daily life. Use this energy to achieve magically and create mentally whatever specific physical or mental objective one is aspired to. It becomes a vehicle of sacred consecration of spiritual force. Our prayers remind us of our role in shaping not only our physical existence but our human consciousness as well. Just as the spring has been celebrated for tens of thousands of years as the point of fertility, as when nature displays its beauty to bring about the conception of life, so too our own life has its birthing seasons. As a newborn babe, I can stand on my wobbly legs in the new World, wash the new body that has just been so tenderly born from a lifetime labor, and walk to stand before the bright sun. O Lord of hosts, happy is the human that trusts in Thee. Though I am fallen, I shall raise again, though I dwell in darkness, Thou art my light. Thou art my lamp, O Lord, Thou dost illumine my darkeness. My heart is not turned away, neither have my steps departed from Thy path. In earthquake and storm, I shall not fear, though mountains be moved into the heart of the seas; though surging waters roar and foam, and mountains shake under the storm; though the fig tree may not blossom, and there be no fruit on the vines; though the olive crop has failed, and the fields yield no food; though there be no flocks in the field, and no heard in the stalls; yet will I have faith in Thee, O Lord; I shall rejoice in the God of my salvations, for with Thee is the foundation of life; in Thy light we do see light. To have faith is to perceive the wonder that is here, and to be stirring by the desire to integrate the self into the holy order of living. Faith does not spring outside of nothing. It comes with the discovery of the holy dimension of our existence. We live by the certainty that we are not as dust in the wind, that our life is related to the ultimate, the meaning of all meanings. God’s existence can never be tested by human thought. All proofs are mere demonstrations of our thirst for Him. Does the thirsty human need a proof of one’s thirst? There is neither advance nor service without faith. Nobody can rationally explain why one should sacrifice one’s life and happiness for the sake of the good. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
Let that sunshine pour in! It’s a stunning #Thursday and we’re so excited to be hosting guests in our #Havenwood home today!
There’s enough space for a crowd, but the thoughtfully designed floorplan works just as well for a small gathering. Best of all the worlds!
The eye-catching design is as stunning on the inside as it is on the outside. If you want to add more stylish, functional living space for all to enjoy, the upper-level loft is a popular choice.
Who Would Keep a Cow of their Own that Can Have a Quart of Milk for a Penny?
No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness, and generosity hidden in the soul by God. The human mind is fascinating. A young officer working on a ship wrote that he would awaken during the night and discover himself under an undesirable physical and mental condition. He seemed to be clearly in a mesmerized condition, caused by someone or something giving the powerful posthypnotic suggestion to wake up and obey. The remedy is to use the same technique in reverse. That is, practise auto-hypnosis, give the self-suggestion that on waking up there will be full conscious and full rejection of the negative idea. If one must hate something, let one hate hatred itself. The storms of violent passion are to be resisted as the smoothness of inner peace is to be invited. To keep one’s temper in a single provocative situation may be easy, but to keep it consistently equable is a real feat. Life is a conflict. One must not let these negative feelings take up lodgement within in one longer than a single moment. All humankind must awake from its materialistic apathy and cast out something of its selfishness. It is called upon to renounce its violence and meannesses, its intolerance, unkindnesses, and injustices. It must either emerge from its animal brutality or else suffer itself to be extinguished by it. It must come out from the shadows of ignorance, selfishness, and materialism. Only then will it find the sunshine of a larger life that awaits it. It is not always one oneself who acts in a particular way at a particular time. Impulses from lower sources or outside contacts may be strong intuitions from higher levels or outside sources may influence one to wise choices which bless one’s future. We must not hate those who are born of the same divine essence as ourselves but we may hate the sins they perpetrate and the evil they radiate. The seeker has to contend not only with limiting environments but also with internal enemies. Apathy delays one, depression obstructs one, and loneliness frustrates one. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
The more one becomes sensitive, intuitive, responsive to the spirit, the more one is unfolding exceptional passivity. However, this puts one in peril, for one feels the negative presence too. Hence the more one must restrict one’s contacts until one’s strength is above them. It is prudent to escape from a situation where there is much pressure to commit a foolish action or to make a foolish decision leading to calamitous results—and not continue to stay in it until the danger materializes. One whose presence is felt to be odious, whose personality is regarded as distasteful, is better left alone. One should never allow the actions or words of ignorant human to arouse in one reactions of anger, envy, or resentment. The years are too few and there is too much to be done—both on oneself and for oneself—to waste them in negative, resentful thought and decaying, neurotic emotion. When one comes to understand its importance, one will begin to exercise some vigilance over one’s thoughts. Resist beginnings—that is the most practical way to deal with negatives. The destructive thoughts of fear and self-doubt which whine at your door, whine at the door of every human. However, you can make them powerless to hurt you. For—there is n chance, no destiny, no fate can circumvent, can hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul! If the negative thought persists then one has to wrench oneself away from it with the assent and use of all one’s being—feeling, reason, intuition. One’s own attitude towards events holds the power to make them good or bad, whatever their nature of itself may be. Those who are unable to think correctly about this tragic World situation must be pardoned, but those who refuse to think correctly about it do not deserve pardon. The counsel of Jesus to “resist not evil” does not apply to other men’s acts but to our own thoughts. We are to turn aside from a negative thought-habit by the simple method of substituting the opposite and the beneficial one. We need not to spend our strength resisting the thought of misery, for example. We are to substitute hope for misery, whenever the latter appears. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Wrong-doing will be avoided not because it is punished by the law of recompose even when it is not punished by the law of society, but because of the strong inner conviction that right-doing is its own reward, its own satisfaction. The beautiful is allied to the good. If we cultivate beautiful feelings, evil ones begin to get dissolved. One will not risk rebuffs by expressing one’s views and describing one’s experienced to the uncomprehending of the unsympathetic. It I cowardice to refuse to face the fact that one has made a mistake and to continue following the same course because it is to stop it and return to the right road. The easier way is too often the worse way, leading to trouble for one’s self and others. There is a limit to the extent of concessions to prejudice; we must not beyond it. Beware of those whose mind is vindictive and whose speech is venomous. If they are born of emotional prejudice or passionate bias, it is of little use to meet irrational arguments with rational statements. The ancient saying that where goodwill exists agreement will not be hard to find, still remains true. The crowds which delighted in the gladiator shows of ancient Rome and, to a lesser extent, those which delighted in the bullfights of modern Spain, do not see to understand how bestial they allow themselves to become at such times. If one is to be distinguished from a member of the savage species, the true human being, the fully evolved human, must have the quality of pity in oneself. Do not attempt to fight evil with evil. Overcome it by calling on a higher power to bring out the good in you wherewith to meet it. In this way you obey Jesus’ counsel, “Resist not evil.” Synesis (fourth century): “This would be the most extreme of ills—not to be conscious of the presence of evil. For this is the condition of those who no longer try to rise…for this reason repentance is elevating means…[but] both deeds and words [must] lend a helping hand.” A philosopher may not ignore the negative side of one’s or another’s life: one has to deal with it because circumstances force one, like everyone else to do so. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
However, one’s way will be different, because one will use all one’s faculties and capacities: intellectual, practical, and intuitive. One will keep calm and not let passion or negative emotion carry one away. However, all that done, one hands over the results to the higher power (which includes destiny). One’s mind must stay in That which transcends negativity, sin, evil, even if one must grapple with them. Philosophy will not disregard the bad in others, and the sin in ourselves, but having seen them clearly it does not react negatively in useless condemnation. Instead, it reacts constructively in trying to realize the meaning of evil, the consequence of sin, and then proceeds to cultivate the opposite quality, the good of that particular evil—as honesty where there is dishonesty and so on. If practical dealings are involved, we may regret the existence of these faults in others, but we may not refuse to recognize them. Amid all the pessimistic reflections which the state of the World so easily induces in the thinking human, one may yet be buoyed up by the hope which the eternal verities must again and again give one, that is, the hope that the end of it will be immeasurably better. The existentialist view—so popular with so many young people today—that we begin with oblivion and end with annihilation, that what comes between is either meaningless or mysterious, with no solutions to problems, no answers to questions, is a view which the tragedy and evil and catastrophe of our times tempt us to accept. However, religion and philosophy release us from this despair. In such critical times as these even some faith in the existence of a higher power, and some aspiration towards serving it, has protective value. Trust, not tension: trust in the higher power producing serenity rather than tension; because of the pressures of life this is a great need today. However dark or desperate World history may seem at times, we must always remember no one can disrupt the divine World-Idea, or spoil its manifestation, or prevent its glorious outcome. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Fear of the power and cunning of these evil opponents causes them to rely on obvious but ordinary human forces and weapons for protection. They forget the divine forces they could, and should in this crisis, call on—and neglect the superhuman and extraordinary. To express a half-amused contempt for the intelligence of our time is not at all the same thing as to make a jaundiced indictment of it. To witness the magnificent parade of a civilization of almost unredeemed triviality is less likely to arouse bitterness in the soul and more likely to give it a good half-hour’s amusement. On the one hand, carried away by the idealistic enthusiasm and millennial promises of merely emotionalist cults, some believe that a spiritual teaching has only to be propagated and it will spread triumphantly everywhere. On the other hand, confronted by the formidable spectacle of a whole World plunged in ignorance, conscious that the ordinary individual can do so little to uplift it, others drift into bewildered defeatism and actually do nothing at all. However, this second attitude, although much more sensible and much more justifiable than its opposite one, is not quite philosophical. According to the old classical fable, we had to look for truth in the bottom of a well; today we have to look for it in the bottom of a bitter disillusionment. In the dismal World conditions of today it is a paramount necessity to obtain some glimpse, however meagre, of the divine plan which is working out for all our lives. Only in this way can we co-operate with it understandingly and adequately. Instead of relying on flight into the unknow and uncertain, it is better to rely on God. In the first case one may be making a false escape and duping oneself, but in the second case one opens the way for true guidance in the matter. With peace in the mind and harmony in the feelings, both completed by knowledge of the universal presence of divinity—who could harbour evil thoughts, hatreds, or destructive plans? #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
Every evil person who crosses our path provides an opportunity, in the injury one attempts to do us, to keep ourselves from being provoked into retaliation, anger, or resentment. If we succeed in overcoming our own feelings, we mount upward a step. In a negative situation, where negative criticism and negative emotions are rampant, other persons may try to involve one in it, or at least get one to support their attitude and endorse their criticism. However, a feeling may come over one preventing one from doing so. If so, one should obey and remain silent. With time the rightness of this course will be confirmed. One the injunction to return good for evil, the question arises, with what then will you return go? Return good for good, but justice for evil. Is this not wiser counsel? Does not the other punish goodness to an extremist position, rendering it almost ridiculous by condoning bad conduct? Inner and outer difficulties are often related. What appears to be an ugly state of affairs may well be a definite attack of certain evil forces using interested human instruments. In such a situation, the individual should never practise nonresistence in any way, but, on the contrary, should fight them off as hard a one can. At the same time, one must remember that weakness in self-control can give these evil forces an opening which they might not have had otherwise. If one wishes to emerge victorious in the struggle, one must be on one’s guard. If one does not throw off this condition, one, oneself, unwittingly erects a barrier though which the divine help sent one finds it difficult to penetrate. Although the temptation to seek release as such a time through, for example, the easy way of drink is understandable, one must nevertheless remember the duty one owes to one’s spiritual life, to one’s personal interest on the relative plane, and to others. Although the student must forgive those who mistreat one, one need not think tht forgiveness implies one has to associate with such people thereafter. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Whenever the thought of them, or their abuse, comes into one’s mind one must exert one’s willpower to drive it out, and immediately direct one’s thoughts toward God, or toward any inspired individual in whom one had faith. Only the actualized Christian is entitled to dismiss evil and to deny its existence: all others must look it in the face, understand it, and overcome it by slow gradations. It is better to keep out of the way of evil humans, especially when they are in power, until or unless we are driven by the necessity of circumstance of the inward voice of duty to oppose ourselves to them. It is always a certainty that the practice of active goodwill directed toward those who regard one harshly will benefit one’s own development, while it is always a possibility that this practice may dissolve the harsh feeling against one. It is all gain and no loss. This is one part of the case for Jesus’ advice to return good for evil. It is a technique of this evil power to paralyse its intended victims by frightening them. If we give way to fear, we give assistance to its effort. It cannot be beaten without open defiance and ready valour. One must remember that one will meet with those individuals who are themselves the bearers of antagonistic forces, instruments of darkness—sometimes consciously, most unconsciously, people used by evil forces. So far as possible one must avoid such people. Certainly never enter into intimate associations with them, whether the relation be business or personal. If one does one will find that sooner or later some of their unfortunate behaviour will be returned by Universal Law and tumble on one and one with have to suffer with the afflicted individual. These people make talk as believers in spiritual things—indeed, they often belong to some cult or other. However, they do not understand truth or live it. They cannot help one and one is not strong enough to carry them. So leave them alone. And that is not always easy, because often they are people of a kind that force themselves into one’s life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Sometimes one can know them by this hallmark, by this aggressive way which they try to entangle another individual. It may even be necessary at times to deal with such people with a firm hand, even mercilessly and relentlessly. If so, do not hesitate, but do it without any personal feeling of any kind. The American landscape has been badly corrupted. European writers no longer even notice the natural wonder of it, they are so put off by the ugliness and conformity of the towns. However, worse than the ugliness and conformity is the neglect that baffles pride of place. Our poets try to move themselves by nostalgically repeating the names of towns: “Biloxi and Natchez, Pascagoula and Opelousas”—but beware of paying a visit. The Americans disesteem public goods, and improving the landscape is a big expense. Historically, the neglect of appearance and plan of our scores of thousands of villages and small towns, especially in the Middle West and South—the diner, the Woolworth’s, and two filling stations—can be analogized to the neglect of the present-day less affluent. In the tide of expansion, appearance was disregarded as not essential; later, the matter would be mopped up. However, the neglect rigidifies, it is a hard core not easy to change. Instead, the present tendency is to impose on the countryside a new corporation style altogether, in the form of shopping centers (=national chain supermarkets) on the highway. This works out disastrously for the communities, for these “centers” are not centers of villages, and there cease to be villages at all, simply scattered family houses. This is the end of a long process of disruption, for in any case the industry is gone, then men work in plants thirty miles away. It is possible to travel many miles even in New England and not see a single activity a man could make a living at, except automobile agencies and filling stations; not even a food store. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
The schools too are large and centralized. The families tend to move away frequently, but even while they are put, they are driving around. This does not make much community to grow up in. In more primitive societies, a chief community activity is working together, thatching a roof, net fishing. However, with us, precisely this co-operative labour, for instance the work in a factory, is removed from its community setting ad emptied, by the relations of production, of any community spirit. Places that have no shape have no face-to-face functioning, for the shape is the functioning community. The loveliness of so many hamlets in Europe is that they have shape and are built of local materials by local craft. Perhaps the people had to cluster to attend early masses. In Ireland, where they farm out the back door, the rows of thatched houses line both sides of a little street. In France, where men go off to their farms, there may be a square. In our own early New England villages, where congregational and political spirit was strong, there was a common green with public buildings, though the families lived scattered on the farms they worked. There was the shape of a community, with its economy, its crafts, and its ideas. The advantage of growing up in such a community in one’s early years is evident. It is not family supervision, on which the physicians of juvenile delinquency are now laying such stress; quite the contrary! it is that the family does not have to bear the burden of teaching the culture. In a community, everybody knows the child face to face. There is an easy grading of overlapping ages, right up to the adults who are going about their business in a going concern, and not paying too much attention to children. A good city neighbourhood works in the same way. From this point of view, the swarm of kids in a city housing project form a better community than present-day country boys or the kids on Park Avenue. Therefore they have more local patriotism. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
The bother with this community chain, however, is that it terminates abruptly before it reaches the adults, who belong to a different World; so the kids are a gang and the local community spirit turns into loyalty to a Code; it does not eventuate in anything socially cohesive and culturally worthwhile. And such a gang in prone to be delinquent because, as we shall see, in such conditions it is the forbidden tht best cements loyalty. Politically, a delinquent gang is not lawless and not in the state of nature. Balked in its growth, the local loyalty turns on itself and simple reinvents the feud-code of Alfred the Great, marking out safe territories and making provision for special classes of revenge. On this view, if one teenage gang, pursuing its vendetta, falls on another and murders a kid, it would not be our business to interfere in the law of that differently constituted society. Also, like Danes or Vikings of Alfred’s time, they regard our larger society merely as a field of sports and plunder; they have not yet reinvented International Law. However, we, of course, cannot view it so, for we live in an advanced state of politics and law: they are members of our community. We are not children but more experienced and somewhat wiser, and therefore responsible, so we cannot simply annihilate them like pirates (they are small in size, few in numbers, and armed with primitive weapons); and we cannot let them hurt themselves. (I think it is wise sometimes to regard disaffected groups as if there were plausibly these two viewpoints, rival patriotisms. It is better humanity and it might make better law. The advantage is that it takes the disaffected seriously as disaffected, rather than merely pathological; it keeps in the foreground the question of allegiance. We must deserve allegiance.) However, they are children. Let us consider rather the peculiar patriotic problem of an older disaffected group, the Hipster young men, for then we can see that it is a patriotic problem. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Here too, I think, there has often been a strong community influence of growing up together. For instance, fellows who went to Black Mountain College, which was oriented to community and creative arts—a powerful, and powerfully disaffecting, combination—are pillars of Hipster society. Other fellows were buddies in the armed services. However, it was, as Hispters their community spirit is strong. They barge in to sleep, they share property, they share a culture. Now think of this community, disaffected from America, as engaged in a pathetic quest for some other big patriotism, an adult peer group. We saw how, appointing themselves outcast, they affirm the accidental symbol of other marginalized groups: African American, Puerto Rican, the less affluent, and others. However, this is pretty thin gruel for intellectual young men, many of whom have been to college. On the other hand, they are unable to make the jump to the great international humanists community because, simply, they do not know anything, neither literature nor politics. (I once taught at Black Mountain College, and to my astonishment I found that the students had never read the Christian Bible, Milton, Dryden, Gibbon, etcetera, etcetera, nor did they feel—as a lack—that such things existed. However, they knew odd facts about Mayan hieroglyphics which their teacher had been interested in.) What then? Since it is necessary for grown fellow to have some major allegiance or other, they have latched on to the late Japanese masters of Zen Buddhism. (This is a late effect of the early-century discovery of Japan by Fenollosa, Frank Lloyd Wright, the Misses Lowell and Ayscough, and Ezra Pound, suddenly reinforced by the postwar occupation under General MacArthur.) Now, as we shall see, Zen is not irrelevant to those young men’s needs, for it is a theology and style of immediate experience. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
However, the pathos is that Zen was the flower of an intensely loyal feudal system that fed, protected, and honoured its masters, and to which the Zen masters in turn had fealty. For example, it is said that the haiku was invented by a poet as a public service when one was suicidally despondent because one’s Emperor had died. However, Zen without farmers and servants is an airy business; and the young men, as we have seen, are betrayed into dubious devices to keep body and soul together, nor do they have a flag to salute. Community approaches have worked to resolve many problems. In looking at mental health, the broadest approach for the treatment of schizophrenia is the community approach. In 1963, partly in response to the terrible conditions in public mental institutions, the U.S. government ordered that patients be released and treated in the community. Congress passed the Community Mental Health Act, which stipulated that patients with psychological disorders were to receive a range of mental health services—outpatient therapy, inpatient treatment, emergency care, preventative care, and aftercare—in their communities rather than being transported to institutions far from home. The act was aimed at a variety of psychological disorders, but patients with schizophrenia, especially those who had been institutionalized for years, were affected most. Other countries around the World put similar sociocultural treatment programs into action shortly thereafter. Thus began four decades of deinstitutionalization, an exodus of hundred of thousands of patients with schizophrenia and other long-term mental disorders from state institutions into the community. On a given day in 1955 close to 600,000 patients were living in state institutions; today only around 60,000 patients reside in those setting. The unfortunate result is that mental health lost most of its funding and a lot of people with mental illnesses have to where to go, but jail or to live on the street. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Clinicians have learned that patients recovering from schizophrenia can profit greatly from community programs. However, the actual quality of community care for many of these people has been inadequate through the United States of America. The result is a “revolving door” syndrome: the few patients, who are lucky enough to be treated, have been released to the community, readmitted to an institution within mothers, released a second time, admitted yet again, and so on, over and over. A lot of people who want mental health care are not able to access this precious resource. In fact, 10.3 percent (over 4.7 million) of adults with a mental illness remain uninsured. And, 56 percent of patients want access to a mental health care facility. As COVID-19 continues to rage, Americans are experiencing anxiety and depression. More than 42 percent of U.S. adults reported symptoms, up 11 percent in the previous years. Nearly 1 in 5 Americans has some type of mental health condition. Spending on mental health treatment and social services has reached over $250 billion, which is up approximately 60 percent since 2009. This cost includes spending on things like therapy and prescription medications as well as stays in psychiatric or substance abuse rehabilitation facilities. However, it does not take into account indirect costs, such as lower workforce participation rates and decreased productivity. In fact, depression alone is estimated to account for $44 billion in loses to workplace productivity. And access to care can be prohibitively expensive—even more so than physical health costs. An hour-long traditional therapy session can range from $65 to $250 for those without insurance. A patient with major depression can spend an average of $10,836 a year on health costs. Meanwhile, a person with diabetes taking insulin can spend $48,000 to manage their condition. On a national level, research shows that the United States of America is likely to continue to experience a shortage of mental health professional through 2025. If you are looking for excellent health and wellness coverage, consider becoming a Kaiser Permanente member. You do not need a referral for mental health and addiction care services. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Other ways to help keep health and wellness in check is celibacy. However, there is the double standard that is a Worldwide phenomenon that has many layers of meaning. The first is that one and one is not always two, because the woman or man of the evening is a criminal but their client is a “john,” an also because women are expected to be virginal at marriage and chaste afterward, and some men are expected to be chaste before a relationship and after, and during the marriage and relationship, but one’s husband is not bound by the same constraints. The double standard implies, in other words, that chastity is primarily and woman’s and small percent of men’s domain. Nonetheless, only women are typically judged more harshly than all men whose conduct is identical. Even today, the discrimination is thunderously obvious, preached from pulpits and parliaments and specifically mandated in the law. The double standard is nefarious not only because it embodies egregious gender inequality but because it condoned solicitation as an acceptable outlet for unchaste men. Though it condemns people of “the evening” as social scum and consigns them to lives of degradation and danger and disease, it sanctions their profession. The reason is obvious: without solicitation, lascivious people might seduce rather than marry the virgins of their own social class. It is particularly chilling that the members of many churches and other organizations in positions of authority support the double standard and, albeit reluctantly, swallows the equation that no men or women of the evening equals no chastity. Laws essentially force women to abide by a higher standard of regard in the matters of chastity than men. They also denounce solicitation but at the same time partially exonerate it as the safety valve that kept virgins pure. It is unsurprising, then, that the double standard matured as a code of conduct in pleasures of the flesh that demand female chastity and at the same time approve, or at least tolerate, the dominant group of mostly men, and their carnality expressed in the use of other humans as toys, though this meant sacrificing certain women and sometimes other to unchaste, unrestrained men and a small fraction of women. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Furthermore, not all men honour their obligations to marry their child’s mother. And when men who came from a higher social echelon seduced a working-class girl, they almost never honoured that class’s code. Domestics and shop girls in particular were the pray of privileged men, but being with child destitute these women rather than pushing them into marriage with the baby’s father. However, often times, after these men who have money start to become older and nearing retirement, they will then leave their wives for young women of other ethnic backgrounds and of lower social standings because these women tend to be considered more exotic and attractive. The women will marry for older man for security and to escape labour. However, in a few cases, it is real love. In society, another problem is many people seem to scarcely be able to comprehend what chastity means, or to regard it as a virtue. Among the middle and upper classes, chastity’s double standard wreaked havoc on social decency. Some of these moral puritanical, which even frown on premarital male activities involving pleasures of the flesh, young women are coached to trap husbands without surrendering beforehand even a taste of the delights to come. Men are, in some cases, are frustrated at this implacable wall of chastity and take it as a challenge. They play games. In large numbers, they form unholy crusades to seduce young virgins. This upper-class deviance was depicted on shows like the original on Gossip Girl. “Resist, resist!” the virgins’ elders urge them. “Just say a resounding ‘No’ to your pleading, inveigling, deceiving young suitors.” After all, as the old adage went, “Who would keep a cow of their own that can have a quart of milk for a penny?” However, at the same time, ladies, and a small percentage of men, forgive them for trying to ruin you. This double standard of conduct involving pleasures of the flesh is necessary, because unlike you, the dominant class of men and a small percentage of dominant women, by nature have an urgent, irrepressible need. Brothels used to be officially licensed. Unchaste people play a crucial role in upholding their societies’ notions about chastity. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Now, nowhere is a failure to achieve perfect synchronization more lamented than in the bedroom—unless it is when the U.S. Federal Reserve or the Bank of Japan rises or lowers interest rates and get the timing wrong. Timing, as any comedian can tell us, is everything. However, we are, for the most part unwittingly, changing our links to time, and that is no joke. As interested as investors and economists may be about exact timing in finance, they re remarkably uniformed about the role of synchronization—and, even more so de-synchronization—in the creation of wealth and poverty. Yet understanding these can give us a wholly new way of thinking about wealth creation. Some degree of synchronization has been needed ever since hunters and gatherers began working in groups. Historian William McNeill argues that mass rhythmic activities have been used throughout history to promote synchrony, which in turn improved economic productivity. Tribal dancing, he suggests, strengthened teamwork and made hunting more efficient. For thousands of years fishermen have chanted in unison as they hauled in their nets, the musical beats indicating when to pull and when to breathe. Agrarian economies also reflected seasonal change. According to anthropologist John Omohundro, writing about the Philippine island of Panay, “Through the dry season…and into the rainy season…businessmen are in their slowest season. All aspects of the distribution system slow down. By September or October the rice crop begins to arrive in town…Because the wealth of the province is regulated by agrarian cycles, city business activity rises and falls the these cycles.” Economic anthropologist Willem Wolters adds: “Purely local banks have never been viable in the semi-arid tropics because of the seasonality and synchronic timing.” Early industrial economics operated under completely different temporal conditions. Assembly-line work required a different rhythm. Thus, the factory whistle and the time clock were invented to coordinate work schedules. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
By contrast, today, as we will see, business activities are speeding toward real time. In addition, the uses of time are becoming increasingly personalized and irregular, if not erratic. More different tasks need to be integrated, and the acceleration effect truncates the time available for each task. All this makes synchronization harder to achieve. And that is only the beginning. If we look deeper, we find that every economy throbs and vibrates with unnoticed rhythms. We may buy a newspaper daily, pick up soap or milk at the supermarket weekly, gas up the car every ten days or so, cash a paycheck every two weeks and pay credit card bills monthly. We might call a broker sporadically according to what is happening in the stock market, buy a movie ticket or a book on a whim a few times a year, pay taxes quarterly or annually, go to the dentist when a toothache strikes and purchase a gift for a relative who is getting married in June. These and countless other transactions create rhythms that flow through banks, markets and lives. With the very first slap on our infant behind, every one of us becomes part of this ongoing economic music. Even our biorhythms are affected (and in turn influence) the marvelously complex, orchestrated process that pulse around us as people work—making things, providing services, managing others, caring for one another, financing companies or processing data and information into knowledge. At every moment, some tempos speed up, others slow down. New melodies and harmonies are introduced, then fade out. There are choruses, counterpoints and crescendos. Beyond these, throughout the entire society and economy, there is a generalized pulse of life that is itself the average, as it were, of all its subordinate tempos. The “economic music” never stops. The result is not patternless chaos because, within every wealth system, various components or subsystems are continually adapting their speeds, phases and periodicities to one another. In biology this process is called “entertainment.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Neurons, it turns out, do not work alone. They form temporary teams—much as businesses increasingly do today. In the words of Science magazine, “Neurons frequently fall into step with one another, forming ensembles that play the same tune, as it were, firing in relative synchrony for brief periods, before some neurons drop out of synch, perhaps to join another ensemble.” Firing in sync, moreover, apparently predisposes the neurons to “joint processing” at high levels of the system. Today’s breakup of monolithic corporations into congeries of short-lived project team, alliances, partnerships and joint ventures parallels these ephemeral “ensembles” in the neural system. One way the World could survive in joy is if the whole World worships God. We hear you, fellow-creatures. We know we are wrecking the World and we are afraid. What we have unleased has such momentum now, we do not know how to turn it around. Do not leave us alone, we need your help. You need us too for your own survival. Are there power there you can share with us? In the Service of the Heart, nothing is further from the truth than the widespread notion that to pray is synonymous with to beg, to request, or to supplicate. To be sure, to pray means to call upon God to help us. However, we need Him not only when we are physically in danger. We need Him also when we are spiritually in danger. To pray means to seek God’s help, “to keep our tongue from evil,” “to purify our hearts,” “to put into our hearts to understand, to learn and to fulfill in love, the words of the Christian Bible,” and thus to keep us unswervingly loyal to truth, goodness, and beauty. To pray is to feel and to give expression to a deep sense of gratitude. No intelligent, healthy, normal human being should take for granted, or accept without conscious, grateful acknowledgement the innumerable blessings which God in His infinite love bestows upon one daily—blessings of parents and loved one, of friends and country, of health and understanding. To pray is to express renewed allegiance to the moral and ethical principles which we accept as the guides of our personal lives, and which we recognize as the indispensable foundation stones for a decent human society. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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#CresleighHomes
Life is Very Short When You Look Back and Realize How Long You Spent Not Living Your Dreams
One of the interesting things that has happened in extant genetic codes is the discoveries that have to do with the degeneracy of the genetic code—the existence of several different sequences of bases in the messenger RNA molecule that can cause the same amino acid segment to be incorporated in the protein under construction. For example, the evidence strongly suggests that the amino acid arginine can be evoked by any one of three messenger RNA triplets CGC, AGA, and UCG. The related inference also appears to be correct: that three different types of transfer RNA molecule, each capable of carrying the amino acid arginine, correspond to these three messenger RNA triplets. Such degeneracy in the code is compatible with the fact that 4 X 4 X 4, or 64, different messenger or transfer RNA triplet combinations can be made of the 4 bases of the nucleic acid molecule, whereas only 20 amino acids must be specified by the various combinations. The evidence to this point suggests that every one of the 64 possible combinations may ultimately be found to be “meaningful” in the sense of specifying one or another of the 20 amino acid constituents of the end-product protein molecules. It should be noted that this kind of degeneracy does not lead to ambiguity in the genetic code. To be sure, it means that messenger RNA molecules with different base sequences can govern the production of the same kind of protein. And the existence of such alternative “words” within the genetic language suggests that different species of organisms may employ somewhat different dialects in the nuclear books of instruction with which they control their cellular chemistry. Nevertheless, the code could still be universal in the sense that a given messenger RNA molecule, if capable at all of operating the genetic mechanisms of different types of foreign organisms, would always produce the same kind of protein molecules. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Not only did Bonner’s successful crossbreeding of the genetic mechanisms of pea plants and E. coli cell-free extracts in experiments with synthetic messenger RNA has provided further confirming evidence. While much less work has been done with mammalian than with bacterial components, it has at least been established that the messenger RNA triplets that evoke specific amino acids in the finally fabricated protein molecules are the same for mammalian as for bacterial systems in the case of the half-dozen kinds of messenger nucleic acid that have been tested. In general, while making allowance for some degree of variation from species to species in the details of the genetic mechanisms, biochemists today are confident that the genetic code has essentially been “broken”—that they are on the point of being able to line up every possible messenger RNA triplet with a particular amino acid in the resulting protein molecule. However, the specific sequence of amino acid segments in the manufactured protein molecules determine their catalytic properties and therefore controls the specific set of chemical reactions that take place in the cell. Therefore, the solution of the genetic code in this way implies the ultimate ability of the scientist to “read” the molecules of messenger RNA (or the nuclear DNA which produces them) and thereby learn the properties of the cell whose metabolism they control—whether the cell is to have the properties of pea plant or intestinal bacillus, for example. Inasmuch as the higher organisms, including humans, are believed to employ the same system of genetic control (plus a few complications yet to be treated), the implications of this work are that one day the biochemists are now able to determine the colour of eyes and shape of the nose of a yet-to-be-developed human individual by analysis of the structure of the nucleic acid molecules in the cells of the embryo! #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Before we move on to some of the additional complexities that characterize the structure and metabolism of higher organisms, we should make sure that we understand how the discussion how all of this information contributes to our basic thesis as to the purely physical origins of life. The experimental evidence reported here can only strengthen our faith in the soundness of our nonvitalistic philosophy; for strong support for the thesis of the fundamentally physical nature of the life processes is provided by the success of the biochemists in extracting from living cells the pertinent nucleic acid/enzyme apparatus and in stimulating it to perform its architectural functions by means of the addition of nucleic acid from other organisms. Ans the successful employment of human-made chemicals for this purpose even verges on the dramatic in its demonstration of the workability of our physical explanations. Not even the evidence for the similarity of the principal features of the genetic mechanisms in all forms of life is particularly disturbing. To be sure, this might at first glance appear to be more reconcilable with the vitalistic view of the supernatural purposiveness of life than with the materialistic view that everything has happened as the result of the blindly probabilistic physical laws of the Universe. However, there is really no great problem in imagining evolutionary developments that could have led to a considerable degree of ultimate standardization in the nucleic acid/enzyme mechanisms. And such evidence of variety as the degeneracy of the genetic code, with the accompanying implication of divergence from species to species in some of the details of the genetic mechanism, seems comfortably consistent with our views of the normal consequences of the evolutionary process. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
As we address ourselves to some of the further complexities that characterize modern higher organisms, we shall find that our considerations will continue to be intimately involved with the genetic mechanisms that have occupied so much of our attention to this point. We shall not be able to escape being enormously impressed by their overriding power and importance in the phenomena of life. While evolution is clearly the great technique employed by nature for developing its biological novelties, we shall find it easy to conclude that the genetic mechanisms may constitute the most ingenious and important invention yet achieved by the use of that technique. Now, looking ahead. Did you know that your DNA determines your reaction to caffeine? Caffeine is widely consumed in foods and beverages and is also used for a variety of medical purposes. Despite its widespread use, relatively little is understood regarding how genetics affects consumption, acute response, or the long-term effects of caffeine. Twin studies find the heritability of caffeine-related traits to range between 0.36 and 0.58. Analysis of poly-substance use shows that predisposition to caffeine use is highly specific to caffeine itself and shares little common disposition to use of other substances. Genome association studies link variations in adenosine and dopamine receptors to caffeine-induced anxiety and sleep disturbances. Polymorphism in the metabolic enzyme cytochrome P-450 is associated with risk of myocardial infraction in caffeine users. Modeling based on twin studies reveals that genetics plays a role in individual variability in caffeine consumption and in the direct effects of caffeine. Both pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic polymorphisms have been linked to variation in response to caffeine. These studies may help guide future research in the role of genetics in modulating the acute and chronic effects of caffeine. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Caffeine is the World’s most widely used stimulant. Nearly 90 percent of adults in the United States of America alone consume an estimated 30 million pounds of this psychoactive substance annually. It is the most consumed psychoactive substance in the World. Seventy-five percent of this caffeine is taken in the form of coffee (from the coffee bean); the rest is consumed in tea (from the tea leaf), cola (from the kola nut), chocolate (from the cocoa bean), and numerous prescription and over-the-counter medications, such as Excedrin. Caffeine’s popularity Worldwide can be attributed to its ability to promote wakefulness, enhance mood and cognition, and produce stimulatory effects. It is used clinically to treat premature neonatal apnea and as an analgesic adjuvant. Around 99 percent of ingested caffeine is absorbed by the body and reaches its peak concentration with an hour. It acts as a stimulant of the central nervous system, again producing a release of the neurotransmitters dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine in the brain. Thus it increases arousal, mild euphoria, alertness, enhanced cognitive performance and motor activity and reduces fatigue. It also disrupts the performance of motor tasks and may interfere with sleep. Finally, it increases the rate of breathing and gastric acid secretions in the stomach. More than two to three cups of brewed coffee (250 milligrams of caffeine) can produce caffeine intoxication, which may include such symptoms as restlessness, nervousness, anxiety, stomach disturbances, twitching, and increased heart rate. Grand mal seizures and fatal respiratory failure or circulatory failure can occur at doses greater than 10 grams of caffeine (about 100 cups of coffee), but there is a decreased risk in neurodegenerative disorders. Many people who suddenly stop or cutback on their usual intake of caffeine experience withdrawal symptoms—even some individuals whose regular consumption is low (two and a half cups of coffee daily or seven cans of cola). #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
It is likely that several factors contribute to individual differences in responses to caffeine, including demographic and environmental factors such as age, other drug use, circadian factors, and sleep hygiene. One important source of variability that has received some attention in the recent year is genetic predisposition. There is growing evidence that individual differences in caffeine response or caffeine consumption are related to genetic factors. Genetic factors may influence responses to caffeine directly, by altering acute or chronic reactions to the drug, or indirectly, by affecting other psychological or physiological processes that are related to the drug effect, such as sensitivity to anxiety, rewarding and reinforcing effects of substances in general, or related personality traits. Finally, genes can also alter the body’s adaptive responses to long-term caffeine use. The biological mechanisms of these possible sources of variation likely involve interactions at multiple sites. One study had adult subjects consume their usual caffeine-filled drinks and foods for two days, then abstain from such foods for two days while taking actual caffeine pills. More subjects experienced headaches (52 percent), depression (11 percent), anxiety (8 percent), and fatigue (8 percent) during the two-day placebo period then during the caffeine periods. In addition, subjects reported using more unauthorized medications (13 percent) and performed experimental tasks more slowly during the placebo period than during the caffeine periods. Genetic contribution to caffeine consumption changes through different stages in life. It appears that genetic contribution becomes more pronounced throughout adolescence and then stabilized during adulthood. Researchers found that genetics influence individual sensitivity to caffeine toxicity, tolerance, and withdrawal in female twins. On average the woman reported slightly higher level of caffeine-induced insomnia and greater sleep disturbances in general health than men. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Epidemiological studies indicate that smokers drink more coffee than nonsmokers, but it is not clear whether these associations are related to genetic factors or to drug interactions, social conditioning, or other variables. One approach to solving this question is to correlate the use of caffeine to other drugs and using the common pathway model and mapping the genetic contribution to a common joint use factor and substance-specific factors. Using this technique, researchers found that the heritability for coffee use overlapped with that of nicotine and alcohol, though 0.72 of the total heritability was specific to caffeine, which was considerably higher than that for nicotine and alcohol. Investigators often assess caffeine’s impact by measuring coffee consumption, yet coffee also contains other chemicals that may be dangerous to one’s health. Thus, although some studies hint at links between caffeine and cancer (particularly pancreatic cancer), the evidence is not conclusive. Similarly, studies demonstrating correlations between caffeine and heart rhythm irregularities (arrhythmias) or high cholesterol levels are not fully reliable. Caffeine does, however, appear to cause at least a slight increase in blood pressure over time in regular users and a larger but short-lived increase during the first few days of consumption by new users. As public awareness of these possible health risks has increased, caffeine consumption has declined. Around half of Americans now drink coffee daily, whereas 80 percent did so in 1983. Heavier caffeine users appear to be more influenced by genetics than lighter caffeine users. People who tend to consume more alcohol also tend to drink more coffee. Genetic association studies have been used to identify specific genes that are responsible for the heritable components of these caffeine-related traits. Caffeine and its metabolites belong to the methylxanthine class, which are structurally similar to cyclic nucleotides, and interact with cyclic nucleotide phosphodiesterases. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Caffeine is absorbed rapidly and completely from the gastrointestinal tract. It is metabolized by cytochrome P-450 enzymes, which represent the rate-limiting step for plasma clearance, and its elimination follows first-order kinetics. P-450 1A2, which is coded for by gene CYP1A2, is the primary isoenzyme responsible for the demethylation of caffeine into dimethylxanthine metabolites paraxanthine, theobromine, and theophylline. Each of these metabolites is subjected to further demethylation into monimethylxanthines. Variation in the CYP1A2 activity, both within and between individuals, represents a major source of variability in pharmaco-kinetics of caffeine. The clearance of caffeine can vary to up to 40-fold within and between individuals. Notable exogeneous factors that affect clearance include numerous drugs, medications, and smoking status, as well as caffeine itself. Endogenous factors include pregnancy, ethnicity, and genetics. Asian and African populations, for instance, appear to metabolize caffeine at slower rate than Caucasians. Genetic variations in a number of neurotransmitter functions could influence responses to caffeine. Because 10 grams of caffeine can be fatal, the substance is classified as a medical poison. The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we will miss it, but that it is too low and we will reach it. A leader is someone who has the capacity to create a compelling vision that takes people to a new place. In 1783 Washington sent a circular letter to the States, describing the situation of the new nations as he saw it. “We have equal occasion to felicitate ourselves,” he said, “on the lot which Providence has assigned to us, whether we view it in a natural, a political, or moral point of light.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
He pointed to the natural resources of the new nation, its independence and freedom, the Age of Reason during which it had come of age, an age of “the free cultivation of letters, the unbounded extension of commerce, the progressive refinement of manners, the growing liberality of sentiment, and above all the pure and benign light of Revelation….if these citizens,” he concluded, “should not be completely free and happy, the fault will be certainly their own. Such is our situation and such are our prospects.” It is hard to read these sentences without agitation and tears, for they are simply true and simply patriotic. In the next generations, almost to our own times, patriotic rhetoric did not cease to sound, more pompously and falsely, but never without a core of truth. There was always something special in the American destiny to be proud of. In 1825 it was the broad democracy. In 1850 it was the magnificent spread and settlement from coast to coast. In 1875, the material progress, the cable and the Pacific railroad, the building of modern industrialism. In 1900, America was the melting pot, the asylum of the poor and the oppressed. In our century, the patriotic rhetoric began to be unbelievable—not by accident, for foreign wars (1898 and 1917) are incompatible with reasonable rhetoric. In recent decades there has been almost a surcease of such speech. Even references to the American Way, free enterprise, high production, and the economy of abundance have finally died out, because they call up the idea of tail fins and TV commercials. Highbrow journalists mention the American Way with scorn. Our case is astounding. For the first time in recorded history, the mention of country, community, place has lost its power to animate. Nobody but a scoundrel even tries it. Our rejection of false patriotism is, of course, itself a badge of honour. However, the positive loss is tragic and I cannot resign myself to it. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
A man has only one life and if during it he has no great environment, no community, he has been irreparably robbed of a human right. This loss is damaging especially in growing up, for it deprives outgoing growth, which begins with weaning from Mother and walking out of the house, of the chance of entering upon a great and honourable scene to develop in. Culture is, first of all, city and patriotic culture. Patriotism is the culture, we come with a fatal emptiness to the humane culture of science, art, humanity and God; and this emptiness results in the best people not turning back, like Plato’s philosopher who has emerged from the cave, to serve their country. Many of the best Americans have a strong philanthropic and local community zeal, yet it would seem odd for somebody nowadays to put himself to a big and hard task just to serve his country, to make her better, and be proud of that. Young people aspire mightily to appearances on television and other kinds of notoriety, but I doubt that many now thing of being honoured by a statue in the park and winning “immortal” fame, the fame of big culture. Let me make the same point by analyzing a remarkable proposition of Otto Jespersen, the grammarian. He shows that, contrary to expectation, a child does not learn his mother tongue at home from his mother and immediate family, he does not pick up their accent. The accent, vocabulary, syntax, and styles that form his speech are learned from his first peer groups, outside the home. Jespersen does not explain it, but the psychology seems evident. Speech occurs at the stage of the developing of the “I,” it is a forming of the image of the self, it is a self-appointment to one’s ideal and putting on its uniform. Changes occur as we appoint ourselves to one peer group after another. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
At certain stage a lad appoints himself or commits himself to a band of friends and puts on its jargon, jacket, tattoo, and masculine ring on the fourth finger of the left hand. If he is insecure and disturbed, this conformity is a cowering protection and the band is a delinquent gang, but in every case it is also, we see by the blazon, an achievement. And one way in which the Governor of California does not take the juveniles seriously, when he speaks of giving them a sense of belonging, is that he does not offer an ideal that promises equal manliness. He has none to offer. It is tragic when there is no great adult peer group to meet growth. Consider the case of an artist, my own case. To have simple and sounding language, rather than merely the lovely colloquialism of Sherwood Anderson or William Carlos Williams, it is necessary to believe in the great national culture of one’s people. Our popular culture does not warrant the belief, even to make the sacrifice that Virgil made when he sadly gave up his best vision because strife-torn Rome needed a national poet. True, an artist can then jump to the international and universal, for a mankind and God do not let him down (mankind is the fellow on one’s own block), but this is at the loss of pomp and glitter, of the glancing present. Without a patriotic peer group, it is impossible to have the brilliance of Handel, the material grandeur of Venice. With us the style of the big bright sensation belongs to cheap musical dramas on Broadway. Now, an analogy to the “triumphant conscience,” as developed by Luther personally as well as theologically, appeared in the enthusiastic philosophy of Giordano Bruno. The moral conscience is overcome by the “heroic affect” toward the Universe and the surrender to its infinity and inexhaustible creativity. Participation in the creativity of life universal liberates the moral conscience, the bad as well as the good. Humans, standing in the center of being, are bound to transform life as it is into higher life. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
These living souls take upon themselves the tragic consequences, connected with the destructive side of finite creativity, and must not try to escape them for the sake of a good moral conscience. While in Bruno the transmoral conscience is based on a mystical naturalism, Nietzsche’s transmoralism is a consequence of his dramatic-tragic naturalism. Nietzsche belongs to those empiricists who have tried to analyze the genesis of moral conscience in such a way that its autonomy is destroyed—Hobbes and Helvetius, on the ground of a materialistic metaphysics; Mandeville and Bentham, on the ground of a utilitarian psychology; Dr. Darwin and Dr. Freud, on the ground of an evolutionary naturalism—all have denied any objective validity to the voice of conscience, according to their rejection of any universal natural (rational) law. Nietzsche carried these ideas further, as the title and the content of Genealogy of Morals shows. He says, “The bad conscience is a sickness, but it is a sickness as pregnancy is one.” It is a creative sickness. Humankind had to be domesticated, and this has been done by its conquerors and ruling classes. It was in the interest of these classes to suppress by sever punishments the natural instincts of aggressiveness, will to power, destruction, cruelty, revolution. They succeeded in suppressing these trends. However, they did not succeed in eradicating them. So the aggressive instincts became internalized and transformed into self-destructive tendencies. Humans have turned against themselves in self-punishment; they are separated from their innocent terrestrial past from which they had derived strength, joy, and creativity. However, humans cannot prevent their instincts from remaining alive. They require permanent acts of suppression, the result of which is the bad conscience, a great thing in human evolution, an ugly thing if compared with humanities real aim. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Nietzsche described this aim in terms which remind one of Luther’s descriptions of the transmoral conscience: “Once in a stronger period than our morbid, desperate present, one must appear, the man of the great love and the great contempt, the creative spirit who does now allow his driving strength to be turned to a transcendent World.” Nietzsche call him the man “who is strong through wars and victories, who needs conquest, adventure, danger, even pain.” The man is “beyond good and evil” in the moral sense. At the same time, he is good in the metaphysical (or mystical) sense that he is in unity with life universal. He has a transmoral conscience, not on the basis of a paradoxical unity with God (such as Luther has), but on the basis of an enthusiastic unity with life in its creative and destructive power. Recent “existential” philosophy has developed a doctrine of transmoral conscience that follows the general lines of Luther, Bruno, and Nietzsche. Heidegger, the main representative of existential philosophy, says, “The call of conscience has the character of the demand that humans in their finitude actualize their genuine potentialities, and this means an appeal to become guilty.” Conscience summons us to ourselves, calling us back from the talk of the market and the conventional behaviour of the masses. It has no special demands; it speaks to us in the “mode of silence.” It tells us only to act and to become guilty by acting, for every action is unscrupulous. One who acts experiences the call of conscience and, at the same time, has the experience of contradicting one’s conscience, of being guilty. “Existence as such is guilty.” Only self-deception can give a good moral conscience, since it is impossible not to act and since every action implies guilt. We must act, and the attitude in which we can act is “resoluteness.” Resoluteness transcends the moral conscience, its arguments and prohibitions. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
The good, transmoral conscience consists in the acceptance of the bad, moral conscience,which is unavoidable whenever decisions are made and acts are performed. The way from Luther’s to Heidegger’s idea of a transmoral conscience was a dangerous one. “Transmoral” can mean the re-establishment of morality from a point below morality. The empiricists from Hobbes to Dr. Freud have analyzed moral conscience, but they have not destroyed it. Either they were dependent in their concrete ethics on Anglo-Saxon common sense; or they identified utility with the social conventions of a well-established bourgeoisie; or they cultivated a high sense of conscientiousness, in scientific honesty as well as in the fulfillment of duties; or they did not dare, unconsciously or consciously, to draw the radical moral consequences of their dissolution of the conscience. In Nietzsche and Heidegger none of these inhibitions is left. However, it is not without some justification that these names are connected with the antimoral movements of fascism or national socialism. Even Luther has been linked with them, as have Machiavelli and Bruno. This raises the questions: is the idea of a transmoral conscience tenable? Or is it so dangerous that it cannot be maintained? However, if the idea must be dismissed, religion as well as analytic psychotherapy would also have to be dismissed. For in both of them, the moral conscience is transcendent—in religion by the acceptance of the divine grace that breaks through the realm of law and creates a joyful conscience, and in-depth psychology by the acceptance of one’s own conflicts when looking at them and suffering under their ugliness without an attempt to suppress them and to hide them from oneself. Indeed, it is impossible not to transcend the moral conscience because it is impossible to unite a sensitive and good conscience. Those who have a sensitive conscience cannot escape the question of the transmoral conscience. The moral conscience drives beyond the sphere in which it is valid to the sphere from which it must receive its conditional validity. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
The celibacy movement was rather interesting. The “silent strike,” with its contingent of proud spinsters, generated an inevitable backlash. This came in the form of gender discrimination. Scientists started to expressed the biological differences been men and women. Havelock Ellis said that, “women’s special sphere is the bearing and the rearing of children, with the care of human life in the home. Man’s primary sphere remains the exploration of life outside the home, in industry and inventions and the cultivation of the arts.” With this observation of the status quo cloaked in scientific garb, Ellis proceeded to extrapolate conclusions. One was the ideal the relations involving pleasures of the flesh would be between male dominance and female submissiveness. Another was that the ideal female, a paragon of Motherhood, was very definitely not a spinster, a word that in Ellis’s writings elaborated on the nasty connotations our century has inherited from his. Like so many Motherhood aficionados, Ellis claimed and was credited with a feminist agenda: surely praising the wonderful work of mothers must be women-positive. In Ellis’s case, this seemed irrefutable, for he also preached the novel idea that women should, indeed must, enjoy pleasures of the flesh. No more lying rigid, clenching fists, and teeth, enduring bimonthly intimate invasion by obliterating it with thoughts of England and the empire. (Ironically, Ellis himself had earlier lost an adored lover because he failed to reach a “proud status” during romantic interlude. His predilection in pleasures of the flesh was to observe the other species using the water closet, which stemmed from his unforgettable boyhood experience of watching his mother relieve herself of fluid in the garden.) #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Ellis’s espousal of the great Motherhood or, in Germany, Mutterschutz, movement particularly explains his enormous influence. From the 1800s onward, fewer children were born but infant mortality soared. Physical exams revealed the poor condition of many schoolchildren, and military recruits were rejected at a high rate for a plethora of disabilities. Something was wrong—at least, these authorities now knew something was wrong—and the solution seemed to be a nation of Super Moms who would reverse the physical decline. In Ellis’s words, these women would undertake the “regeneration of the race” and the “evolution of a supermankind.” Women, too bought into the Motherhood ideal. Some felt it validated the roles they had chosen or that had been chose for them. Others were persuaded that this form of biology was scientific truth and so believed the conclusions its thinkers so convincingly reported. These conclusions clashed with feminist beliefs, particularly the silent strike, the voluntary spinsters’ movement in which women took control of their lives by refusing to surrender their rights to husbands. Censuring spinster became the keynote of antifeminist attacks. One Motherhood proponent, herself a woman, decried spinsters with an analogy to a beehive, in which infertile workers were like “surplus woman” who refused or had no opportunity to marry. Since the workers bee’s poisoned sting required the egg laying tube, spinsters who relinquished “the power of life” would, by definition, gain possession of “the stinging weapon of death.” Another male antifeminist spoke in alarmist terms of eventual civil war between wives and spinsters, “the waste products of our female population.” In Modern Woman and How to Manager Her, another male writer called spinsters “man-condemning, man-hating…women who are ‘independent of men,’ a motely host, pathetic in their defiance of the first principle of Nature, but of no serious account in the biological sense.” He even proposed polygamy as a solution to “spinsterhood, and the right to live one’s life—the supreme consummation of a large number of revolutionary British women.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
In later years, charges of women who lonely loved other women and frigidity, both caused or worsened by spinsterhood, bolstered the attacks on single, independent women. Given that British women outnumbered men by 2 million, this was heavy artillery indeed. The women were acknowledged—negatively—as the prime movers behind reforms for all species, human and animal. The “fanaticism and crankiness” of these dangerous virgins, charged virulent antifeminist Charlotte Haldane, impelled them to espouse “freak science, freak religions, and freak philanthropy,” and to embrace wholeheartedly such contemptible crusades as antivisection, the bane of England’s scientific advancement, dogs’ homes and cats’ homes, missionary endeavors, and “‘Kill-joy’ propaganda.” Furthermore, “enough is known [about the psychological effects of permanent virginity],” Haldane opined, “to make us aware that in entrusted responsibility towards individuals and the State to elderly virgins we may be acting unwisely.” Women and loved other women, styled “intermediate women,” were even more problematic. They should be allowed only inferior jobs because as educators or nurses or doctors, “intermediate women may do an enormous amount of harm.” In the manipulative hands of the “anatomy biologists” and their unlikely Motherhood allies, the celibacy that women seeking independence had once embraced with such delight and firm purpose was now portrayed as sullied and suspicious, a witch’s mantel for freaky madwomen or a masquerade for reviled women who love women. Society still demanded virgin brides, but their virginity was their supreme offering to a husband who would maneuver them through the rest of their life. Aging girls—women—who failed to contract a marriage were pitied, but self-styled spinsters with agendas, no matter how noble and important, were condemned in vitriolic terms, their brand of feminism repudiated as antisocial and unworthy of any regard but the most evil eye. Their celibacy had become as loathsome as its object: women’s independence and personal fulfillment. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
With so many people in the World today whose outlook is negative, whose emotions are twisted and thinking is warped, it is more needful to stand firm in one’s own spot of optimistic thinking that ever. Whoever doubts the truth of this message, thereby deprives oneself of its benefits. However, this is equally true of the believer who fears its truth. If the future holds distress and suffering, blows and disasters, it is to be met with courage sought and asked from the higher self. According to our faith, it will be given us. It is not a question of what we like or prefer to believe. It is a question of accepting quietly, or else defying vainly, the chose of events and the trend of destiny. If catastrophe and obliteration threaten humanity and if the individual is hopeless when confronted by them, it is logical to conclude that although humanity might not be able to save itself, the individual can save oneself from these disasters if one believes that inner salvation is at least a possibility where outer salvation is not. Yes, you and I can save ourselves from within even when we cannot save ourselves from without. That at least is a better lot than the one of the humans who can save oneself neither from within nor from without and puts one’s faith in political action alone. For politics is merely a system of human bargaining actuated by self-seeking. It can invoke the assistance of no higher power because it does not rise higher than this self-seeking interest itself. However, the individual is free to life oneself above this sordid plane and therefore one is in a position to invite the attention and assistance of higher powers. One who consciously inhabits reality will live independent of the mutations of fate, the catastrophes of history, and the crises of an epoch in dissolution. Even in crisis of war, where danger or even death is lurking, philosophy reveals its immense practicability. For the philosopher can meet them with the utter calmness, effective capacity, and resolute heroism with which one’s studies, reflection, disciplines, and ideals have formed one’s character. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Amid the surging tides of postwar chaos, one sets the example and shows the value of philosophic principles by standing firm as a rock. Just as one kept cool in the very midst of global conflagration, so one now keeps clear-sighted amid the gloom of its dusty aftermath. In the very midst of World confusion, one becomes a little oasis of strength and peace, wisdom and certitude, calm and holiness. If one has to live in a chaotic disordered environment, the sad heritage of war, one still lives one’s own constructive ordered pattern of existence. The very example of such a human keeping steady and balanced thus silently helps some others who are bewildered or aimless. Now, when considering American capitalism, there are a few things we should keep in mind. According to Adam Smith, “Labour was the first, price, the original purchase—money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the World was originally purchased.” It many come as a surprise that, until field of labour was replaced by factory work, few of our ancestors ever held a job. This surely was not because they were rich. Most were wretchedly poor. They did not hold jobs because the “job,” in today’s sense of formally committed work in return for stipulated pay, had not yet been invented. Like the steam engine and other industrial innovations, jobs and wage labour became widespread only during the last three centuries. Work itself was transferred from outdoors to indoors, or schedules set no longer by sunrise and sunset but by the punch clock. Most payments came in the form of wages based on hours worked. Indeed, these arrangements essentially define the term job. However, the job is only one way of packaging work. And as the latest, knowledge-based wealth systems unfold, we are moving toward a future in which, as we will see, more people “work” but fewer hold “jobs.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
It will drastically alter labour relations, human resources departments, legislation and the overall labour market how the offices of employment are conducted in the future. It is bad news for trade unions as we know them. The deep fundamental of work is changing more profoundly than at any time since the industrial revolution. Division of labour, like work itself, traces back to hunting and gathering, when the division was mainly based on gender. However, here, too, we are approaching a turning point. Ever hear of a “metallurgy and failure analysis litigation consultant” or a “post-harvest horticulturalist”? Neither have most of us. (The latter is the superspecialist who determine such things as how many microscopic holes are needed to admit oxygen into the plastic bag that holds vegetables in the supermarket.) Adam Smith in 1776 called the division of labour the source of “the greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour.” And this has been true ever since. However, the more refined and specialized tasks become, the harder and more expensive it becomes to integrate them—especially in an innovation-driven competitive economy. At some point, the costs of integration may exceed the value of such superspecialization. Moreover, narrowly focused specialists may be good at incremental innovation. However, breakthrough innovation is often the product of temporary teams whose members cross disciplinary boundaries—at a time when breakthroughs in every field are, in fact, blurring those very boundaries. And this is not just a matter for scientists and researchers. The new wealth system demands a complete shake-up in the way increasingly temporary skill sets are organized for increasingly temporary purposes throughout the economy. Nothing is more deeply fundamental to the creation of wealthy. Now only are work and the division of labour changing, but income distribution itself—the “who gets what?”—may be heading, over the long term, toward truly revolutionary change. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
The temple of the animals has fallen into disrepair. The pad of feet has faded. The panthers flee the shadows of the day. Tired, I recall the animals of last year: the altars of the bear, tribunals of the ape, solitudes of elephantine gloom, rare zebra-stripped retreats, prophecies of dog, sanctuaries of the pygmy deer. Were there rituals I had forgotten? Animal calls to which those animal voices replied, called and called until that jungle stirred. Were there voices that I heard? Love was the very animal made his lair, slept out his winter in my heart. Did he seek my hear or ever sleep there? I have seen the animals depart, forgotten their voices, or barely remembered—like that last speech when the company goes or the beloved face that the heart knows, forgets and knows—I have heard the dying footsteps of fall. The sound has faded, but lingers here. Ah, bitterly I recall animals of last year. Thine, O Lord, is the greatness and the power, and the glory and the victory and the majesty; all that is in the Heaven and in the Earth is Thine; Thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and Thou art exalted above all. Both riches and honour come from Thee, and Thou rulest over all; in Thy hand is power and might, and in Thy hand it is to make great, and to give strength unto all. Therefore, our God, we thank Thee, and praise Thy glorious name. O give thanks unto the Lord who alone doeth great wonders; His lovingkindness endureth forever. Sing unto the Lord with thanksgiving; sing praise upon the harp unto our God; He covereth the Heavens with clouds, He prepareth rain for the Earth, and maketh the mountains to be green with grass. He maketh your borders peaceful, He giveth you the fat of the wheat in plenty. He is good to the Earth, and watereth her with His rivers that are full of water. He maketh the Earth soft with showers, and blesseth the growth thereof. He crowneth the year with His goodness, and showereth the Earth with rich bounty. #RandolpHarris 21 of 21
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Whatever Person Posses this Book, Lucifer Promises to Carry Out One’s Plans
The latter part of the nineteenth century was an anguished and tortured period. Gentility was a terrible strain. Beneath the appearance of stiff propriety there ran currents of anger and aggression frightful in their intensity. Some indication of the dark, baleful aspect of the lives of our great-grandparent went untold. Black and white magic. Contemporary forms of magic are being studied carefully by parapsychologists. (Parapsychology is the study of apparently supernatural phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, apparitions, and related forms of ESP.) Researcher in this field who operate from a completely naturalistic standpoint deny the existence of a personal devil or evil spirits. They may speak of two vital forces in the Universe, however, one working upward in an evolutionary manner, and the other counteracting these ascending steps. These investigators of psychic phenomena do not make any effort to explain the origin of these invisible powers, and simply declare that some people have special psychic gifts which give them access to these forces. They may even say that some religious practitioners appear to have superhuman power, and refer to their work as white magic. They may also acknowledge that some individuals can mysteriously bring harm to their enemies, and this evil use of power they call black magic. The majority of these parapsychologist insist, however, that they do not believe in a personal God or the devil, and simply affirm that at the present time we do not fully understand some of these esoteric powers in this Universe. The Christian student of occultic activity has a distinct advantage over the naturalist, for one accepts the reality of a personal God and an invisible World of angels and evil spirits. This does not mean that one rejects a scientific approach to the problems that are encountered. One must avoid the temptation to declare dogmatically that every unexplainable occurrence is the result of supernatural activity—either by God or the forces of evil. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Some manifestations that now puzzle us may in the future be understood within the framework of the natural. The fact remains, however, that Satan is a real personality, and that a multitude of evil spirits have joined him in opposition to God and His people. The Christian Bible records numerous instances which clearly reveal their activity, and we have good reason to believe that some of the unexplainable phenomena in evidence today are the works of these demonic beings. Practitioners of black magic usually declare openly that they are serving the devil. Many of them say that have made a pact with Satan, and some have indicated their allegiance to him by signing a document with their own blood. Missionaries have reported that acts with the devil are not at all unknown among many primitive peoples. Reputable followers of Jesus Christ are convinced that these religious leaders actually can bring illness or death to people through ritualistic incantations. Black magic is practiced extensively today in many parts of Germany, France, and Switzerland, as well as in primitive cultures. Dr. Kurt Koch cites numerous instances of conjurers casting spells which have brought about the death of animals and even humans. He also tells us of amazing healings, but points out that when a person is cured of a physical disease by such a practitioner, one usually suffers such severe mental depression that the new condition is worse than the old. As one reads the examples of black magic—cattle being milked dry in a mysterious manner, the sudden unexplainable death of animals, healings followed by terrible psychic disturbances, and the appearance of frightful apparitions—he finds his credulity stretched almost to the breaking point. If one has not witnessed such occurrences, one is likely to dismiss these reports as untrustworthy. However, serious scholars who have investigated these accounts do not deny the reality of such phenomena. They may not believe them to be the work of Satan or evil spirits, but they admit that many of them cannot be explained at the present time. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
Professor Adolph Koberle, from the University of Tubingen, in the introduction to Christian Counseling and Occultist, says: Readers who approached this study with a purely rationalistic bent will experience spiritual difficulty in following the author in many areas because we have here a report of cases and experiences which seems to conflict with all sound human intelligence. However, perhaps such persons can be brought to listen, since research first tries the immanent solution of the problems and only where this is proved to fail does one break out and propose the added dimension, the dimension of the eternal. Even though research may evoke contradictions here and there—from medics and pastors, from parapsychologists and psychotherapists—yet the questions that are here posed cannot be evaded by any person who concerns oneself in a genuine and responsible manner with a fruitful diagnosis and a helpful therapy. Clearly sane, scholarly, and since humans have examined the apparently superhuman powers evidenced in black magic and other forms of occultism, and made every effort to find naturalistic explanations, before finally concluding that Satan and evil spirits are actually at work. Black magic as a specific form of witchcraft has its own literature. The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses are the primary source, and are well known in Europe. They constitute one volume, and are alleged to have been written by Moses himself. Strangely enough, they maintain that this great national leader was a servant of Satan, and set fourth detailed instructions for establishing a mystical relationship with the devil. This research tells readers how they can gain power through black magic over all the people they will encounter both in this World and the next. It makes this solemn assertion: “To whatever person possesses this book at any given time, Lucifer makes promise to carry out one’s commands, but only as long as one possess this book.” Dr. Koch comments on the strange and sinister nature of this writing by saying, “In the many cases which the pastor-counselors have come to know, there is no possessor of The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses who have no psychic complication.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
White magic is declared by its practitioners to be in direct opposition to black magic. Whereas black magic includes an open allegiance with the powers of darkness, in white magic the name of God is invoked, and Biblical phrases are utilized. Most people who practice it, however, have no understanding of the basic doctrines of the Christian faith. Some possibly are endowed with an unexplainable psychic power, and their desire to use it was not totally selfish at the beginning. However, many find very soon that they become enslaved to a yearning for self-exaltation. The Radio Bible Class has received letters from a number of people for a time had engaged in a “healing ministry” of this kind, but who abandoned it because it led to a gradual departure from God. Although some cult leaders and those endowed people, they are using the name of God and Christ in a manner that violates the Lord’s will. The danger of mistaking an enigmatic psychic power for the gift of the Lord must be recognized. Dr. Kurt Koch points out that Dr. Henry Drummond, fellow-worker of D.L. Moody, possessed psychic ability which enabled him to have mental power over person who were miles away. While working with Moody, Drummond found that he could hypnotically influence the large crows who had gathered, but concluded that to use this power would be a hindrance to the activity of the Holy Spirit. One prayed that the Lord would take this psychic gift away from him, and his prayer was answered. Had Dr. Drummond decided to exercise this ability, he would soon have established a Worldwide reputation as a great healer. However, his accomplishments would not have honoured the Lord, and real blessings would not have resulted from his ministry. In Biblical faith, trust is placed solely in the Lord Jesus Christ. In white magic it is deflected to someone else (the human agent) or to something else (one’s own faith, etcetera). In the Biblical prayer of faith, the praying person subjects oneself to the will of God. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
In white magic, the help of God is demanded under the assumption that exercising such power is in accordance with God’s will. Also in white magic the Christian markings are mere decorations that camouflage the magical means of knowledge for power. Certain influences, as we might call them, can be termed elementary forms of magic. Firstly, we have an example of the criminal use of hypnosis. A girl reported in a counselling session that a doctor who she had consulted had hypnotized her. While hypnotized he had seduced her. The doctor had done the same to her girl friend. It was later discovered that he has also done this with other girls. When these stories leaked out, the doctor left the town and settled elsewhere. The girl said that for a long time after this incident she had not been able to read her Christian Bible. She had felt a strong aversion towards religion, and evil thoughts had always come to her mind when praying. Another example, a doctor at a hospital had indecently assaulted women and girls under hypnosis. Once the ward sister caught him in the act. To cover up his scandalous behaviour, he used to question the patients about their sexual relationships and included their answers in their case histories. He thus tried to protect himself in the event of anything being discovered. A respectable gurl who was engaged to a Christian young man became pregnant at the hospital. Following this her fiancé left her. The girl herself denied all knowledge of having an intimate relationship with anyone. The doctor had lain with her when she had been hypnotized. The assistant matron and the ward sister had finally reported the doctor. However, the result was that they themselves were dismissed by the medical superintendent. The doctor in question stayed. Other nurses, who also had incriminating evidence against him, were forced to keep quiet now because of the fear of dismissal. After a few years, though, when the situation became too hot for the doctor, he left and went abroad. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Scientific advocates of hypnosis believe that a man could not be forced to do anything under hypnosis that he would not be prepared to do when conscious. They are of the opinion that crimes are not possible under hypnosis. However, not all the experts share this opinion. Moreover, in my counselling work I have met many cases in which crimes have taken place under hypnosis. From the point of view of the Scriptures it is understandable that an innocent girl can be molested this way. Jesus Christ said that out of the heart come evil thoughts and so on. Evil lies dormant even in the most moral of people. Normally these instinctive reactions are held in check by one’s consciousness, which is moulded by education, religious training and is affected by one’s disposition. Under hypnosis however, this regulator is switched off. Instinctive impulses can arise unhindered from the subconscious, and can be exploited by unscrupulous and uninhibited people. Besides this, some take no account of the fact that magical hypnosis exists in addition to the normal type of hypnosis, and that this can have far deeper effects. Magical hypnosis can often be recognized by the fact that afterwards the patient is no longer able to pray or to keep one’s faith. Here are some actual examples. A Christian girl went to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist used magical hypnosis far more often than he did ordinary hypnosis. I have occasionally come across such doctors in areas where magic is commonly practised. In reply to the girl’s question, the doctor admitted that he had not received his gift from God. He went on to tell the girl that he had wanted to conduct suggestive experiments on her. After the treatment, the girl lost her faith and could no longer pray. She suffered from doubts and other serious difficulties in believing. I think a lot of people who have had good lives, and then are abused and tortured over a long period of time have these same problems. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
When they restart reading the Christian Bible, it may make them upset and angry and they do not know why, but they keep going and praying hoping to overcome their situation. They know that God is there and guiding them, but they have just been able to sustain, not yet overcome the situation. So they keep forcing themselves to pray and thank God so they can rebuild their faith, and it can really take a lifetime, especially when the situation has been going on for decades. Abusers just kind of rob some people of faith and joy. And year after year, they keep praying it is over, and it never is, so it makes it hard for them to trust anyone, including God. So they have to keep reminding of his words and praying and seeking mental health treatments so they can live, and they pray they will still have some youth left, if the situation is ever resolved. Another example is a man, in his spare time a minister dabbled in magic. He experimented in various areas and learned card-laying, how to use a pendulum, magic charming and magical hypnosis. Since he had no suitable people to experiment on, he used his wife for the purpose. As his magical abilities increased, so too did his own and his wife’s dislike for the Christian Bible and prayer. This dislike developed into a strong resistance, and as time went on psychic disturbances appeared in the wife. She exhibited a serious anxiety hysteria and always had to lock the door of whichever room she happened to be in. There also was once a businessman who had the strange ability of being able to influence his customers hypnotically or magically, causing them to accept the business offers that he makes to them. In this way, his yearly income exceeds $75,000.00. He rejects Christianity altogether. A woman allowed a masseur to hypnotize her. Before the treatment she had regularly read her Christian Bible, prayed and attended the local church services. Afterwards when she tried to pray, she felt a compulsion to blaspheme and to curse. She then lost her faith. These effects indicate that the masseur had used magical hypnosis. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
Plato derived the etymology of the word “demon” (Greek, daimon) from an adjective meaning “intelligent” or “knowing.” If this derivation is correct, it suggests that intelligence was considered a prominent characteristic of demons. If demons are fallen angels, this would be expected. As Satan’s vast wisdom became vitiated when he sinned (Ezekiel 28.12, 17), the great wisdom that characterizes angels in general (2 Samuel 14.20) must also have been corrupted in his followers. This is undoubtedly why demons use their great but perverted knowledge so relentlessly in an effort to frustrate God’s purpose. Humans who consult professional mediums and use other methods of divination to obtain knowledge of the future seem to imply a degree of confidence in the intelligence of evil spirits. The superior knowledge demons possess is not a holy or saving knowledge. Demons “believe” but only to “tremble” (James 2.19). They are confirmed in depravity and never seek forgiveness. As preeminently unclean spirits, they never long for purity. They confess Jesus Christ is Lord, but they do not trust Christ or submit to him. Although they recognize his authority (Mark 1.24; 5:6, 7). They cleverly withhold knowledge of his incarnation and completed redemption (1 John 4:1-6), corruption sound doctrine (1 Timothy 4.1-3), discern between those who have God’s seal and those who do not (Revelation 9.4), and know full well their own tragic destiny and inevitable doom (Matthew 8.29). Their superhuman intellect is accomplished by superphysical strength. The psalmist celebrates this angelic characteristic: “Bless the Lord, ye His angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of His word,” reports Psalm 103.20. The Apostle Peter also speaks of the “power and might” of angelic spirits (2 Peter 2.11). Our Lord Himself indirectly referred to demonic strength (Matthew 12.29). #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
Perverted power and strength are thus conscious attributes of fallen angels. This titanic energy is displayed in the supernatural strength demons can impart to the human body when they enter it and possess it. The Gadarene demoniac who was dominated by a “legion” of demons (Mark 5.9) could not be bound even with chains. “Because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetter broken in pieces: neither could any man tame him,” reports Mark 5.4. The great strength of this demoniac was due to the vast number of demons who possessed him. “A legion” in Roman military history consisted of three-to-six-thousand-foot soldiers, and three to seven hundred cavalries. The term “legion” was not only the name of the possessed human but probably also served to indicate the phenomenal strength of the demoniac. The demons were so powerful that when the Lord ordered them to enter a herd of two thousand swine, they cased the entire herd to rush violently down a hill into the sea (Mark 5.13). No wonder the demon-possessed human was disturbed physically, mentally, and emotionally. However, the superphysical strength of demons is not limited to the physical energy they impart to their victim. Their power is broad enough to cause occult oppression of mind and body. They can produce physical disabilities and sickness unrelated to organic disorders and which medicine or natural therapy cannot alleviate. Perhaps the most terrible power of demons is to derange the mind by upsetting the nervous system. In this way they can afflict the body with a psychosomatic disease. Demons are aware of the close relationship between physical and mental health. By jangling the nerves and the emotions, they can cause mental Instability (Luke 8.26-36), producing suicidal mania (Mark 9.22). Their purpose is to drive their occult-enslaved victim to self-destruction. “I’m tired of his bleary-eyed tootling—I have warned him to lie down and nap. So now that I have told him to stop it, I will give him a sharp little rap.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
Dealing with necromancers who claim to contact the dead. The writer of 1 Samuel 19.9-10 describes in incident in which King Saul tried to impale David on his javelin. His attack is attributed to an “evil spirit from the Lord.” This indicates that God allowed a demon spirit to enter Saul and possess him. The kingdom of evil spirits is within God’s control, though not acting on his direction. God allows spirit activity, just as he allows evil men to prosper, within the boundaries of his ultimate plan for humans. God’s sovereign control over the realm of evil spirits is further illuminated in 1 Kings 22:18-23. “And the king od Israel said to Jehoshaphat, Did I not tell you that he would not prophesy good concerning me, but evil? And Micaiah said, Therefore hear the word of the Lord; I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the hosts of Heaven standing beside him on his right hand and on his left; and the Lord said, Who will entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead? And one said one thing, and another said another. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying, I will entice him. And the Lord said to him, By what means? And he said, I will go forth, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go forth and do so. Now therefore, behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the Lord has spoken evil concerning you.” From this passage, too, it is clear that God overrules the World of evil spirits and permits them to do their work when it accords with His sovereign will and purpose. A unique incident involving spirits of the dead is recorded in 1 Samuel 28. King Saul had banished mediums and wizards out of the land as commanded by God (v.3). When confronted by the philistine army he was fearful and sought guidance from the Lord. When no guidance came, he told his servants to seek out a medium who could give him counsel (vv. 5-7). Having found one at Endor, Saul went to her in disguise. She feared a trap because of Saul’s decree against mediums, but Saul promised her protection and asked her to bring forth the spirit of dead Samuel (vv. 8-11). #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
The medium screamed in fear when she saw Samuel himself—apparently she was used to communicating only with evil spirits. This is the only account in the Old Testament of God’s permitting a departed person’s spirit to return to Earth. This was not by the lower of the medium, however; in fact, she was not prepared for it at all. Samuel told the piteous kin it was no use: God would take the kingdom from Saul and give it to David (vv. 15-17), and the Philistine army would rout Saul’s army (v.19). 1 Chronicles 10.13 provides the epitaph to the tragic story: “So Saul died for his unfaithfulness; he was unfaithful to the Lord in that he did not keep the command of the Lord, and also consulted a medium, seeking guidance.” Saul’s case is a chilling warning from Scripture against consulting with mediums or trying to communicate with departed souls; the judgment of God is upon it. A case of supposed witchcraft occurred in Cork, Ireland in the year 1685-1686, the account of which is contained in a latter from Christopher Crofts to Sir John Perceval (the third Baronet, and father of the first Earl of Egmont) written on the fifteenth of March in that year. Though the natator professes his disbelief in such superstitions, yet there seems to have been an unconscious feeling in his mind that his strict administration of the law was the means of bringing the affliction on his child. He says: My poor boy Jack to all appearances lay dying; he had a convulsion for eight or nine hours. His mother and several others are of opinion he is bewitched, and by the old woman, the mother of Nell Welsh, who is reputed a bad woman; and the child was playing by her that day she was upon her examination, and was taken ill presently after she was committed to Bridewell. However, I have not faith to believe it was anything but the hand of God. I have committed the girl to Bridewell, where she shall stay some time.” At one period in their history that peculiar people, known amongst themselves as the Society of Friends, and by their opponents as Quakers, appear to have been most troublesome, and to have caused a good deal of annoyance to other religious bodies. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
Not unnaturally their enemies credited any wild tales which were related about them to their detriment, especially when they had referenced to their doctrine of the influence of the Spirit. Dr. More, in his continuation to Glanvill’s book, has in the sixth Relation an account of man, near Cambridge in England, who was possessed by an evil spirit which led him to do the most extraordinary things in its attempts to covert him to Quakerism. In the Life of Mr. Alexander Peden, late Minister of the Gospel at New Glenluce in Galloway, who died in 1686, there is an account of a Quakers’ meeting in this country which the Devil appeared in most blasphemous parody of the Holy Ghost. As Mr. Peden was travelling one time by himself in Ireland, “the night came on, and a dark mist, which obliged him to go into a house belonging to a Quaker. Mr. Peden said, ‘I must beg the favour of the roof of your house all night.’ The Quaker said, ‘Thou art a stranger, thou art very welcome and shalt be kindly entertained, but I cannot wait upon thee, for I am going to the meeting.’ Mr. Peden said, ‘I will go along with you.’ The Quaker said, ‘Thou may, if thou please, but thou must not trouble us.’ He said, ‘I will be civil.’ When they came to the meeting, as their ordinary is, they sat for some time silent, some with their faces to the wall, and others covered. There being a void in the loft above them there came down the appearance of a raven, and sat upon one man’s head, who started up immediately, and spoke with such vehemence that the froth flew from his mouth; it went to a second, and he did the same; and to a third, who did as the former two. Mr. Peden sitting near to his landlord said, ‘Do you not see that? Ye will not deny it afterwards?’ When they dismissed, going home Mr. Peden said to him, ‘I always thought there was devilry among you, but never thought that he did appear visibly among you till now that I have seen it.’ The poor man fell a-weeping, and said, ‘I perceive that God hath sent you to my house, and put it into your heart to go along with me, and permitted the Devil to appear visibly among us this night. I never saw the like before. Let me have the help of your prayers.’ After this he became a singular Christian.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
Mr. Peden was also somewhat of a prophet, and his specialty appears to have been the prognostication of unpleasant events, at all events to persons in Ireland. Two instances will suffice. When in a gentleman’s house in Co. Antrim he foretold that a maid-servant was enceinte, that she would murder the child, and would be punished. “Which accordingly came to pass, and she was burnt at Craig Fergus.” On another occasion two messengers were sent to inform the Lord-Lieutenant that Presbyterian ministers in Ireland should affirm that they had nothing to do with the rebellion at Bothwell Bridge. Mr. Peden said they were on the Devil’s errand, but God would arrest them by the gate. Accordingly one was stricken with sickness, while the other fell from his horse and broke his leg. In another cause of the supernatural, during the late 1800s, the Santa Clara Valley, in California presented sweeping vistas of rural open space. It was a serene setting for Mrs. Winchester to begin her building project, which she did with steadfast determination. She immediately hired carpenters to work in shifts around the clock. By the turn of the century the eight-room house had grown into a nine-story mansion! The estate eventually grew to about 730 acres of farmland (according to documents), which included orchards of apricots, plums, and walnut trees to supplement Mrs. Winchester’s income. Her dried plums, which turned into prunes were very popular. Some people believe that prune juice is what kept Mrs. Winchester’s screen so wrinkle free, gave it a natural growth, and made her look so young, as it flushes toxins out of the body (word of caution, make sure to use it in moderation and start in the morning with a few ounces, and do not go anywhere for 24 hours until you see how it work with your system). Nonetheless, Mrs. Winchester also owned homes in Atherton, Los Altos, and Palo Alto. The combination of her wealth and her eccentric building of this beautiful mansion gave rise to many rumors in the local community. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
Jeremiah Haralson was waiting for a tour of Mrs. Winchester’s beautiful mansion, and he had been waiting an hour to have tea with her—he was really impressed with the mansion as it seemed to twinkle. It was really a rural setting and very pretty. The estate had a lot of thick green foliage and beautiful flowers and what seemed to be miles of green lawns. So he waited for her. It was August 1894, and the chill of an unusually evening entered into his bones. The construction workers passed him with a surely response to his “Good Night.” Many of the servants went by him like ghosts with soft voices; and it was nearly midnight, and she still had not come. He then heard a ghostly music wafting from the dark mansion. The bell in the belfry high in the gables began to toll. Jeremiah shrugged his shoulders and turned towards the gates that lead to the main road. He looked back, but there was still no sign of movement about the mansion, so sign of life, no lights even in the windows. He paused by the gate, wondering. Then he noticed that the front doors were open—wide open—and the porch lamp shone a little way into the foyer. There was something about this that did not please him—that scared him a little, indeed. The house had a gloomy and deserted air. It was obviously impossible that it harboured a rich widow. The must be away on business. In which case—Jeremiah walked up the path, tower the stairs to the front porch, and listened. Yet, still no sign of life. He passed into the foyer. There as no light anywhere. Where was everybody, and why were the beautiful jeweled front doors open. There was no one in the front parlour, nor the drawing room, the dining room and the study were equally empty. Everyone was out, evidently. However, the unpleasant sense that he was, perhaps, not the first casual visitor to walk through that open door impelled him to look through the house before he went anyway and closed it after him. So he went upstairs, and at the door of the first bedroom, Jeremiah turned on the gasolier, as he had done in the siting rooms. Even as he did so, he felt that he was not alone. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
Jeremiah was prepared to see something, but for what he saw he was not prepared. For what he saw lay on the bed, in a white loose gown—and it was Mrs. Winchester, and her throat was cut from ear to ear. He did not know what happened then, nor how he got downstairs and into the street; but he got out somehow, and the policeman found him in a fit, under the lamp-post at the crossroads of the road. He could not speak when they picked him up, and he passed the night in the police cells, because the policeman had seen plenty of drunken men before, but never one in a fit like Jeremiah Haralson. The next morning he was well, though still very pale and shaky. However, the tale he told the magistrate was convincing, and they sent a couple of constables with him to her house. There was no crowd about it as he had fancied there would be, and the curtains were open. As Jeremiah stood, dazed, in the front of the doors, they opened, she Mrs. Winchester came out. Jeremiah held on to the upside-down posts on the front porch for support. “See, my boy! Mrs. Winchester is just fine as can be,” said the constable, who found him hiding before one of the posts. “I told you, you were drunk, but you would know best!” When Jeremiah was alone with Mrs. Winchester, he told her how he had come into the rambling mansion, and had found the front doors open and the lights out, and how he had seen something—in even trying to hint at which he turned sick and broke down and had to have a little Vin Mariani given to him. “Oh, heavens, boy,” Mrs. Winchester said, “I dare say the house was dark, for we were all at St. Joseph’s Cathedral with Daisy, and no doubt the door was open, for the maids will run out if they are left. However, you could not have been in any of the bedrooms on the second floor, because I have my staff lock them when I am away, and my dear sweet boy, they key was in my pocket. I dressed in a hurry and I left my odds and ends laying about.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
“I know,” Jeremiah said; “I saw a gold scarf on the chair, and some gold gloves, and a lot of hairpins and ribbons, and a prayerbook, and a lace handkerchief on the dressing table. Why, I even noticed the almanack on the mantlepiece—16 January 1895. At least it could not be that because this is 16 August 1894. And yet it was. Your almanack is at 16 January 1895, is it not?” “No, of course it is not,” said Mrs. Winchester, smiling rather anxiously; “but all the other things were just as you say. You must have had a nightmare, of a vision, or something.” Jeremiah was a very ordinary, commonplace, City young man, and he did not believe in visions, but he never rested day or night still he got away from the Winchester mansion. Now the curious and quite inexplicable part of this when Mrs. Winchester came down to breakfast on the morning of 17 January 1895, she found Jeremiah looking like death, with the Oakland Tribune in his hand. He caught hers—he could not speak, and pointed to the paper. And there she read that on the night of the 17th a young lady had been found with her throat cut from ear to ear, in a second story bedroom of that Beautiful, but Bizarre Winchester Mansion. Although demons reveal various degrees of wickedness (Matthew 12.45), they all are depraved. This aspect of their character appears in the terrible things they do to their victims. The Christian Bible often refers to them as spiritually and morally “unclean” (Matthew 10.1; Mark 1.27; 3.11; Luke 4.36; Acts 8.7; Revelation 16.13). People who deal in the occult are sometimes found to be vulnerable to Satan and demonic powers. Sometimes these “unclean spirits” take possession of vulnerable people. The character of demons reveals what they can do to their victims. Invisible, extremely intelligent, strong, and totally depraved personalities can do a great deal of harm to the vulnerable person. Since the supernatural exists and does interact with the natural World, the truly scientific investigator must take this into consideration. Prayer and faith can heal the mind and the body supernaturally, just as medicine and rest can do it naturally. By the same token, unbelief and sin can harm body and mind as a result of demonic bondage. (However, many mental and emotional illnesses are, of course, due to natural causes, such as overwork, tension, fatigue, malnutrition, organic disease, etcetera. Such disorders can be treated effectively by a physician, neurologist, psychologist, or psychiatrist. Demonic spirits may have little or nothing to do with such disorders of the mind. The causes are purely natural and may be corrected by purely natural means. This is not surprising since the Creator has placed the creation and His creatures under the normal operation of the laws of cause and effect.) #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Winchester Mystery House
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In the Cup of Omens there is a Baptism into Black Magic!
In popular thinking, the term “magic” refers to the tricks of a sleight-of-hand artist, the optical illusions created by a clever trickster, or the cunning exhibition of seemingly supernatural powers by money-hungry charlatans. Undoubtedly many of the amazing demonstrations performed by such people have a completely naturalistic explanation, but honest scholars who have investigated occultic phenomena in many parts of the World agree that science at present is unable to account for some of the apparently supernatural events they have witnessed. The Bible also sets forth the view that not all magic is merely hocus-pocus. In the Biblical portrayal of magic, the Scriptures acknowledge that real superhuman power can be accomplished through sorcery, but clearly teach that the source of such manifestations is evil. The Egyptian magicians actually were able to change their rods into serpents by throwing them on the ground. Some say these rods were really snakes which had been hypnotized into becoming as rigid as a cane, but even so we must admit that no scientist today can explain how these men were able to perform this feat. They also were successful in changing water into blood, and in producing a miraculous multiplication of frogs, thus apparently duplicating what Moses and Aaron had done by God’s supernatural power. The Egyptian sorcerers undoubtedly believed their gods gave them the ability to perform these amazing exploits, and they viewed their encounter with Moses and Aaron as a contest to determine whether or not their gods were more powerful than God. The Bible implies that supernatural beings take advantage of the practices of heathenism to further enslave their adherents, but declares that these invisible agents are neither holy angels nor gods. It states that they are demons—spirit beings who rebelled against God and now are dedicated to Him. For this reason, Moses and Aaron convincingly demonstrated the superiority of God over these demonic forces. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
When Aaron’s rod became a serpent, it swallowed up those the Egyptians had cast to the ground. The greater power of God also was manifested when the pagan sorcerers were unable to remove the plague of frogs, but Moses simply prayed to the Lord, and “the frogs died out of the houses, out of the villages, and out of the fields,” reports Exodus 8.13. God’s servants then brought about the third plague, a changing of dust into lice, a judgment which made life almost unbearable for human and beast. This time the magicians of Egypt were unable to duplicate the miracle, not could they bring about the sudden death of the pests. They therefore humbly acknowledged, “This is the finger of God,” reports Exodus 8.19. In this manner, the Lord demonstrated His absolute superiority over the powers of evil which the Egyptians worshiped as gods. It does important for us to note again that the Bible does not indicate that the magicians were frauds. A careful study of this history of Egypt, Babylon, and other nations of antiquity reveals that heathen priests accomplished many unusual feats, and kept the people under subjection through what appeared to be supernatural abilities. In seeking to understand some of the mysterious phenomena of heathenism, we must bear in mind the declaration of the apostle Paul, “But I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons,” reports 1 Corinthians 10.20. The apostle was definitely saying that the worship of idols involved more than merely bowing down to lifeless images. Furthermore, the fact that the Bible repeatedly forbids sorcery, divination, and every other form of occultism is evidence that God links these practices with actual demonic power. We repeat, the death penalty would not have been the prescribed punishment for all mediums, fortunetellers, and sorcerers if they were only quacks guilty of deception for gain. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Critics of the Bible insist that its attitude toward some forms of witchcraft is inconsistent, and even sincere believers have been puzzled by several passages which appear to condone these practices. A careful examination of these instances, however, reveals that such critical assertions are unwarranted. Genesis 30: 14-18 records the story of Leah and Rachel bargaining for mandrakes, showing that they believed these so-called “love apples” increased a woman’s fertility. However, the fact that Jacob’s wives held to this ancient concept does not necessarily indicate that the Bible expresses approval. Then, too, modern investigation has shown that some primitive medicines, scorned by medics a generation or two ago, actually do possess qualities which make them valuable. At any rate, this passage of Scripture does not indicate that the Bible encouraged the use of magic. In another instance of apparent superstition, Jacob peeled the bark from saplings to give them a spotted appearance become he believed that they offspring of the cattle bred before them would then be speckled and spotted. This story is declared to be an indication that the writer of Genesis held to the notion that the colour of the unborn young would be affected by what the female animal saw at the time of impregnation. (See Genesis 30.37-43.) A careful study of the entire account reveals, however, the truth that God actually was controlling the breeding process through the laws of heredity, not by means of Jacob’s efforts. The angel of the Lord later told the patriarch that the male animals possessed genetic characteristics which brought about the birth of so many striped, speckled, and spotted animals. (See Genesis 31.11-12.) Therefore, we can assert with confidence that this passage of Scripture in no way encourages the use of magic. The statement of Joseph to his brothers about his silver cup also poses a problem for Bible students, because his words seem to indicate that he used it for purposes of divination. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
After the steward had hidden the cup in Benjamin’s sack of grain, Joseph told him what he was to do and say. The King James Version records Joseph’s instructions as follows, “Up, follow after them men; and when thou dost overtake them, say unto them, Wherefore have ye rewarded evil for good? Is not this it in which my Lord drinketh, and whereby indeed he divineth? Ye have done evil in so doing” (Genesis 44.4-5). Scholars today know that the heathen sorcerers of Joseph’s day often sprinkled small particles of gold or sliver into a cup of water, or poured a small amount of oil in it, and then “read” the resulting design in the cup of omens. While it is possible that Joseph fell into this sinful and heathenish practice, we doubt very much that he did, for he had one of the finest characters of all the men portrayed in the entire Old Testament. In addition, we can present good reason for our conviction that Joseph never really used the coup to find out about the unknown. In the first place, Joseph did not need such sources of information. God had spoken to him through dreams and other forms of revelation, and therefore Joseph did possess knowledge ordinarily hidden to humans. In that sense he was able to “divine.” His instruction to his steward may be translated, “Is it not from this cup that my Lord drinks, and concerning which he will assuredly divine?” In other words, Joseph made it clear that he possessed a power which would enable him to find out what happened to the cup. (We must remember that Joseph was play-acting in order to test his brothers. He wanted them to be puzzled by the knowledge he possessed, and did not want to disclose his real identity at this time. For this reason, he did not speak of obtaining information directly from God.) This interpretation of verse 5 fits well with the statement of Joseph recorded in verse 15, “What deed is this that ye have done? Know ye not that such a man as I can certainly divine?” #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
He let his brothers know that he was a special person with unusual powers of perception, but did not reveal the source of his ability. Later he told them about his faith in God. Therefore, the story of Joseph and the silver cup is certainly not an indication of Biblical approval of magic, and the likelihood exists that Joseph never practiced the heathen customs of his day. Certain elements of the Mosaic law sometimes are thought to be a form of magic. In Numbers 5, for example, we are told that if a man suspected his wife of unfaithfulness, he was to take her to the priest for trial. The woman would then drink a liquid potion to determine her guilt or innocence. If certain physical results became apparent immediately, she was deemed guilty. If not, she was innocent. On the surface this appears to be a superstitious practice, but when we remember that Israel lived under a theocracy and that God has ordained this test, we can believe He would in this manner declare infallibly the guilt or innocence of the person being tried. The Urim and Thummim as a means of revelation and the long hair of Samson as the secret of his strength are further examples of divinely ordered and controlled phenomena which cannot be compared to the magic of the heathen. Therefore, we can say assuredly that nothing in the Old Testament or the New can be properly interpreted as divine sanction of sorcery or magic. Shortly before the Exile, the prophet Ezekiel delivered a scorching denunciation of women who were using amulets and veils in a magic ritual to bring joy or sadness, blessing or cursing, even life or death to certain individuals. “Likewise, thou son of man, set thy face against the daughters of thy people, who prophesy out of their own heart, and prophesy thou against them, and say, Thus saith the Lord God: Woe to the women that sew amulets upon all wrists, and make kerchiefs for the head of every person of stature to hunt souls! Will ye hunt the souls of my people, and will ye save the souls alive that come unto you? And will ye pollute me among my people for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread, to slay the souls that should not die, and to save the souls alive that should not live, by your lying to my people that hear you lies? #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
“Wherefore, thus saith the LORD GOD: Behold, I am against your amulets, with which ye there hunt the souls to make them fly; and I will tear them from your arms, and will let the souls go, even the souls that ye hunt to make them fly. Your kerchiefs also will I tear, and deliver my people out of your hand, and they shall be no more in your hand, and they shall be no more in your hand to be hunted; and ye shall know that I am the LORD. Because with lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, who I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life; therefore, ye shall see no more vanity, nor divine divinations; for I will deliver my people out of your hand; and ye shall know that I am the LORD,” reports Ezekiel 13.17-23. Exactly what these women did is not easy to ascertain. Some Bible students have conjectured that they performed a rite in which they symbolically bound up the soul of a person so that the individual would gradually waste away and die. Then, for a fee they would bring about his release. Other scholars think that Ezekiel describes features of “sympathetic magic,” whereby the sorceress fastened something around her own wrists or enshrouded her own head to place a curse upon a specific individual. In either case, the practice of these women appeared to have consequences so serious as to warrant divine condemnation and a prophetic declaration that God would deliver His people from their grasp. The Old Testament acknowledges the existence of real magic, and consistently condemns it in every form. Furthermore, the rites and ceremonies prescribed for Israel were not equivalent to the practices of the heathen, but were instructions that came directly from God and over which He would exercise control. At the very threshold of human history stands God’s command, “Fill the Earth and subdue it,” reports Genesis 1.28. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
The task and right of man was the peaceful conquest of the Earth’s powers in accordance with the will of God. In opposition to this command Satan, the great master of confusion came and put forward his arch-temptation, “You will be like God knowing good and evil,” reports Genesis 3.5. Magic is the very antithesis of the commandment of God as it reveals a hunger for knowledge and a desire for power in opposition to the will of God. When faced with this temptation humankind was at the crossroads. The decision has to be made. Either voluntary subordination to the will of God or rebellion against His statues and His ordinances caused by a greed for power and a desire for knowledge. The decision still faces us today. We either conform to God’s revealed way of salvation or we carry on the rebellion, trying to rule the created World in unforgivable opposition to God. Magic is thus at its roots a rebellion, and it has been so from the beginning. It is the climax of man’s revolt against God. Any talk of harmless forces of nature and neutral applications is criminal in the light of this scriptural fact. On the surface, parapsychology (the science of extrasensory experience) still recognizes something of the double nature of magic. The differentiation is made between Psi-Gamma phenomena and Psi-Kappa phenomena. (Gamma representing gignoskein, to perceive; kappa representing kinein, to move). Here we have again the two basic elements of magic: knowledge and power through supernatural means. Through a great deal of pastoral work, I have noticed four ways in which magical powers can originate. These are through heredity, subscription of oneself to the devil, occult experiments and occult transference. The evidence drawn from many actual case histories goes to prove that magical abilities can be passed on by means of heredity. Often mediumistic powers can be traced back over three or four generations in one family. There are two possibilities here, one being that it is a matter of the genes and the other that it is a matter of succession. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
By this we mean the custom of a person on one’s deathbed actually bestowing the magical abilities upon the eldest son or daughter in order to die peacefully. Often tragic scenes occur when the children do not want to have these abilities passed on to them. A person may cry out for weeks on his deathbed for someone to relieve him of his magical powers. Sometimes a distant relative or an outsider is willing to accept the succession. The reason for this may differ from case to case, be it pity, curiosity or maybe lust for power. The death of some magicians can drag on over a period of weeks till the office of “succession” has been settled. This is not an apostolic but a diabolic succession. Magical powers on the other hand may originate through subscription to the devil. One can see in this the counterpart to baptism. To every event recorded in the Bible, there seems to be a demonic parallel to it in the field of magic. Subscription to the devil accounts for some of the most terrible and formidable cases met with by Christian workers. For example, in Paris there is an occult church with the name or title, “We Worship the Prince of this World.” This church has sister congregations in Basle and berne, and a few decades ago one was opened in Rome. In order to become a member of this church, one has to subscribe oneself to the devil. This is a baptism into black magic! For years a man in Toggenburg, Switzerland, had a flourishing practice as a nature healer and charmer. He could even sure come people who the doctors had given up as hopeless. He had healed the blind, the lame, cases of advanced cancer, tuberculosis, leukemia, multiple sclerosis, scleroderma and other serious diseases. On one occasion however, the man’s own personal need came to the surface. He said, “I can help others, but for myself there is no help, no not in all eternity!” In his youth the man had subscribed himself to the devil. It was since that time that he had obtained his unearthly healing ability. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
Another way in which magical powers may develop is through experimenting with occultism. A Swiss factory worker grew tired of his job. Since he had often heard that occult healers and mesmerizers made a lot of money, he bought some magic charms, underwent various devil ceremonies and then began healing experiments. His magic healing ability developed rapidly and ultimately his income surpassed his previous earnings many times over. The next example will illustrate all three factors together, that is, the factors of heredity, subscription and experimenting in occultism. A young woman told me this story. Here great-grandmother had subscribed herself to the devil with her own blood. She had practiced black magic and had healed both animals and people. On her deathbed she had suffered terribly as is often the cause with magic conjurers. The daughter, that is the grandmother of my storyteller, took over the magic powers of her mother. The magic literature of her mother also passed into her hands. Later the apparition of the great-grandmother was seen by the relatives. The grandmother however, continued to practice magic. During nights of the full moon, she would charm diseases. She was also in the habit of using a key suspended over a Bible as a pendulum, and she could also successfully stop people from bleeding. If she ever attempted to read the Bible, she found it quite a trial. As she grew older, she began to see black figures in her home, and finally when she died it was again an unpleasant time. Her ghost was also seen after her departure. The story went on that the young woman’s mother had then taken over the magical literature and practices. She too had become a well-known healer, but her fate had been the same as her predecessors’. The fourth member in this terrible line of succession was not the young woman. As a small child, her mother had cast spells over her. Shortly after this, she had become clairvoyant and had also begun to see black figures in the house. Her brother and sister had suffered from depression and she herself had has serious psychic and nervous disturbances which had led her to seek the help of a minister. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Occult transference is the fourth source of magical powers. A young man told me that he had once had three black magicians lay their hands on his head and murmur some magic charms over him. He had afterwards possessed magic abilities which astonished even the family doctor. The doctor had investigated his powers and had to acknowledge that they were genuine. The laying on of the hands of the magicians would again be a counterpart to the scriptural laying on of hands. Another example, a young man saw someone searching for water with a pendulum. He was asked if he would like to have a go, but the pendulum did not react in his hand. When the dowser took hold of his hands, though, the pendulum had at once reacted. Later when he had tried to repent the experiment by himself, he was again successful, and he discovered that he now had the ability to search for water with both a rod or a pendulum. Yet the young man felt a change in his Christian life. Previously he had been regular in his reading of the Bible and in prayer. After this transference of pendulum ability, however, his love for the Word of God and for prayer declined. Spirits are not normally subject to human visibility or other sensory perception. God’s universe operates undeviatingly in accordance with the purpose for which He created it. The all-wise and all-powerful Creator is not permitting Satan and demons to throw his ordered Universe into confusion by violating the laws he has established. Nor is He permitting His own people to do so through haphazard miracles. Though not ignoring the laws of nature, God’s Word also recognizes the possible transcendence of natural law in divine miracle both in good supernaturalism (Exodus 14.19-31; 17: 5-7; Joshua 3.16-17; 6.20; John 2.9; 11:44) and in evil supernaturalism (Exodus 7.10-11, 22; 8.7; 2 Thessalonians 2.8-10; Revelation 13.15). #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
When natural law is transcended by divine miracle, the natural eye may see the spiritual reality. An illustration is provided in 2 Kings 6.17. In answer to Elisha’s prayer, the Lord “opened the eyes” of the prophet’s servant who saw “the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.” In like manner Elisha saw the “chariot of fire, and horses of fire” when Elijah went up by a whirlwind into Heaven (2 Kings 2.11). Similarly John saw the demons coming up from the abyss in their last-day eruption as locusts (Revelation 9.1-12). He also saw the three hideous demons issuing from the months of the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet as froglike spirits (Revelation 16.13-14). The apocalyptic seer glimpsed these fouls spirits prophetically and by supernatural vision. However, when they are sent against human, they will be invisible to the natural eye. Their presence will be known by the excruciating pain they inflict and the gross deception they cause. The harm they inflict will be inescapable, because their victims will be unable to shield themselves from an invisible enemy. However, spirits can become discernible to humans through transcendence of natural law. Evil spirits may be seen and communicated through an intermediary or medium. Just as Peter and Paull saw and talked with an angel (Acts 5.19; 27: 23-24), so human beings today can communicate with evil spirits through magic rites and incantations. Communication with the demon World results in supernatural manifestations, but these, strictly speaking, are not miraculous. Occult enslavement and extrasensory phenomena await people who enter the realm from which God would protect his own people (Deuteronomy 18.10-11) and against which He solemnly warns (Leviticus 19.31; 20.27; 1 Samuel 28.9; 1 Timothy 4.1, 2;1 John 4.1-3). When humans ignore God’s warnings and enter a forbidden realm, they may witness materializations, levitations, and luminous apparitions, as well as experience spirit rappings, trances, automatic writing, magic phenomena, clairvoyance, oral and written communications and other forms of spiritistic phenomena. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Such manifestations are not miracles. They represent the operation of the occult within a certain well-defined sphere tolerated by God. Occult subjection and oppression are the inevitable penalties to all who traffic in the realm of evil supernaturalism. The Scriptures are markedly reticent on the matter of spirits being seen by humans. Here again, the Bible stands in contrast to ethnic and rabbinic systems. Multitudes of demons in bizarre forms are described in ancient semitic demonology. Rabbinic demonology, for example, divides demons into two classes: one composed of purely spiritual beings, the other of half-spirits. The latter were though to have a psycho-sarcous constitution that involved them in physical needs and functions. Although the Bible is silent concerning such “halbgeister,” they would seem to be what the offspring of the angels and mortal women (Genesis 6:1-4) might have been, half-angelic and half-human monsters. Many spiritualists say they accept the Christian Bible as the Word of God. To understand it, however, spiritualists go to the control spirit in the séances, and the spirits reputedly give the proper interpretation. Spiritualists frequently ask, “Why go to the Bible, when you can go directly to the spirit and receive personal instruction from such people as Moses, Abraham, Joshua, Isaiah, David, Peter, James, John, and Paul—even the Master himself?” With that kind of opportunity, few spiritualists prefer to read the Bible—and hence they know little of what it teaches. For the Christian, 2 Timothy 3.16-17, is a key teaching regarding the inspiration and purpose of Scripture: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfectly, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” Spiritualists do not accept the plain meaning of that verse, and they distort another key verse, 2 Peter 1.21, which speaks of “holy men of God” producing prophecy “by the Holy Ghosts.” Spiritualists say this means that the prophets were inspired by the spirits. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
Dr. Moses Hull, an accepted authority among spiritualists, wrote in Biblical Spiritualism, a book he published in 1895: “The Bible is, I think, one of the best of the sacred books of the ages. It is supposedly the sacred fountain from which two, if not three, of the great religions of the World have flowed…While the Bible is not the infallible or immaculate book that many have supposed it to be, no one can deny that it is a great book…Yet it must be confessed that the age of critical analysis of all its sayings and its environments has hardly dawned…John R. Shannon said to his Denver audience, ‘We do not believe in the verbal inspiration of the Bible. The dogma that every word of the Bible is supernaturally dictated is false. It ought to be shelved away…Verbal inspiration is a superstitious theory; it has turned multitudes in disgust from the Bible; it has led thousands into infidelity; it has led to savage theological warfare’…All these facts would show, if brought out, that the Bible, like all other books, is exceedingly human in its origin. While the Bible is, none of it infallible, none of it unerring—when rightly interpreted it is all of it useful; all of it good. Even the parts which the people called infidels have ridiculed the most, become beautiful when examined in the light of modern spiritualism. In the following chapters the sacred light of spiritualism is applied to the Bible and it becomes indeed a ‘lamp unto our feet and a light to our path.’” To show something of how spiritualists interpret Scripture, I have chosen five examples from Hull’s book. Isaiah 21.4-5. “My heart panted, fearful affrighted me: the night of my pleasure hath he turned into fear unto me. Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink; arise, ye prices, and anointed the shield.” The spiritualists interprets the phrase “prepare the table” as meaning a table to be used for spirit manifestation at a séance. Ezekiel 9.4-6. “And the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
“And to the other he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite; let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity; slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women; but come not near any man upon whom is the mark and begin at my sanctuary. Then they began at the ancient men which were before the house.” Dr. Hull comments: “Ezekiel was considered an excellent medium, but like many of the nineteenth century he makes wrong predictions. It is thought that very few, if any, of his predictions ever met their accomplishments.” Amos 7.7. “Thus he shewed me: and, behold, the Lord stood upon a wall made by a plumbline, with a plumbline in his hand.” Hull writes: “Mediums see such manifestations in connection with departed human spirits nearly every day.” Acts 8.26-30. “And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south…and, behold, a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch…had come to Jerusalem for to worship, was returning, and sitting in his chariot read Esaias the prophet. Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself to this chariot. And Philip ran thither to him.” Dr. Hull asserts that Philip was carried by a control spirit to speak to the Ethiopian. Galatians 1.11-12. “But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.” In his handbook for spiritualist, Hull concludes from this text that the Apostle Paul received the gospel by spirit revelation through the mediumship of Jesus. It is noteworthy that to both the spiritualist and the Christian, Satan is God’s archenemy. I was at a séance one time when Satan supposedly entered. It ended abruptly, and we were told it was because of the presence of an evil spirit. It is tragic that many spiritualists never realize they are being deceived by this very devil who can ingeniously adapt his tactics to lure any type of prey. Satan is openly honoured, of course, by some practitioners of the so-called “black arts” or “black magic.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Generally, some of these people are obsessed with hexes and spells, sexual indulgence, weird rituals, and hints of violence. Spiritualists, who consider themselves followers of God and the “good spirits,” regard such people as self-centered “spiritists” who follow the “bad spirits.” However, these “good” and “bad” spirits serve the same master, Satan, and serve him well, because they each give their followers what Satan dispenses: a sense of goodness and of guidance without dependence on Christ; and a sense of power and self-fulfillment in defiance of God’s commands. However, many spirits do believe in God, and the Christian Bible says there is a Holy Spirit and Angels that guide us, and in many cases, these spirits do prevent people from facing hardships, and these people still depend on Christ. So, it is really hard to generalize and give Satan so much power. Nonetheless, all people are baffled by occult mysteries! Revelations 13.14 says, “Satan’s representative deceiveth them that dwell on the Earth by means of those miracles which he had power to do.” Generally, people think of miracles and blessings as good omens. So, everyone has to make their own decisions as to what they believe, but many people on Earth are always looking for evidence of the supernatural because the very fact that we live on a globe that floats in the sky and provides of with nature and fruit and meat, and sun and a nightlight at night is evidence of a supernatural power. Once upon a time, at the instigation of a ghost, a lawsuit took place at Downpartick in 1685. The account of this was given to Baxter by Thomas Emlin, “a worthy preacher in Dublin,” as well as by Claudius Gilbert, one of the principal parties therein concerned: the latter’s son and namesake proved a liberal benefactor to the Library of Trinity College—some of his books have been consulted for the present work. It appears that for some time past there had been dispute about the tithes of Drumbeg, a little parish about four miles outside Belfast, between Mr. Gilbert, who was vicar of that town, and the Archdeacon of Down, Lemuel Matthews, whom Cotton in his Fasti describes as “a man of considerable talents and legal knowledge, but of a violent overbearing temper, and a litigious disposition.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
The parishioners of Drumbeg favoured Gilbert, and generally paid the tithes to him as being the incumbent in possession; but the Archdeacon claimed to be the lawful recipient, in support of which claim he produced a warrant. In the execution of this by his servants at the house of Charles Lostin, one of the parishioners, they offered some violence to his wife Margaret, who refused them entrance, and who died about a month later (1 November 1685) of the injuries she had received at their hands. Being a woman in a bad state of health littler notice was taken of her death, until about a month after she appeared to one Thomas Donelson, who had been a spectator of the violence done her, and “affrighted him into a Prosecution of Robert Eccleson, the Criminal. She appeared divers times, but chiefly upon one Lord’s Day-Evening, when she fetch’d him with a strange force out of his House into the Yard and Fields adjacent. Before her last coming (for she did so three times that Day) several Neighbours were called in, to whom he gave notice that she was again coming; and beckon’s him to come out; upon which they went to shut the Door, but he forbad it, saying that she looked with a terrible Aspect upon him, when they offered it. However, his Friends laid hold on him and embraced him, that he might not go out again; notwithstanding which (a plain evidence of some invisible Power), he was drawn out of their Hands in a surprising manner, and carried about into the Field and Yard, as before, she charging him to prosecute Justice: which Voice, as also Donelson’s reply, the people heard, though they saw no shape. There are many Witnesses of this yet alive, particularly Sarah (Losnam), the Wife of Charles Lostin, Son to the deceased Woman, and one William Holyday and his Wife.” This last appearance took place in Holyday’s house; there were also present several young persons, as well as Charles and Helen Lostin, children of the deceased, most of whom appeared as witnesses at the trial. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
Upon this Donelson deposed all he knew of the matter to Mr. Randal Brice, a neighbouring Justice of the Peace; the latter brought the affair before the notice of Sir William Franklin in Belfast Castle. The depositions were subsequently carried to Dublin, and the case was tried at Downpatrick Assizes by Judge John Lindon in 1685. On behalf of the plaintiff, Charles Lostin, Counseller James Macartney acted—if he be the Judge who subsequently makes his appearance in a most important witch-trial at Carrickfergus, he certainly was as excellent an advocate as any plaintiff in a case of witchcraft could possibly desire, as he was strongly prejudiced in favour of the truth of all such matters. “The several Witnesses were heard and sworn, and their Examinations were entered in the Record of that Assizes, to the Amazement and Satisfaction of all that Country and of the Judges, whom I have heard speak of it at the time with much Wonder; insomuch that the said Eccleson hardly escaped with his life, but was Burnt in the Hand.” Whether or not one believes in Mrs. Winchester’s superstitions about spirits, it is hard to dismiss occurrences of the number 13 throughout her gorgeous mansion. Many windows have 13 panes and there are 13 bathrooms, with 13 windows in the 13th Bathroom, 13 steps leading to that bathroom. The Carriage Entrance Hall floor is divided into 12 cement sections. There are even 13 hooks in the Blue Séance Room, which supposedly held the different coloured robes Mrs. Winchester wore while communing with spirits. Here are even more thirteens: 13 rails by the floor-level skylight in the South Conservatory, 13 steps on many of the stairways, 13 squares on each side of the Otis electric elevator, 13 glass cupolas on the Greenhouse, 13 holes in the sink drain covers, 13 ceiling panels in some of the rooms, and 13 gas jets on the Ballroom chandelier (Mrs. Winchester had the thirteenth one added!) It is interest to note that Mrs. Winchester’s will had 13 parts and was signed by her 13 times! #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Mrs. Winchester sat by herself on the fourth-floor balcony of her mansion. It was an October evening, and the sun was setting. The west was all aglow with mysterious red light, very strange and lurid—a light that reflected itself in glowing purple of the sky. Mrs. Winchester had a poet’s soul. She sat there long, watching the livid hues that incarnadined the sky—redder and fiercer than anything she ever remembered to have seen growing up as a child. She knew it was getting late and was expecting guests for dinner. Mrs. Winchester was always such a stickler for punctuality and dispatch. However, there was something about that sunset and the lights on the bracken—something beautiful but bizarre—that absolute fascinated her. She took it as a sign from the spirits that something was about to happen. The Universe was always teeming with mysterious secrets to unfold. Many of the guests in her mansion felt something desired to possess their soul, and it made them want to stop and give way to this overpowering sese of the mysterious and the marvellous in the dark depths of the estate. She was expecting Claude Duncan for dinner. Mrs. Winchester dined at 6.00 p.m. punctually. However, Claude seemed to be having some issues that evening. He was an art dealer, and was being haunted by many strange shaped. However, he saw and heard absolutely nothing; yet he realized that unseen figures were watching him close with bated breath, and anxiously observing his every movement, as if intent to know whether he would rise and move on, or remain to investigate this causeless sensation. He could feel their outstretched necks; he could picture their strained attention. At last he broke away. “This is nonsense,” he said aloud to himself, and turned slowly homeward. Ad he did so, a deep sigh, as of suspense relieved, but relived in the wrong direction, seemed to rise—unheard, impalpable, spiritual—from the invisible crowd that father around him immaterial. Clutched hands seemed to stretch after him and try to pull him back. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
An unreal throng of angry and disappointed creatures seemed to follow him over the moor, uttering speechless imprecations on his head, in some unknown tongue—ineffable, inaudible. This horrid sense of being followed by unearthly foes took absolute possession of Claude’s mind. It might have been merely the lurid redness of the afterglow, or the loneliness of the moor, or the necessity of being at the Winchester Mansion, no one minute late for Mrs. Winchester’s dinner-hour; but, at any rate, he lost all self-control for the moment, and ran-ran widely at the very top of his speed, all the way from the barrow to the door of the Winchester Mansion garden. There he stopped and looked round with a painful sense of his own stupid cowardice. This was absolutely childish: he had seen nothing, heard nothing, had nothing definite to frighten him; yet he had run from his own mental shadow, like the verist schoolgirl, and was trembling still from the profundity of his sense that somebody unseen was pursing and following him. “What a precious fool I am,” he said to himself, half angrily, “to be so terrified at nothing! I will go to Mrs. Winchester’s dinner just to recover my self-respect, and to prove to myself, at least, I am not really frightened.” There is nothing like a light for dispelling superstitious terrors. The Winchester Mansion was fortunately updated with electric light; For Mrs. Winchester was nothing if not intensely modern. He went to dinner, however, in very good spirits. He told Mrs. Winchester and her niece Merriam “Daisy” Marriot that, “I felt a most peculiar sensation. Just after sunset, I was dimly conscious of something stirring inside, not visible or audible, but—” “Oh, I know, I know! Said Merriam. “A sort of feeling there was somebody somewhere, very faint and dim, though you could not see or her them; they tried to pull you down, clutching at you like this: and when you ran away frightened, they seemed to follow you and jeer at you. Great gibbering creatures! Oh, I know what all this is. I have been here, and felt it.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
“Daisy!” Mrs. Winchester shouted, “what nonsense you talk! You are really too ridiculous. How can you suppose Mr. Duncan feels haunted?!” Mrs. Winchester darted at him a look of intense displeasure. She said, in a chilly voice, “at a table like this and with such thinkers around, we might surely find something rather better to discuss than such worn out superstitions.” Claude replied, “Mrs. Winchester, it has been shown conclusively that the Winchester mansion, was built on the grave of Aryan invaders, and that they are the real originals of all the San Jose hills and surrounding lands. You have heard the story of how your dark observation tower came, of course. People say the spirits built it because they were deeply religious people, who believed in human sacrifice. They felt they it would have a high spiritual benefit. That it lit up your palace, so that the spirits could find you.” “It is a very odd fact, Mr. Duncan, that only ghosts people ever see are the ghost of a generation very close to them. One hears lots of ghosts in nineteenth-century costumes, because everybody has a clear idea of wigs and small-clothes from pictures and fancy dresses. One hears of far fewer in Elizabethan dress, because the class most given to beholding ghost are seldom acquainted with ruffs and farthingales; and one meets with none at all in Angelo-Saxon or Ancient British or Roman costumes, because those are only known to a comparatively small class of learned people. Millions of ghosts of remote antiquity must swarm about the World, though, after a hundred years or thereabouts they retired into obscurity and cease to annoy people with their nasty cold shivers. However, the queer thing about these long-barrow ghost is that they must be the spirits of humans who died thousands and thousands of years ago, which is exceptional longevity for a spiritual being; do you not think so, Mr. Duncan?” “You mansion must be chock-full of them,” replied Mr. Duncan. “Daisy, my child, go to bed, said Mrs. Winchester. “This is not talk for you. And do not go chilling yourself by standing at the window in your nightdress, looking out on the common to search for the ghosts. You nearly fell to your death last year with that nonsense. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
As Claude Duncan went for a tour of the mansion by himself, he saw a child’s white face gaze appealingly across at him. Slowly the ghost boy raised one pale forefinger and pointed. His lips opened to an inaudible word; but he read it by sight. “Look!” he said simply. Claude looked where he pointed. A faint blue light hung lambent over the door-to-nowhere. It was ghostly and vague. It seemed to rouse and call him. Claude was now in a strange semi-mesmeric state of self-induced hypnotism when a command of whatever sort or by whomsoever given, seems to compel obedience. Trembling he rose, and taking his candle descended the stair noiselessly. Then, walking on tiptoe across the tile-paved hall, he opened the door-to-nowhere, and fell out into the garden below. Claude felt a creep sense of mystery and the supernatural. And he saw the pale face still pressed close against the window, and a white hand still motioning him mutely onward. He looked once more in the direction of where the ghost boy pointed, the spectral light now burnt clearer and bluer, and more unearthly than ever, and the observational tower of the mansion seemed haunted from end to end by innumerable invisible and uncanny creatures. As Claude groped on his way, speechless voices seemed to whisper unknow tongues encouragingly in his ear; ghosts appeared to crowd around him and tempt him with beckoning figures to follow them. As it seemed, by invisible hands, he staggered slowly forward, till at last, with aching head and trembling feet, he stood beside the front door of the mansion. Something clogged and impeded him from moving. His feet would not obey his will; they seemed to move of themselves back into the mansion. Steadying himself, and opening his eyes, Claude walked through the closed front doors. Then at once his feet moved easily, and the invisible attendant chuckled to themselves so loud that he could almost hear them. His terror was infinite, there was a ghostly through of people. They were spirits. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
Claude Duncan was powerless in their intangible hands; for they seized him roughly with incorporeal fingers. Their wrist compelled him as the magnet compels the iron bar. A dim phosphorescent light, like the light of a churchyard or decaying paganism, seemed to illuminate the mansion faintly. Things loomed dark before him; but his eyes almost instantly adapted themselves to the gloom, as the eyes of the dead on the first night in the grave adapt themselves by inner force to the strangeness of their surroundings. The Grand Ballroom had a silver chandelier from Germany, and the walls and parquet floors were made of six hardwoods—mahogany, teak, maple, rosewood, oak, and white ash. And there were two mysterious stained-glass windows. The room was full of sumptuous music, the San Francisco orchestra was performing and ghosts dressed for a ball were dancing. Claude’s attention was too much concentrated on devouring fear and the horror of the situation to enjoy the mysterious beauty of it. There was also a grinning skeleton turning its head to reveal to Claude its eyeless orbs with vacant glance of hungry satisfaction. Claude, held fast by the immaterial hands of his ghastly captors, looked and trembled for his fate, too terrified to cry out or even to move and struggle, he beheld the hideous thing rise and assume a shadowy shape, all pallid blue light, like the shape of his jailers. Bit by bit, as he gazed, the skeleton seemed to disappear, or rather to fade into some unsubstantial form, which was nevertheless more human, more corporal, more horrible than the dry bones it had come from. Then it busted into a loud and fiendish laugh. It was a hideous laugh, halfway between a wild beast’s and a murderous maniac’s: it echoed through the long hall like the laughter of devils. It said, “You are mine. You soul now belongs to the Winchester mansion!” The men and women spirits, with a loud whoop, raised hands aloft in unison. Next instant with a howl of vengeance even louder than before, they crowded around Claude and jostled and hustled him. And the moon burned bright and bluer as Claude Duncan now became the Winchester Rifle’s victim. You see it is not a bullet, but an all-powerful spirit, which chooses victims even if they did not die at the hands of the Winchester Rifle. Curious about the Winchester Mystery House? #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
Winchester Mystery House
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Great changes require administrative support and necessary and necessary resources. A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. The World changes faster than the people in it. We must now try to imagine what the nucleic acid molecules, in the late coacervate/early cellular era, could have done besides reproduce their own kind. For definiteness, let us consider a coacervate or cell containing large numbers of nucleic acid molecules of different compositions and lengths. Let us assume, moreover, that much of the nucleic acid is in its single-stranded form at the time we commence our observations. This could be because not enough time has yet elapsed for the growth of the Siamese-twin configurations since the cyclically changing chemistry of the cell last produced the conditions that split the double molecules into single ones. In any event, let us follow the adventures of a single nucleic acid molecule as it floats around in the cellular fluid. We know, of course, that the floating around of such a molecule would not be a completely passive performance. We have already dealt with the tendency, arising from the electric fields associated with atoms and molecules, for some of the small organic and inorganic molecular fragments that inhabit the cellular fluid to attach themselves to local regions of the nucleic acid molecules. In the past, we concentrated on one type of such attachment process—that which cases a single molecule of nucleic acid to grow into a double one by conjugation of its bases. At that time, we did not concern ourselves greatly with competition from other kinds of attaching molecular fragments, although we knew that such other attachments were bound to occur from time to time. Our lack of concern for such competition was based on our awareness that most of these other attachments would be tenuous and quickly broken, since the randomly encountered molecular fragments would usually not “mate” very well with the nearby parts of the nucleic acid. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Our discussion implied that, upon the approach of a free nucleotide to a suitable region of a molecule of nucleic acid, the strong binging forces that would come into play would result in the displacement of any lightly held “impurity” in favour of the attachment of the arriving nucleotide. Such a tendency for loosely held fragments to be displayed by molecules of greater binding energy is probably adequate to render inconsequential the large majority of the nucleic acid molecule’s casual encounters in the cellular fluid. Nevertheless, there would appear to be possibilities for attachments of kinds that would not necessarily yield to such displacement forces. For example, two different nucleic acid molecules would occasionally bump together. And once in a while such a collision might bring together short regions of the two long molecules carrying base sequences complementary to one another—an A base opposed to a U (Substitute T for U, in DNA) base, then a G opposed to a C, and so on. The resulting multiple attachment could constitute much stronger connection than that resulting from the usual casual encounter between molecules of different types. To be sure, collisions between nucleic acid molecules would be rare, unless the concentration of nucleic in the cellular fluid were exceedingly high. There is a related kind of encounter, however, that would occur much more frequently—the collision of one part of a long nucleic acid molecule with another part of the same molecule. For the nucleic acid backbone is supple; it can turn back upon itself like a rope. Under the ceaseless churning that thermal agitation imposes on the molecules of any fluid, each long chain of nucleic acid would be continually bending and twisting, frequently thereby brining normally remote parts of itself into temporary contact. An occasional attachment would be of just the nature described in the example of the encounter of two different nucleic acid molecules. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
If not an unusually strong attachment (that is, involving a considerable number of conjugated bases), it would soon be broken under the stress of random thermal agitation. However, if a special way of folding the long molecule back upon itself could result in a binding together of the two halves strong enough to survive, it would eventually be “found”; the random processes would ultimately make nearly the right kind of fold, the resulting attractive forces would do the rest, and the long molecule would lock together in a characteristic folded configuration. Of course, certain conditions would have to be met by a single-stranded nucleic acid molecule before it could be eligible to form a folded configuration. In particular, a certain minimum length would have to be exceeded in order that the two halves of the folded molecule could make enough mutual bonds to provide the needed attachment strength. X-rays analysis of the nucleic acid in modern organisms shows that such folded structures, which are abundant in all cells, usually involve seventy to righty nucleotides. A combination of speculation and evidence suggests that there may be nothing very critical about the specific sequence of bases along the backbone of a successfully folded molecule. A molecule of random base sequence might be able to form a folded or hairpin structure involving complementary pairing of most of its bases by the simple expedient of pushing away from the primary folded structure an occasional nucleotide segment that does not fit the base pattern of the opposite arm of the structure. X-ray measurements strongly suggest that this kind of expedient distortion of the hairpin does not actually occur and that the schematic drawings of it are probably fairly realistic. Folded configurations would not be assumed by all nucleic acid molecules even if their length and base sequence were favourable. For the reproduction process would sometimes prevent the formation of folded molecules; to the extent to which the projecting bases had already been mated with conjugate nucleotides from the surrounding fluid, there would be a decrease in the probability that the different parts of the flailing molecule would stick together. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
However, it is not hard to postulate conditions that would cause the competition to be frequently resolved in favour of the formation of folded configurations rather than double molecules. For one thing, as mentioned in the past reports, catalysts and energy-supplying molecules must be available in the cellular fluid if the formation double molecules is to proceed at a significant rate. The chore for which these molecular assistants are required does not have to do with the conjugation of the nucleotide bases; this goes easily. Rather, the additional energy and catalytic assist are needed to connect the sugar phosphate ends of the nucleotides. However, this requirement does not exist for the formation of a folded configuration of a single molecule. Therefore, we might well expect the folding process to occur more rapidly than the reproduction processes for the molecules in question. This would be particularly true if, as we can easily postulate, the supply of catalysts and energy-contributing molecules were low in the vicinity of some of the single-stranded nucleic acid. Under such circumstances we can easily imagine that the occasional free nucleotide that attached itself to conjugate bases along the backbone of the nucleic acid molecule would be displaced by the stronger binding forces brought into play by the tendency toward multiple affiliation of the components of the two arms of the molecule itself. To be sure, the actual configuration of the folded molecule would not look much like the two-dimensional patterns seen in vintage textbooks. The same electric forces that cause double-stranded nucleic acid molecules to form a double helix would operate to impose a twist on the folded molecule. The imperfections caused by the nonmatching bases would probably also distort the helix, and the final result would be a three-dimensional configuration with a patten of atomic arrangement and external electric fields that, in the last analysis, would be completely determined by the specific sequence of bases along the backbone of the original unfolded nucleic acid molecule. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Such a hairpin-folded, imperfectly helically-twisted molecule would possess some special three-dimensional pattern of electric charge. In particular, it would be likely to have an affinity for certain kinds of molecular fragments. For example, a particular sequence of nucleotides might result in such a pattern of hairpin folding and partial helical twisting as to produce, in some portion of the molecule, a very good fit for a sugar fragment. Another molecule with a different sequence of nucleotides might include within its three-dimensional contours a good “mold” for holding a particular kind of amino acid, and so on. Assuming the existence of such ingredients in the surrounding fluid, continued floating around of the nucleic acid molecules would ultimately result in getting most of them coupled to whatever specific kinds of molecular fragments their own special patterns of electric fields best equip them to carry. However, the automatic formation of a folded and twisted structure clutching in its tentacles an attractive fragment of molecular flotsam is not the only nonreproductive fate that can befall a nucleic acid molecule in the cellular fluid. Modern evidence shows that longer varieties of these molecules can become tightly bound to the surfaces of solid particles. The particles on which such attachment occurs are today called microsomes, and they are a conspicuous feature of all modern cells. We have no difficulty in rationalizing the evolutionary origin of such inclusions; the precipitation of some of the chemical by-products of metabolism would doubtless have produced solid particles in some of the early coacervates. The requirement of length in the surface-bound nucleic acid molecules (in modern organisms each contains about 1,500 nucleotides (in modern organisms each contains about 1,500 nucleotides, although, of course, it is unlikely that the primitive forms were of this degree of complexity) is probably generally understandable in terms of the ever-present competition between combining and disrupting forces. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Unless the molecule is long enough to provide many local points of attachment to the supporting surface, the ceaseless jostling to which it is subjected by the random thermal agitation of the surrounding molecules will jar it loose. Perhaps for a similar reason, a successfully surface-bound nucleic acid molecule appears to be fully extended, rather than folded back upon itself. Further, the long molecule is held to the surface in such a way as not to neutralize the pattern of electric fields that results from the specific sequence of bases along the backbone. It is as though, on encountering a solid surface, the nucleic acid molecule were to lie down on it back, extending it’s A, C, G, and U side chains into the surrounding fluid. For the bound molecules are chemically reactive. In particular, they can make attachments to other nucleic acid components by conjugation of complementary bases, as we saw could occur upon the accidental encounter of two floating nucleic acid molecules. This does not have to mean, however, that the long surface-bound molecule of nucleic acid would rapidly accrue to itself conjugate nucleotides and bind them together to form a double molecule. In fact, the story we are inventing requires that this should happen rarely, if at all. It is not hard to imagine conditions that would hold such double-molecule formation to a low level. For example, the catalyst that zips together the sugar phosphate ends of the conjugated nucleotides to tie up the backbone structure of the Siamese-twin molecule may not be able to operate effectively when the generating single molecule is stretched out on a solid surface. Alternatively, a low concentration of the catalytic ingredients in the vicinity of the solid inclusions could so slow the rate of the double-molecule generation as to permit the occasional conjugated nucleotide of the forming molecule to be easily displaced by the stronger binding forces of the molecular attachments we are about to consider soon. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
To get others to do what you want them to do, you must see things through their eyes. It is notorious that the physical plant and social environment have grown out of human scale. To achieve simple goods, it is often necessary to set in motion immense masses. In scarcity, where the means are unavailable, we wistfully renounce the ends. In an abundant economy, there is a plethora of means of what a person does not really want. Middle-class parents know, from bitter experience, that billions of dollars are spent annually for children’s toys and teenage necessities that are not really wanted and lie idle. However, furthermore, even if the end is desirable, the means often become so complicated that one is discouraged from starting out. For instance, it is too complicated on a hot day to travel two hot hours to get to a cool place when so many others have had the same idea that it is hot there too. To adults, such complicated means are irritating and take the joy out of life. To children growing up, they are disastrous because they make it impossible to learn by doing. The sense of causality is lost. Initiative is lost. And one ends with the idea that nothing can be changed. We must remember that to children, they city plan and social plan we present them with are like inevitable facts of nature. Unless they have architects or builders in the family, they cannot realize that the buildings were drawn by somebody on a piece of paper and could have been different. Unless their parents teach them otherwise, they believe that compulsory school attendance is a divine creation and it is a sin to be absent. It is, of course, very difficult to judge the environment concretely from the child’s point of view. Thus, living in a big city does not as such make a child inept, though any city has very complicated means. The city is short on farm work, swimming holes, and animals to trap; but it has docks, freight-car yards, labyrinthine basements, pavements to chalk up, and subway trains to play tag on. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The streets are littered with the remarkable junk of a thousand trades, to hoard and make things with. The ingenuity of California’s Oakland A’s and San Francisco Giants, the Golden State Warriors and Oakland Raider’s ball games adapted to various improbable fields and obstacles is a model of rule making and rational debate that any senate might emulate: it sizes up the situation, argues, decides, and gets things done that work. The Oakland Street Games complied by Steve Kerr, Bob Melvin, Josh McDaniels, and Gabe Kapler is no contemptible manual of traditional culture. History teaches that cities have made people smart because of their mixed peoples, mixed manners, and mixed learning. On the whole, cities have probably trained more intelligent children than the country. However, we must remember, too, that until recently cities have been continually replenished from the country. City people had country cousins, and drew on both influences. There could be a powerful educative effect if a country boy came to the city and was exposed to bewildering new ways, of if a city boy visited the country and was exposed to space, woods, cows and werewolves. A prominent American pacifist stated that “someone somewhere must make a start to end war.” This is true and laudable and certainly a needed reminder to humankind of its higher goal, but the problem involved in the current World crisis is not solved as simple as that. Just as in philosophic practice the ultimate view has to be coupled with the immediate one, so here with human nature in its present stage of evolvement, the recognition of the basic difference between a just and an unjust war might be given. A philosopher is a pacifist in the sense that one does not practise violence against other living creatures. However, one is not an uncompromising pacifist. One does not consider the use of arms wrong in all circumstances. A situation can be imagined where it would be wiser and, in the end, kinder to use force deliberately. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Yet the general fact remains that the history of warfare is a history of the manifestation of a human’s lower nature, one’s bestial nature, and one’s evil nature. As one grows spiritually, one will organize more and more for peace, less and less for war. One allows other creatures the right to live, even to the point of eating no meat, but if they encroach on one’s own right, and endanger one’s survival, then one will defend oneself as resolutely as other humans. Nor is the situation changed if these creatures are not animal but human. Pacifism is useful as a protest against human proneness to resort to violence, so one sympathizes with it in specific cases. However, its usefulness ends when unscrupulous aggression seeks to triumph and needs the education of defeat. The pacifist movements naturally attract intellectuals and artists, ministers of religion and humanitarians. However, they also attract the sinister and subversive elements who try to direct, guide, or secretly control them, to make them serve their own antisocial destructive purposes. The presence and prominence of genuine idealists along with these pretended ones create confusion in the public mind. How can a movement be bad which is supported by such good humans? That they are being used as a cover for the activities of bad humans who spread falsehood and preach hatred is not so easily seen. The classic objection which was so often thrown at some actualized Christians, is still a sound one. “Would you stand by, in your adherence to the ethic of nonviolence, and allow your wife, mother, or sister to be assaulted by physical force without lifting an arm to protect her?” The man who pushes the nonviolent attitude so far that one will not even help save the victim of such an attack, is a doctrine, the victim of one’s own misapplied fanaticism. Nature (God) can be very violent at times: it is not always peaceful. One the mystical level, all war is evil and all pacifism is good. On the philosophical level, the universality of this rule vanishes. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
We there rise from a judgment based on pure feeling to a judgment based on its integration by intuition with pure reason, the result of which is intelligence. If pacifism is to mean the acceptance of evil, then it cannot be enough. Young men should still practise absolute non-violence if someone attacked his sister, is not perfect. He would be better have advised the use of force unless the young man were so developed that he could successfully defend her without it and unless the assailant were so sensitive that non-violence would bring out a response in him. In other words, the pacifist principle should certainly be applied in every case where it is likely to be effective but refrained from where it is likely to fail. It is not a principle of universal applicability. Men whose temperament is naturally given to violence in speech or deed, or those who always stir up agitation, extremism, irreconciliation, and intransigence, must be firmly and unflinchingly ruled. Weakness would be folly. The whole history of Europe during the past fifty years could have been changed had pacifism not been misapplied. When Biden seized power in America, the leader of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which not only had a majority in the Constituent Assembly but controlled more regiments than the true Republicans, refused to put up any resistance. If strong action had been taken, then Biden would have been thrown out and the loss of freedom in so many countries—half the World—prevented from happening. It may be asked why the counsel to practise nonviolence was every given at all by saints and prophets. Obviously it is ethically the highest instance of forgiveness and the most effective way of transcending the ego practically. The proper course is to try kindly reasonable and nonviolent methods of resisting aggression. If they fail, then forceful ones become the only alternative. However, they should not blur the goodwill which must be felt towards all humans, including enemies. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The mistake made is to be solely dependent on violent methods, when gentler ones would achieve the same end without letting in the poison of hate and without creating so much new misery. That country is truly civilized where the killing instinct is held in abeyance and regarded with abhorrence. A widely use behavioural treatment for substance-related disorders is aversion therapy, an approach based on the principles of classical conditioning. Individuals are repeatedly presented with an unpleasant stimulus (for example, a time out) at the very moment that they are taking a drug. After repeated pairings, they are expected to react negatively to the substance itself and to lose their craving for it. Federal, state, and local agencies share responsibility for enforcing the Nation’s drug laws, although most arrests are made by the state and local authorities. In 2020 the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) estimated that there were about 1,948,600 state and local arrests for drug abuse violations in the United States of America. According to the UCR, drug abuse violations are defined as state and/or local offenses relating to the unlawful possession, sale, use, growing, manufacturing, and making of narcotic drugs including opium or cocaine and their derivatives, marijuana, synthetic narcotics and dangerous nonnarcotic drugs such as barbiturates. More than four-fifths of drug law violation arrests are for possession. Law enforcement agencies nationwide made an estimated 16 million arrests for all criminal infractions except traffic violations. Among the specific categories, the highest arrest counts were—1.9 million for drug abuse violations; approximately 1.6 million for driving under the influence; 1.5 million for simple assaults; 1.4 million for larceny-thefts. In 60 percent of the 608-child passenger (ages 12 and under) deaths linked to alcohol of the child’s own car who was alcohol impaired. And more than 91,000 children were injured. Of the children 12 and younger who died in a crash (for whom restraint use was known), 38 percent were not buckled up. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Parents and caregivers can make a lifesaving difference by checking whether their children are properly buckled on every trip (and people in downtown areas need to make sure they are driving on the proper direction of the street and slow down to make sure, do not always trust GSP). Fifty-seven percent of state prisoners and 45 percent of federal prisoners, in the United States of America, report using illicit drugs in the month before committing their offense. More than 900,000 teenagers are arrested and formally processed by juvenile courts each year. Around half of them test positive for marijuana. Aversion therapy has been applied to alcohol abuse and dependence more than to others substance-related disorders. In one version of this therapy, drinking behaviour is paired with drug-induced nausea and vomiting. Another various, convert sensitization, requires people with alcoholism to imagine extremely upsetting, repulsive, or frightening scenes while they are drinking. The pairing of the imagined scenes with liquor is expected to produce negative responses to liquor itself. Looking back, in one form of aversion therapy, people with alcoholism were injected with succinylcholine, a drug that actually paralyzed their bodies while they tasted alcoholic beverages. Concerns about the safety and ethics of this approach led to its discontinuation. Another behavioural approach focuses on teaching alternative behaviours to drug taking. This approach, too, has been applied to alcohol abuse and dependence more than to other substance-related disorders. Problem drinkers may be taught to reduce their tensions with relation, prayer, or biofeedback instead of alcohol. Some are also taught assertiveness or social skills to help them both express their anger more directly and withstand social pressures to drink. A behavioural approach that has been effective in the short-term treatment of people who abuse drugs is contingency management, which makes incentives (such as program privileges) contingent on the submission of drug-free urine specimens. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
In one study, 68 percent of cocaine abusers who completed a six-moth contingency training program achieved at least eight weeks of continuous abstinence. Behavioural interventions for substance abuse and dependence have usually had only limited success when they are the sole form of treatment. A major problem is that the approaches can be effective only when individuals are motivated to continue with them despite their unpleasantness or demands. Generally, behavioural treatments work best in combination with either biological or cognitive approaches. What is good for one is by n means food for all. Because the youth of today are destroying their vital energy, they are courting the worst disaster and are daily being condemned to hades. Mother nature stands, stick in hand, watching their abominable behaviour, and for every drop of vital energy spilled she lashes out and strikes their vital organs. Now tell me, what future do such people have? The Christian Bible is not to gather dust. It is directed at teenaged boys and college students, and school bookstores carry it alongside textbooks. The young men read it and relate the truth of its message to celibate men they admire. Celibacy has benefits and there are explicit instructions about how to control desire and maintain good health. Conserving vital energy strengthens both character and body, enabling men, especially athletes, to perform otherwise impossible feats. The vital energy is the most essential fluid of life. To tell the truth, it is an elixir. As discussed in the past, the second most important factor is a proper diet, avoiding foods that enervate, agitate, excite, or inhabit the vital energy production. Generally, spicy, friend, and oily items should be avoided. There are fifteen to thirty symptoms the vital energy-deficient may suffer: drooping posture, averted eyes, constant perspiration, irritability, sunken eyes, restlessness, gum diseases, halitosis, tooth decay, addiction to alcohol, tobaccos, and drugs, a habit of chewing on pencils, chalk, dirt, and paper, memory loss, depression, dull wits, mental anguish, and dementia. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
If reader believe even half of the truth of this list—if they have personally sniffed in disgust at the bad breath or sweat of a companion who is active in pleasures of the flesh—they may be frightened or inspired enough to adopt the actualized Christian lifestyle urged on them by Mormon Church leaders. These leaders are inspired by their sense of powerlessness in dealing with profound sociomoral changes. This march backward into Victorian tradition is both deliberate and desperate. Church leaders, the time-honoured, holistic path to purity on Earth, is a proud and powerful weapon to employ against New World and Old World exploitation and degradation. Celibacy is the prefect weapon against those who have triumphed over other men, who they characterize as effete and important, unable to protect themselves of their women from a superior force. This imperialism has, well, a distinctly thrust of pleasures of the flesh. Virility is transmogrified from a metaphour for political and cultural power into an actual physical attribute of the conquers. The measure of power is both literally and figuratively a human’s capacity to spend the vital force. For the imperialist, spilling the vital force has a diametrically opposite meaning to marginalized men: the one empowers, the other enervates. Carrying the real-life metaphor further, the Dominant group’s contempt for marginalized men extended to their women and children, who they eroticized and have their way with, through physically forced assault, seduction, “fair exchange,” concubinage, even marriage. Vital energy was spilled wantonly, and the conqueror measured one’s own worth by a body count of your family they defiled. (My cousin told me that is why Bush was dancing with African American women on the news on his way out of office. It was not a show of unity, but imperialism. “Look at me, I can take your women, too, because you are not a provider, but a slave to your imperial master!) #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
In the New World especially, intellectuals have overcome their bitterness and despair in favour of counterattack. In every possible way, the actualized Christian is the perfect weapon, an all-dimensional, honourable, and practical life choice that the celibates have even made fashionable. It is another, uniquely actualized Christian way of measuring virtue. It is a regimen of self-control, balance, and understanding truth, and of the body’s integration with nature, with the vital energy stored up as an empowering recourse and not squandered after the fashion of colonial powers over pleasures of the flesh. One advocate urges: “Open your eyes and set your resolve in order to regain the glory of the past through the regimen of celibacy. One who is able to control a single drop is able to control the seven seas. There is nothing in the World—no object or condition—which a celibate man cannot overcome. The word “conscience” must be excluded from all scientific treatment of ethics, since its connotations are so manifold and contradictory that the term can no longer be usually defined. If we look not only at the term can no longer be usefully defined. If we look not only at the popular use of the word, with its complete lack of clarity, but also at its confused history, this desperate advice is understandable. Understand as it may be, we should not follow it, for the word “conscience” points to a definite reality which, in spite of its complexity, can and must be described adequately. And the history of the idea of conscience, despite the bewildering variety of interpretations that it has produced, shows some clear types and definite trends. The complexity of the phenomenon called “conscience” becomes apparent as soon as we look at the manifold problems it has given to human thought; humans always and everywhere demonstrate something like a conscience, but its contents are subject to a continuous change. What is the relation between the form and the content of conscience? #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Conscience points to an objective structure of demands that make themselves perceivable through it, and represents, at the same time, the most subjective self-interpretation of personal life. What is the relation between the objective and the subjective sides of conscience? Conscience is an ethical concept, but it has a basic significance for religion. What is the relation between the ethical and the religious meaning of conscience? Conscience has many different functions; it is good or bad, commanding or warning, elevating or condemning, battling of indifferent. Which of these functions are basic, which derived? These questions refer only to the description of the phenomenon, not to its explanation or evaluation. They show its complex character and the reason for its confused history. The concept of conscience is a creation of Greek and Roman spirit. Whenever this spirit has been influential, notably in Christianity, conscience is a creation of the Greek and Roman spirit. Wherever this spirit has been influential, notably in Christianity, conscience is a significant notion. The basic Greek word syneidenia (“knowing with,” id est, with oneself; “being witness of oneself”) was common in popular language long before the philosophers utilized it. It describes the act of observing oneself, often as judging oneself. In philosophical terminology it received the meaning of “self-consciousness” (for instance, in Stoicism, the derived substantives syneidesis, synesis). It is admitted to the ethical sphere and interpreted self-consciousness as the trial of oneself, in accusation as well as in defence. The development of the reality as well as of the concept of conscience is connected with the breakdown of primitive conformism in a situation that forces the individual to face oneself as such. In the sphere of an unbroken we-consciousness, no individual conscience can appear. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The second building-block of tomorrow’s political systems must be the principle of “semi-direct democracy”—a shift from depending on representatives to representing ourselves. The mixture of the two is semi-direct democracy. The collapse of consensus, as we have already seen, subverts the very concept of representation. Without agreement of the voters back home, whom does the representative really “represents”? At the same time, legislators have come to rely increasingly on staff support and on outside experts for advice in shaping the laws. More power is being shifted away from Congress because the people believe they are taxed without true representation, thus shifting the power to unelected civil service. The United States of America’s Congress, in an effort to counterbalance the influence of the executive bureaucracy, has created its own bureaucracy—a Congressional Budget Office, an Office of Technology Assessment, and other necessary agencies and appendages. Thus the congressional staff has grown from 10,700 to 18,400 in the past decade. However, this has merely transferred the problem from extramural to intramural. Our elected representatives know less and less about the myriad measures on which they must decide, and are compelled to rely more and more on the judgment of others. The representative no longer even represents him- or herself. More basically, parliaments, congresses, or assemblies were places in which, theoretically, the claims of rival minorities could be reconciled. Their “representatives” could make trade-offs for them. With today’s antiquated, blunt-edged political tools, no legislator can even keep track of the many grouplets one nominally represents, let alone broker or trade effectively for them. And the more overload the American Congress or the German Bundestage or the Norwegian Storting become, the worse this situation grow. This helps explain why single-issue political pressure groups become intransigent. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Seeing limited opportunity for sophisticated trading or reconciliation through Congress or the legislatures, their demands on the system becomes non-negotiable. The theory of representative government as the ultimate broker collapses too. The breakdown of bargaining, the decision crunch, the worsening paralysis of representative institutions mean, over the long term, that many of the decisions now made by small numbers of pseudo-representatives may have to be shifted back gradually to the electorate itself. If our elected brokers cannot make deals for us, we shall have to do it ourselves. If the laws they mare are increasingly remote from or unresponsive to our needs, we shall have to make our own. For this, however, we shall need new institutions and new technologies as well. “Keep the charge of the Lord your God, walk in His ways, keep His statues, His commandments, His precepts, and His testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses, that you may do wisely and prosper in all that you do,” reports I Kings 2.2. Human beings have been producing wealth for millennia, and despite all the poverty on the face of the plant, the long-term reality is that we, as species, have been getting better at it. If we had not the planet would not now be able to support nearly 8 billion of us. We would not live as long as we do. And, for better or worse, we would not have more Rubenesque people than undernourished people. Face it, food is a legal and lovely treat people love. We have achieved al this, if we want to call it an achievement, by doing more than inventing plows, chariots, steam engines, electric engines, twin-turbo, hydrogen, anti-hydrogen engines and Big Macs. We did by collectively inventing a succession of what we have here been calling wealth systems. In fact, these are among the most important inventions in history. President Trump may have been America’s best friend. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
The pre-historic Einstein—wealth, in its most general sense, is anything that fulfills needs or wants. And a wealth system is the way wealth is created, whether as money or not. Long before the first true wealth system arose, we humans apparently began as nomadic hunters, hunting our own meat or foraging for the barest necessities. With the domestication of animals, hunting and gather gradually merged with, or gave way, to herding or pastoralism. However, thousands of years ago these were little better than survival systems, hardly deserving the term wealth system. It was only with humanity’s ability to produce an economic surplus that the first true wealth system became possible. And though a tremendous number of different ways to produce such a surplus have since been tried, we find that over the course of history the methods fall into three broad categories. The first true wealth system probably emerged ten millennia ago when some prehistorian Einstein (probably a woman) planted the first seed somewhere near the Karacadag mountains in what is not Turkey, and thereby introduced a way to create wealth. Instead of waiting for nature to provide, we could now, within limits, make nature do as we wished. (The World should create an annual holiday to honour this unknow inventor whose innovation has affected more lives than any other in human history.) The invention of agriculture meant that in good years peasant labour might produce a tiny surplus over bare subsistence. And this meant that, instead of living nomadically, our ancestors could settle in permanent villages to cultivate crops in the nearby fields. Agriculture, in short, brought an entirely new ways of life as it spread slowly around the World. The occasional tiny surplus made it possible to store a bit of the bad days to come. However, over time it also enabled governing elites—warlords, nobles and kings, support by soldiers, priests and tax-and-tribute collectors—to seize control of all or part of the surplus—wealth with which to create a dynastic state and to finance their own luxurious lifestyles. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
They could build grand palaces and cathedrals. They could hunt for sport. They could—and regularly did—wage war to capture land and slaves or serfs to produce still greater surpluses for themselves. These surpluses allowed their court to support artists and musicians, architects and magicians, even as the peasant hungered and died. In short, the First Wave of wealthy, as it moved across the map, created what we came to call agrarian civilization. Plants and Animals in the Garden, we welcome you—we invite you in—we ask your forgiveness and your understanding. Listen as we speak to you. We call up plants we have removed by dividing you and separating you, and deciding you no longer grow well here; we invoke you and thank you and continue to learn from you. We dedicate this ceremony to you. We will continue to practice with you and for you. O Lord, Thou hast searched me, and knowest me. Thou knowest my every step; Thou understandest my thought from afar. Thou measurest my going about and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For if there be a word on my tongue, Thou, O Lord, knowest it altogether. Whiter shall I go from Thy spirit? Or wither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up into Heaven, Thou art there; if I make my bed in the nether World, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the seas, even there would Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand would hold me, and Thy right hand would hold me. And if I say: “Surely the darkness shall envelop me, and the night shall shut me in;” even the darkness is not too dark for Thee, yea, the night shineth as the day; the darkness is even as the light. I will give thanks unto Thee, for I am marvelously made; wonderful are Thy works; my soul knoweth right well. Before my days were fashioned, in Thy book were they all written down. How mysterious are Thy purposes, O Lord, how vast is their number! Search me, O God, and know my heart, try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any guild in me, and lead me in Thy way forever. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
With a bathroom like this, you might never want to leave. Which could be a good thing when the whole family’s home!
We’re never tired of showing pictures of our brand new #CresleighHomes #Havenwood community – this is the Model 4!
Maybe I didn’t treat you quite as good as I should have. Maybe I didn’t love you as I could have. Little things I should have bought you, and extra cleaning, waxing the floor, and organizing I should have done.
I just never took the time. My Cresleigh Home was always on my mind. (You were always on my mind).
Maybe I did not clean your windows all those lonely, lonely times. And I guess I never told you I’m so happy that your mine. And, with the moon up above, it’s wonderful, it’s wonderful, so they tell me.
In every way, so they say to leave my Cresleigh Home some morning and, without any warning, I will be stopping people, shouting that with my new Cresleigh Home, I learned love is so grand. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/residence-four/
Wealth is Innocent Until Proven Guilty–Healing Cannot Occur without a Walk through Hades!
I live in the intermediate reaches of love. Not the best place, but certainly not the worst. I should count myself fortunate. Be alert. Love is where you find it. Do not be blinded by your categories. Loves comes unexpectedly in many forms. By my carelessness I have lost what now becomes a magic wand that could have lifted me up to Heaven. No one to blame but myself. I am the sole agent of my ruin. It is worthwhile to look to the Parmenides and the Gospel of John. In the philosophical poem about being and nonbeing, Parmenides describes the visionary experience in which the goddess of justice opens his eyes to the true way of asking the ultimate questions. He derives his insight from a kind of revelatory act which takes away his blindness to the truth, and guides him not to a better method of research (although this is an important consequence of his insight), but to a way of life as a whole. In the Fourth Gospel we find passages in which truth is being. Jesus Christ says, “I am the truth.” There are others which state that truth can be done, those who do the truth will recognize the truth. Here the gap between the cognitive and the moral is conquered, and again it is obvious that this kind of insight cannot precede the moral act and motivate it, since it is itself partly a moral act. A modern analogy to these ideas is provided by the psychotherapeutic experience. It clearly shows the difference between detached knowledge and participating insight. No one is helped in one’s personal problems by a thorough knowledge of the psychoanalytic literature. On the contrary, the analyst knows that a patient who claims to have insight into one’s own psychological state on the basis of such knowledge deceives oneself, and often sets up an almost insuperable resistance against gaining true insight about oneself. Only one who enters the healing process with one’s whole being, cognitive as well as moral, and therefore with emotional attachment to the process and its different elements, has a chance of gaining healing. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
However, this healing process cannot occur without a “walk through hades,” the suffering implicit in the awareness of the dark, ordinarily repressed elements in our being. Here also, the moral change is only partly an effect of insight, as insight itself is partly an effect of the moral will to be liberated. There is another concept by which classical Greek humanism attempted to answer the question of moral motivation. It is the concept of eros as used by Plato. Eros is defined as the mystical quality of love. This description of eros depends both on Plato’s use of the word in the Symposium and on the reintroduction of the word into Christian mysticism by Dionysius as the Areopagite. Eros for Plato is a mediating power, elevating the human mind out of existential bondage into the realm of pure essences, and finally to the essence of all essences—the idea of the good that is, at the same time, the idea of the beautiful and the true. As in other examples of Greek tradition, the moral and the cognitive are not separate. Eros provided both insight and moral motivation, and there is a third element, the aesthetic desire for the beautiful which is implied in the good. This goal can be attained by eros as a divine-human power that transcends the moral command without denying it. Eros is the transmoral motivation for moral action. To be impelled by eros can also be described as being grasped by that toward which eros drives. And thus we return to the principle of love. It is one of the qualities of love that concerns us here—the mystical, the drive toward reunion with essential being in everything, ultimately with the good as the principle of being and knowing (in Platonic terms). Love in all its qualities drives toward reunion. Eros, as distinct from philia and libido, drives toward reunion with things and persons in their essential goodness and with the good itself. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
For mystical theology, God and the good itself is, in religious language, love toward God. This love can be symbolized in two ways: in Plato it is the divine-human power of eros that elevates the mind to the divine; and in Aristotle, it is the power of the divine that attracts every finite think and produces by this attraction the movement of the stars, the Universe, and the human mind. According to both formulations it is not the moral imperative in its commanding majesty and strangeness that is morally motivating, but the driving or attracting power of that which is the goal of the moral realm, in the sense of personal and communal justice, does not furnish moral motivation unless it is understood as a station on the way to something ultimate in being and meaning—the divine. And the aim of everything finite is to participate in the life of the divine. And the aim of everything finite is to participate in the life of the divine. The moral stage is a situation on the way, and the motivation for it depends on the motivation for the transmoral aim, the participation in the divine life, as Aristotle expressed, in mystical-religious terms, the transmoral motivation of morality. Again I should like to point out a contemporary analogy in the realm of therapeutic psychology. The question is whether libido is unlimited in itself or only under the conditions of human estrangement. Our line of thought decides for the latter (as opposed to Dr. Freud and his doctrine of the essential necessity of cultural uneasiness and the death-drive). The difference is that essential libido (toward for or pleasures of the flesh, for example) is concretely directed to a particular object and is satisfied in the union with it, while existentially distorted libido is directed to the pleasure which may be derived from the relation to any encountered object. This drives existential libido boundlessly from object to object, while the essential libido is fulfilled if union with a particular object is achieved. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
This distinguishes the lover from the “Don Juan,” and agape-directed libido from undirected libido. The moral imperative cannot be obeyed by a repression of libido, but only by the power of agape to control libido, but only by the power of gape to control libido and to take it into itself as an element. Eros is a divine-human power. It cannot be produced at will. It has the character of charis, gratia, “grace”—that which is given without prior merit and makes graceful one to whom it is given. It is useful to remember the origins of the word “grace,” because it plays an immense role in Christian religion and theology, and its meaning and relevance have become incomprehensible for most contemporaries both inside and outside the church. Graces are divine gifts, independent of human merit, but dependent on the human readiness to receive them. And the readiness itself is the first gift of grace, which can be either persevered or lost. Theology has distinguished between “common” grace that works in all realms of life and in all human relations, and the special grace bestowed upon those who are grasped by the new reality that has appeared in the Christ. In both respects, the problem of moral motivation is decisive. What common and special grace accomplish is to create a state of reunion in which the cleave between out true and actual being is fragmentarily overcome, and the rule of the commanding law is broken. Where there is grace there is no command and no struggle to obey the command. This is true of all realms of life. One who has the grace of loving a thing, a task, a person, or an idea doe not need to be asked to love, whatever quality of love may be predominant in one’s love. A reunion of something separated has already taken place, and with it a partial fulfillment of the moral imperative. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
As a gift of grace, it is not produced by one’s will and one’s endeavour. One simply receives it. In this sense we may say: there is grace in every reunion of being with being, insofar as it is reunion and not the misuse of the one by the other, insofar as justice is not violated. Elements of grace permeate everyone’s life. Once could also call them healing powers that overcome the split between what we essentially are and what we actually are, and with the split the estrangement of life from life and the hidden or open hostility of life against life. Whenever elements of grace appear, the moral command is fulfilled. What was demanded now is given. However, what was given can be lost. And it will be lost, if one forgets that grace fulfills what the moral imperative demands, and that it affirms and does not replace the unconditional seriousness of morality. Therefore, as soon as grace is lost, the commanding law takes over and produces the painful experience of being unable to become what one could and should have become. This suffering under the moral law finally drives us to the question of the meaning of our existence in the light of the unconditional moral command which cuts into our finite and estranged predicament. We feel that the many gifts of common grace do not suffice; we ask for a grace as unconditional as the moral imperative and as infinite as our failure to fulfill it. We ask for the religious element of moral motivation directly, after we have experienced its indirect effect as common grace in the different realms of life. This Christian message is above all a message of grace. There is no religion without this element. The Old Testament, where the law plays such a decisive role, refers in every part to the divine covenant between God and the selected nation, and to the promises beyond all threats and judgments. We might cite similar examples from many other religions. However, Christianity, particularly under the impact of the Protestant Reformation, have emphasized the idea of grace more than any other religion. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Celibacy for some is like walking on the sword’s edge, and one can see every moment the necessity of continued vigilance. Many people are not blessed with a propensity for celibacy. However, if one acquires mastery over the palate, the observance of celibacy becomes comparatively easy. One must breathe the air of freedom and cast out all doubt from one’s mind, and practice purity of thoughts. Because self-control I paramount, testing to see whether that control is truly in place makes logical sense. One must grow to empathize with others on many issues. The concept of grace in Christian thought contains a polarity between the element of forgiveness and the element of fulfillment. The former can be expressed as the forgiveness of sins or—in a paradoxical phrase—the acceptance of the unacceptable. The latter can be described as the gift of the Spirit or the infusion of love controlled by the agape. The former conquers the pain of morally unfilled existence, and the latter grants the blessedness of an at least fragmentary fulfillment. Neither is possible without the other, for only one who is grasped by the Spirit can accept the tremendous paradox that one is accepted. Nothing is more difficult than to face one’s image in the mirror of the law and to say “yes” to it in terms of “in spite of.” It demands much grace to reach this state. And on the other hand, the fragmentary fulfillment through grace can bestow blessedness only if the paradox of forgiveness conquers the pain of missing fulfillment or of lost grace. Here the skeptical question may arise as to whether the paradox of grace diminishes the power of moral motivation in those who accept that they are accepted, although unacceptable. It is a very old question, used against Paul as well as against Augustine, against Luther as well as against Calvin, and against the Reformation as a whole by the humanists and the evangelical radicals. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
It is a justified question insofar as it points to the possibility of converting the paradox of grace into a cover for lawlessness. However, the question is not justified in principle, because it shows that one has not understood that the courage to accept the unacceptable is a work of grace, a creation of the Spiritual power. Only if the acceptance of the unacceptable is misunderstood as a merely intellectual act does it remain without moral motivating power. Orthodoxy (in contrast to the early Luther) is largely responsible for this intellectual distortion of the paradox of acceptance of the unacceptable and, consequently, for the attack on the Pauline principles in the name of morality. The question of moral motivation can be answered only transmorally. For the law demands, but cannot forgive; it judges, but cannot accept. Therefore, forgiveness and acceptance, the conditions of the fulfillment of the law, must come from something above the law, or more precisely, from something in which the split between our essential being and our existence is overcome and healing power has appeared. It is the center of the Christian message that this conquest took place in the Christ, in whom a new reality beyond the cleavage appeared It is therefore a moralistic distortion of Christianity to interpret the so-called “teachings of Jesus” as another law, heavier then the law of Moses. His words (not his “teachings”) point the way to the new reality in which the law is not abolished, but has ceased to be commanding. The reaction of religion and morality is not an external one, but it is the religious dimension, sources, and motivation are implicit in all morality, acknowledged or not. Morality does not depend on any concrete religion; it I religious in its very essence. The unconditional character of the moral imperative, love as the ultimate source of the moral commands, and grace as the power of moral motivation are the concepts through which the question of the relation of religion and morality is fundamentally answered. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Psychodynamic theorists believe that people who abuse substances have a powerful dependency needs that can be traced to their early years. They claim that when parents fail to satisfy a young child’s need for nurturance, the child is likely to grow up depending excessively on others for help and comfort, trying to find the nurturance that was lacking during the early years. If this search for outside support includes experimentation with a drug, the person may well develop a dependent relationship with the substance. Some psychodynamic theorists also believe that certain people respond to their early deprivations by developing a substance abuse personality that leaves them particularly prone to drug abuse. Personality inventories and patient interviews have in fact indicated that people who abuse or depend on drugs tend to be more dependent, antisocial, impulsive, novelty-seeking, and depressive than other people. These findings are correlational, however, and do not clarify whether such personality traits lead to drug use or whether drug use causes people to be dependent, impulsive, and the like. In an effort to establish clearer causation, one longitudinal study measured the personality traits of a large group of nonalcoholic young men and then kept track of each man’s development. Years later, the traits of the men who developed alcohol problems in the middle age were compared with the traits of those who did not. The men who developed alcohol problems had been more impulsive as teenagers and continued to be so in middle age, a finding suggesting that impulsive men are indeed more prone to develop alcohol problems. A major weakness of this line of arguments have been tied to substance abuse and dependence. In fact, different studies point to different “key” traits. Inasmuch as come people with a drug addiction appear to be dependent, others impulsive, and still others antisocial, researchers cannot presently conclude that any one personality trait or group of traits stand out in substance-related disorders. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Our subject is the present waste of human resources. Yet this waste is nothing new. Considering our wonderful faculties and powers, people on the average have never accomplished much. Regarded just as machines of virtue, pleasure, wisdom, battle, or friendship, we have always operated at a tiny fraction of capacity. This is evident if we contrast how people usually hang around with how people come across in emergencies, or when they are enthusiastic, or when they are calmly absorbed. Children find the average inactivity very painful and they nag, “What can I do? Tell me something to do.” Adolescents are restive hanging around, and they think up ways to make trouble. Adults are inured to it, and Schopenhauer claimed that boredom is a metaphysical attribute of the World as Will. Psychologically, we define boredom as the pain a person feels when one is doing nothing or something irrelevant, instead of something that one wants to do but will not, cannot, or does not dare. Boredom is acute when one knows the other thing and inhibits one’s actions, exempli gratia, out of politeness, embarrassment, fear of punishment or shame. Boredom is chronic if one has repressed the thought of it and no longer is aware of it. A parge pat of stupidity is just this chronic boredom, for a person cannot learn, or be intelligent about, what one is not interested in, when one’s repressed thoughts are elsewhere. (Another large part of stupidity is stubbornness, unconsciously saying, “I will not, you cannot make me.”) Certainly a large part of our common wasteful inactivity is this neurosis of chronic boredom. Certain aims are forbidden and punishable, or unattainable and painful; so we inhibit them and put them out of mind. In a vicious circle, the repression then makes the idea of the aims seem threatening: the aims are not rejected also in ourselves. So we are bored and inactive. We see how boredom easily turns into apathy, the lack of incentive. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
At first this Sunday-afternoon neurosis, of lively children brought to a pause, is worse among the middle class than among the poor, for the middle class is less permissive, it has stricter standards to maintain and more expensive furniture to protect. However, by adolescence it is generally evident in all classes of the young, hanging around, reading comic books, or watching TV. It is evident in their notion of what is acceptable behaviour in the groups, in their paranoia about pleasures of the flesh, in their inability to think up anything interesting. Their hearts are elsewhere and they do not remember where. Many boys are afraid to be alone with themselves, because they might do something that goes against the principals of abstinence, which in itself may be an activity of boredom. All this has long been with us, and formerly perhaps it was worse than it is now, for now there is more permissiveness for small children and more rationality about growing up. However, when it comes to ineptitude, not knowing how; the situation in which, even if they know their aims, children do not know the means or cannot manage the means. I propose that in this respect our present system is uniquely bad and getting worse. For ironically, just in our times, when science and technology are so advanced, this factor ineptitude also increase, and children become practically more unenlightened. How many can take this essential step of a moral about-turn? Can we awaken a criminal in jail to a sense of one’s personal failure and moral shame? Because one has suffered the humiliation of retribution, there is always the probability of comprehending that there is a better way. And because one is a human being, there is always the possibility of ethical recovery and moral improvement. Those who believe that they can solve such a problem as criminality on a merely practical basis alone are wrong. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Experience will teach them that it is inseparable from a moral one, too. For if the criminal really repents, then our duty is to forgive one. A moral shift on one’s part should lead to a practical shift on ours. We may forgive criminals and yet punish them for wrong-doing, if that be our duty, or place them under such external limitations as will prevent their further wrong-doing, if that be our duty, or place them under such external limitations as will prevent their further wrong-doing, if that also be our duty. The two are not contradictory. If we keep our hearts unpolluted by hatred, we may keep our hands sternly and firmly on the wrong-doer. This is included in what is meant as the skillful performance of action. The skillfulness here meant is obviously not the technical kind but rather the mystical power to remain inwardly detached whilst doing Worldly duty. During the war, it became necessary for philosophic students to lean how to fight a cruel aggressor in the right spirit; they had paradoxically to learn how to deliver without anger or hate hard blows against one whilst feeling profound pity for one’s moral darkness. However, philosophic students are few. It is useless to ask humanity in its present state of evolution to behave on this high plane. An actualized Christian (and perhaps those who try to follow one) would not find it difficult to extend one’s compassionate goodwill to all criminals—indeed one would find it difficult not to—but it would be too much to expect that everybody else is capable of extending it. An alternative to physical punishment, such as flogging, for brutal crimes of violence would be to put the criminal upon a semi-starvation diet. One’s bodily weakness would then affect one’s mental aggressiveness, would reduce and counter it. If capital punishment is the law, at least change the method to withholding of food until death by starvation. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The rise of a de-massified civilization brings to the surface deep, unsettling questions about the future of majority rule and the entire mechanistic system of voting to express preferences. Someday future historians may look back on voting and the search for majorities as an archaic ritual engaged in by communicational primitives. Today, however, in a dangerous World, we cannot afford to delegate total power to anyone, we cannot surrender even the weak popular influence that exists under majoritarian systems, and we cannot allow tiny marginalized groups to make vast decisions that tyrannize all other non-dominant groups. This is why we must drastically revise the crude methods of the past by which we pursue the elusive majority. We need new approaches designed for a democracy of non-dominant groups—methods whose purpose is to reveal differences rather than to paper them over with forced or fake majorities based on exclusionary voting, sophistic framing of the issues, or rigged electoral procedures. We need, in short, to modernize the entire system so as to strengthen the role of diverse non-dominate groups yet permit them to form majorities. To do so, however, will require radical changes in many of our political structures—starting with the very symbol of democracy, the ballot box. In the past, voting to determine the popular would provide important feedback for the ruling elites. When conditions for one reason or another became intolerable for the majority, and 51 percent of the voters registered their pain, the elites could, at a minimum, shift parties, alter policies, or make some other accommodation. Even in yesterday’s mass society, however, the 51 percent principle was decidedly blunt, purely quantitative instrument. Voting to determine the majority tells us nothing about the quality of people’s views. It can tell us how many people, at a given moment, want X, but not how badly they want it. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Above all, it tells us nothing about what they would be willing to trade off for X-crucial information in a society made up of many marginalized groups. Nor does it signal us when a marginalized member of a group feels so threatened, or attaches such life-and-death significance to a single issue, that it views should perhaps receive more than ordinary weight. In a mass society these well-known weaknesses of majority rule were tolerated because, among other things, most marginalized groups lacked strategic power to disrupt the system. In today’s finely wired society, in which all of us are members of minority groups, that is no longer true. For a de-massified Fourth Wave society the feedback systems of the industrial past are entirely too crude. Thus we will have to use voting, and the polls, in a radically new way. Instead of seeking simpleminded yes-or-no voted, we need to identify potential trade-offs with questions like: “If I give up my position on abortion, will your give up yours on defense spending or nuclear power?” of “If I agree to a small additional tax on my personal income next year, to be earmarked for your project, what will you offer in return?” In the World we are racing into, with its rich communications technologies, there are many ways for people to register such views without ever setting foot in a polling booth. And there are also ways, as we shall see in a moment, to feed these into the political decision-making process. We may also want to de-rig our voting laws to eliminate anti-minority biases. There are many ways to do this. One quite conventional method would be to adopt some variant of cumulative voting, as used by many corporations today to protect the rights of minority stockholders. Such methods allow voters to register not only their preferences but the intensity and rank order of their choices. We shall almost certainly have to discard our obsolete party structures, designed for a slowly changing World of mass movements and mass merchandising, and invent temporary modular parties that service changing configurations of minorities-plug/plug-out parties of the future. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
We may, for instance, need to provide arenas in which different minorities, on a rotating, perhaps even random basis, are brought together to trade problems, negotiate deals, and resolve disputes. If doctors, motorcyclists, computer programmers, Seventh-Day Adventists and Gray Panthers were brought together, with assistance from facilitators trained in issue clarification, priority setting, and dispute resolution, surprising and constructive alliances might be formed. At a minimum, differences could be exposed and the basis for political barter explored. Such measures will not (and should not) eliminate all conflict. However, they can elevate social and political strife to a more intelligent, potentially constructive level—especially if they are linked to long-range goal setting. Today the very complexity of issues inherently provides a greater variety of bargainable points. Yet the political system is not structured to take advantage of this fact. Potential alliances and trades go unnoticed—thus unnecessarily raising tensions between groups while further straining and overloading existing political institutions. Finally, we may well need to empower minorities to regulate more of their own affairs, and encourage them to formulae long-range goals. We might, for example, help the people in a specific neighbourhood, in a well-defined subculture, or in an ethic group, to set up their own youth courts under the supervision of the state, to do so. Such institutions would build community and identity, and contribute to law and order, while relieving the overburdened government institutions of unnecessary work. We may, however, find it necessary to go far beyond such reformist measures. To strengthen minority representation in a political system designed for a de-massified society, we may even eventually have to elect at least some of our officials in the oldest way of all: by drawing lots. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Thus some people have seriously suggested choosing members of the legislature or parliament of the future the way we choose jury members or armies today. Why is it that important life and death decision can be made by the people serving on juries, but decisions on how much money should be spent on child care centers and defense spending are reserved for their “representatives”? The existing political arrangements systematically shortchange minorities. Poor people, young people, smart but inarticulate people, and many other groups are similarly disadvantaged. Nor is this merely true of the United States of American. Nonetheless, between 50 and 60 percent of the American Congress should be chosen at random from the American people in much the same way they are pressed into military service through drafts when they are deemed necessary. Startling as the suggestion is at first blush, it forces us to consider seriously whether randomly chosen representatives would (or could) do worse than those chosen through today’s methods. If we let ourselves imagine freely for the moment, we can come up with many other surprising alternatives. Indeed, we now have the techniques necessary to choose far more truly representative samples than the jury system or the draft, with their preferential exclusions, ever did. We can build an even more innovative congress or parliament of the future—and do it, paradoxically, with less disturbance of tradition. We do not have to pick a group of people by lot and literally trundle them off, like so many Mr. Smiths, to Washington, London, Bonn, Paris, or Moscow. We could, if we chose, keep our elected representatives, allowing them, however, to cast only 50 percent of the votes on any issue, while turning the other 50 percent of the votes over to a random sample of the public. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
By using computers, advanced telecommunications, and polling methods, it has become simple not only to select a random sample of the public but to keep updating that sample from day to day and to provide it with up-to-the-minute information on the issues at hand. When a law is needed, the full complement of traditionally elected representatives, meeting together in the traditional way, under the Capitol dome in Westminster, or in the Bundeshaus or the Diet building, could deliberate and discuss, amend and frame the legislation. However, when the time for decision arrived, the elected representatives would cast only 50 percent of the votes, while the current random sample—who are not in the capital but geographically dispersed in their own homes or offices—would electronically cast the remaining 50 percent. Such a system would not merely provide a more representative process than “representative” government ever did, but would strike a devastating blow at the special interest groups and lobbies who infest the corridors of most parliaments. Such groups would have to lobby the people—not just a few elected officials. Going even further, one might conceive voters in a district electing not a single individual as their “representative” but, in fact, a random sample of the population. This random sample could “serve in Congress” directly—as though it were a person—its opinions statistically tallied into votes. Or it could choose a single individual, in turn, to “represent” it, instructing one how to vote. Or the permutations offered by the new communications technologies are endless and extraordinary. Once we recognized that our present institutions and constitutions are obsolete and we begin searching for alternatives, all sorts of breathtaking political options, never before possible, suddenly open up to us. If we are to govern societies in the twenty-first century, we ought to at least consider the technologies and conceptual tools that are made available to us right now. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
What is important here are not these specific suggestions. By working at it together, we can no doubt come up with far better ideas, easier to implement, less drastic in design. What is important is the general path we choose to travel. We can fight a losing battle to suppress or submerge today’s burgeoning minorities, or we can reconstitute our political systems to accommodate the new diversity. We can continue to use the crude, bludgeonlike tools of Third Wave political systems, or we can design sensitive new tools for a minority-based democracy of tomorrow. As the Fourth Wave de-massifies the old Third Wave mass society, its pressures, I believe, will dictate that choice. For if politics were “pre-majoritarian” during the First Wave, and “majoritarian” during the Second, they are likely to be “mini-majoritarian” tomorrow—a fusion of majority rule with minority power. Wealth has a future. Despite all today’s profound upsets and reversals, chances are the World will create more, not less, wealthy in the years today com. However, that is not universally regarded as a good thing. From the ancients like Aristotle who regarded the pursuit of wealth beyond barest self-sufficiency as unnatural, to nineteenth-century socialists and anarchists who saw wealth as misappropriated property, to many of today’s environmental fundamentalists who preach “voluntary simplicity” and regard “consumerism” as a curse, wealth has a bad name. Unlike a defendant in an American courtroom, wealth does not enjoy a presumption of innocence. Yet wealth, in itself, is neutral. Which is why, in these pages, wealth is innocent until proven guilty. What matters is who has it and has not got it and what purposes it serves. Wealth is above all an accumulation of possibilities. Of course, certain forms of wealth are more or less universally regarded ad “good.” Health. A strong and loving family. Respect from those we respect. Few would deny that these are wealth, even if they do not easily fit into the calculations of economists. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
In everyday usage, however, the term usually refers, all too narrowly, to financial assets, and often carries a connotation of excess. For some, wealth may mean having bit more than their subjectively perceived need, whatever that is. For others no amount suffices. Among the less affluent, matters are less subjective. For the mother whose child is starving, a daily handful of rice may be wealth beyond measure. Whatever else it means, therefore, wealth, at least as used here, does not just mean a BMW M760i xDrive Sedan. Nor is wealth synonymous with money, as popular misconception might have it. Money is only one of many tokens or symbolic expression of wealth. In fact, wealth can sometimes buy things money cannot. To understand the future of wealth—our own or anybody else’s—in the fullest sense, we need to start with its very origin: Desire. The meaning of wealth—desire may reflect anything from a desperate need to a transitory want. In either case, wealth is anything that satisfies the craving. It applies balm to the itch. It may, in fact, gratify more than one desire at a time. We may want a touch of beauty on our living room wall. A painting, even an inexpensive reproduction, may provide a small surge of pleasure every time we pause to look at it. The same work of art may simultaneously fulfill our desire to impress visitors with our splendid good taste or our social importance. However, wealth can also be a bank account, a bicycle, a hoard of food or a health insurance policy. In fact, we can roughly define wealth as any possession, shared or not, that has what economists call “utility”—it provides us with some form of well-being or can be traded for some other form of wealth that does. In any case, wealth is the child of desire. Which is yet another reason some people detest the very thought of it. Managers of desire—some religions, for example, stigmatize desire. Ascetic beliefs propagate passivity in the face of poverty and tell us to seek happiness by reducing, rather than fulfilling, our desires. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Want less. Live without. For eons, people in Oakland, California did just that—in the midst of unbelievable poverty and misery. By contrast, Protestantism, when it arose in the West, sent, if anything, the opposite message. Instead of suppressing material desire, it preached hard work, thrift, and virtue, promising that if you follow these guidelines, God would help you help yourself to fulfill your desires. The West very largely adopted those values and grew wealthy. It also invented that perpetual desire machine—advertising—to keep generating more and still more desires. Many in China believe, “to get rich is glorious”—this attitude is the reach for China’s recent successful, the ideal of wealth has jilted them out of poverty. In the United States of America, TV screes blare financial advice. Ads for stockbrokers and publications like Money and The Wall Street Journal erupt from the screen. Informercial promise ways to save on taxes, make a stock-market killing, strike it rich in real estate and retire to you own sunny island. An enormous barrage of messages legitimatizes and promotes desire. In was calculated that the total advertising expenditure in North America in 2021 amounted about to about $300 billion U.S.D. However, the spending increased by 19 percent that year. The total advertising expenditure in Japan amounted to 6.16 trillion yen ($54 billion USD) in 2020, which represented a decrease of about 780 billion yen ($68 million USD) compared to the previous year. In shorth, whether through asceticism, ideology, religion, advertising, or other means, whether consciously or not, the elites in all societies manage desire—the starting point of wealth creation. Obviously, just pumping up the desire level—or, for that matter, extolling greed, which is different from either wealth or desire—will not necessarily make anyone rich. Cultures that promote desire and pursue wealth do not necessarily attain it. On the other hand, cultures that preach the virtues of poverty usually get precisely what they pray for. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
O my brothers of the wilderness, my little brothers, may the Master of Life who made you, in the form of the quarry provide you with a forever home; so there may be peace between the World and thy spirit. “The [empty-headed] fool has said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable deeds; there is none that does good or right. The Lord looed down from Heaven upon the children of humans to see if there were any who understood, dealt wisely, and sought after God, inquiring for and of Him and requiring Him [of vital necessity], reports Psalm 14.1-2. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast kept us in life, and hast preserved us, and enabled us to reach this season. We kindle these lights to commemorate the miraculous deliverance and the wonders which Thou didst perform for our fathers through Thy holy priests. During all the blessed days of life, lights are sacred and are not to be used for ordinary purposes; we are only to behold them. We kindle these lights to offer thanks and praise to Thy name for Thy miracles, Thy deliverances and Thy wonders. I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains; from whence shall my help come? My help cometh from the Lord, who made Heaven and Earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved, he that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, He that keepeth America doth neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is thy keeper; the Lord is thy shade upon they right hand. The Sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the Moon by night. The Lord shall keep thee from all evil; He shall keep thy soul. The Lord shall guard thy going out and thy coming in, from this time forth and forever. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; He maketh me lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul; He guideth me in straight paths for His name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; Thou hast anointed my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life’ and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
Two things to note about this wonderful photo from our Meadows Residence 2 model…
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Guess I could find another home, too. But I don’t want no one but you. How could I leave without regret?
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Poverty Becomes Misery and the Poor Belong to Society Less and Less!
Integrity is honesty carried through the fibers of the being and the whole mind. The most certain way to succeed is always be in touch with the unlimited potential and the expanse of this marvelous instrument called the human kind. We have already found our attention drawn to isolated bodies of water as the possible sites of chemical activity basic to the aggregation of the simplest organic molecular units into more complex forms. We shall find further concentration on these primeval lakes to be profitable; for we have not yet exhausted the possibilities they offer for the development of organizations of matter leading toward life. There is a question that is sure to bother many readers as we continue to focus attention upon isolated bodies of water as the sites of major events of early chemical history. From what has gone before, it is clear that we are going to speak glibly of processes continuing for many millions of years. Yet geological evidence, at least that pertaining to more recent eras, would hardly justify our assigning a longevity of more than a few thousand years at the most to a typical enclosed body of water. The resolution of this seeming contradiction is one familiar to geologists. It is assumed that the actual sequences of events was an intermittent one: periods of hundreds or a few thousand years of chemical activity in the favourable environment of an enclosed pool were interspersed among dormant periods of hundreds of thousands or millions of years during which the partially developed organic sediments of earlier times were “out of action”—perhaps covered by volcanic material or trapped in the interior of a newly extruded mountain range. (This may well be an oversimplification. It is possible that important steps in the chemical development of complex from simpler organic forms occurred during these “inert” stages—under the influence of heart, pressure, and the juxtaposition of previously processed organic materials.) Initiation of new activity occurred when the restless stirrings of the Earth’s crust exposed some of this material again. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Perhaps circumstances then led to the formation of a new lake that dissolved the old deposits and introduced them into a further round of chemical processing; perhaps instead the old organic material, on reexposure, was picked up by the wind or by streams and carried to remote regions, part of it settling in existing lakes and seas and there by affecting the course of chemical history in these new domains. Thus, while for simplicity the follow discussion will treat the situation as though a typically chemically active body of water had indefinite longevity, the reader must understand that a long series of successive periods of activity and dormancy is in fact implied. The existence of such a pattern of sporadic activity will not affect our argument except to emphasize again that the processes with which we are concerned must have required an extremely long period of time for their completion. Fortunately, the one or two billion years that geologists allow us for these developments is also an extremely long period of time. In addition to the pattern of intermittency, some other features need to be added to the picture of an organically active lake. The concentration of the simple organic molecules that rained down from the sky and their ensuing gradual combination into more complex forms is only part of what must have gone on in these ancient chemical plants. There must also have been much activity involving inorganic materials. Dissolved minerals from the lake bed and nearby mountains must have introduced metallic compounds into water; volcanic gases escaping from the Earth’s interior must have contributed substantial quantities of hydrogen sulfide, H2S, and carbon dioxide, CO2. Under the accelerating influence of heat from volcanic activity presumably existing near the more interesting early pools, a bewildering variety of chemical transformations must have slowly occurred. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Certain chemical transformations would have had especial importance for the developments that lay ahead. This would have been true, for instance, of reactions resulting in the formation of energy-rich molecules. Very frequently such energy-supplying components are needed to cause small molecules to join and form the larger ones that we know are of major importance in the lifelike structures whose development we are attempting to trace. Reference has already been made, for example, to their role in providing the motive power required to hook amino acids together. It is, of course, unlikely that random interactions in the primitive lakes would have resulted in significant quantities of anything as effective as the adenosine triphosphate (ATP) molecules that provide most of the energy for the metabolism of modern organisms. However, some kinds of configurations capable of transferring energy to other interacting substances would have occasionally formed. We shall have more to say later on about such important energy-rich molecules. Of course, there was nothing very biological about any of this early activity. Most of the transformation yielded compounds that we would regard as uninteresting by-products, in the sense of not contributing to the development of forms of organization of matter pertinent to life. Even so interesting a process as the linking together of several amino acids, for all its pioneering importance, still fell far short of the creation of the gigantic, precisely designed protein molecules of modern times. It the period of which we are speaking sophisticated molecular architecture could have hardly have existed. Countless primitive, proteinlike and nucleic acid-like molecules must have been formed, but surely nothing that would be accepted today as suitable construction material by any self-respecting living cell. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
With this general view of the “starting conditions,” let us see if we can trace some of the early developments that led to the gradual appearance of more complex organic materials. If we have such mobility in time and space that we could go back and determine the chemical composition of, say, a thousand of the primordial pools and repeat the measurements every hundred years, we would soon be struck by a curious circumstance: we would find the pools developing “individualities” of their own. Among the almost limitless number of possible chemical combinations of the simple organic and inorganic constituents present in the pools, we would find that some pools would “specialize” in some of these combinations and other pools would specialize in others. As inquiring scientists, we would then find it necessary to search for a nonvitalistic, purely physical explanation of this unexpected “purposiveness” of behaviour of our primitive chemical plants. A part of the explanation of the growing diversity in the chemical content of the pools would be easy to find: the pools did not all start out alike. Geological and metrological accidents led to differences in the dissolved minerals, in the continuing supply of volcanic gasses, in the concentration of the original atmospherically derived organic materials, in the extent and temperature of local hot spots, and the like. These differences would, by normal operation of the physically based laws of chemistry, affect the relative probabilities of different possible reactions and thereby, with the passage of time, contribute individuality to the chemical character of the pools The development of this degree of understanding would bring us to a critical point in our imaginary investigation. If we were not careful, we would be apt to assume that we had found the complete explanation for the growing diversity in the chemical composition of the pools, and move on to some other aspect of this study. This would be a mistake, for it would cause us to miss an important discovery. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
If we have just continued our observations for another few centuries, we would sooner or later have stumbled across examples of sudden and dramatic changes in the chemical activity of the pools that could not be accounted for satisfactorily by detectable differences in the reacting ingredients. From time to time a pool would seem suddenly to develop a mind of its own; for it would take off on a new course of chemical activity featured by the rapid generation of complex products that it had previously manufactured in insignificant amounts, if at all. We shall find the explanation of this phenomenon more difficult than the earlier determination of the individuality-contributing effects of the starting conditions of the pools and more rewarding in terms of its contribution to our ultimate understanding of processes important to life. Learning should be suffused with excitement, engagement, passion, challenge, creativity and joy. We worry about what our students will be tomorrow, yet we forget that they are somebody today. Teach them to do the right thing. Morality is living by the rules, but not all rules are compatible. Following one’s passionate heart to one’s true love is the right thing. Another right thing is fidelity. Teaching one that jealously, pain, and despair are wrong. Which of these two right things is more right than the other? Rules are too plentiful, too various. They contradict each other. It is impossible to obey all the rules all the time. Were I to try, I could locate my most outrageous conduct within a set of rules so adroitly chosen as to permit anything. Nevertheless, even so, I want to be decent about this. Is that a cop-out? Is “decency” but the refuge of the coward who quails at the hard choice of right and wrong? I want to be fair to others, but fair also to myself. Fairness is equality in the distribution of goods—as when a mother divides a cake in equal portions for her several children. However, what is equality is not possible? What is a clear gain for the one is a clear and unavoidable loss to the other? #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
It is raining. The light is gray. The raindrops streaking the window create an intimate whispering invitation. We are pretty clear about theft, murder, the beating of children, the torture of animals. It is in the quagmire of pleasures of the flesh, in the love and the caring that may or may not spring up around it, the promises we make the betrayals that follow those promises, the evasions we practice, the lies we tell—here, here is the agony of conscience, the confusion, the hunger for a god to tell us what is right and what is wrong. However, may the answer is right before us. Drop all this sophistry. You know what is right. Do it. The answer stares you in the face: obey the rules. The obvious rules, the simple, in-you-face rules. Have we not always known that we cannot have everything? Accept the boundaries, live within their limits and restrictions, and the problem of morality will have been solved. However, even the obvious must be examined. Is it sound? If this solution should come to be generally adopted, what consequences would follow? The person who is serious and conscientious about rule-observing is the perfectly moral human. Upright. Open. Nothing to hide. You know what one stands for, good as one’s word, one can count on this individual. One gets to work on time, never calls in sick, is prudent with one’s assets, exact in the contractual obligations, never shades figures on one’s tax returns. If this individual took a few discreet liberties here and there, no one would know, but this individual would know. One respects the rules, endows them with authority. No one has to keep an eye on this living soul. A careful and prudent individual, temperate, always looking more toward the rules one must be careful to obey than toward the ever-changing World with its shifting dangers and opportunities. One never flirts with an attractive individual, mindful that the slightest step in that direction might lead to adultery. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
What sort of World would it be if everybody were like that? Would it be an improvement on the World we have? Might it be Heaven? Certainly it would be different. We would have no more Newsoms, Bidens, Clintons for sure nor Kennedys, nor Roosevelts. It might be that no one I really love would be there. It would be a static society—or rather, one striving to be static, but slipping progressively out of touch with the changes taking place, unstoppably, around it and within it. And as that discrepancy increased, the efforts of the group to save itself, and its rules, by arresting change would become more rigid, more desperate, more punitive. A Grand Inquisitor would preside over the Tribunal, sentence miscreants to the pyre. Does not all creativity originate in boundary violation, in breaking through to realms outside the old limits? The stupid and the cautious tend to obey the rules: the stupid because they fail to recognize how easily the rules may be subverted with impunity, the cautious because they fear the group’s ability to punish. The intelligent and the bold tend to violate the rules: seeing the loopholes, the endless opportunities for evasion and concealment, and perceiving, further, how far the change—resistant rules have lagged behind a changing social reality, how benighted therefore some of these rules have come to be still asserting, as they do, a horse-and-buggy morality in an age of superhighways, they take liberties—so easily they may not even notice. Snap, crackle, and pop they did not, for Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (1852-1943) designed his cornflakes to sooth and numb all taste buds, from tongue to toe. The successful physician, a Seventh-Day Adventist greatly influenced by Sylvester Graham, had such a strong aversion to pleasures of the flesh that he spent the nine decades of his life without ever indulging in it. “The reproductive act,” Kellogg declared, “is the most exhausting of all vital acts. Its effect upon the undeveloped person is to retard growth, weaken the constitution and dwarf the intellect.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Dr. Kellogg never risked this. Even during his honeymoon, he and his new wife spent a chaste but bonding six weeks revising his books, Plain Facts about Sexual Life and The Proper Diet of Man. Afterward, Dr. Kellogg never faltered. If he felt any temptation, he must have staved it off with one of the many pleasures of the flesh-muting tools he urged on others: a spiceless, wholesome diet, routine exercise, hard work, daily bathing, and religion. In his own long life and marriage, Dr. Kellogg practiced what he preached. After one pretty young woman jilted him, he unexpectedly proposed to and married Ella Eaton, a king and intellectual nurse-in-training at his sanitarium. The honeymoon produced only clean copies of this manuscripts, and soon afterward, the chase, childless Kelloggs announced they planned to open their home to needy children. Forty-two children later, the Kellogg family was also a societal experiment: Could Kellogg love, and moral instruction salvage, even disadvantaged, abused youngsters from slums? Sadly, the answer seemed to be no. Most of the successful junior Kelloggs cam from good family backgrounds, while most tragically hopeless cases slouched forward into equally dissolute adulthood. Ella and John, their virginal foster and adoptive parents, lived together in their mansion, publicly respectfully of each other, privately affectionate, perpetually celibate. Much besides forty-two little people bound them together: their committed Christianity; their obsession with proper vegetarian eating and food preparation; their profound interest in child-rearing. After two decades of marriage, however, Ella fell ill and effectively withdrew into her own rooms, dying over twenty years later without ever having emerged again into the Kellogg World. Nothing suggests her virginity tormented her any more than his did John. What is certain, however, is that the Kelloggs constructed a unique marital relationship based on mutual respect, shared ideals and goals, and an unshakable will to avoid pleasures of the flesh, and they died as celibate as they had been born. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
There is, however, one answered question, namely, what is the function of the formulated laws for moral action? They appear abundantly in sacred texts that consecrate them and provide them with an almost unconditional validity. We must now ask: what is their significance within the structure developed up to this point? The answer lies in the word “wisdom.” They represent the wisdom of the past about humans, their relations to others and to oneself, one’s predicament in temporal existence, and the telos or inner aim of one’s being. Wisdom, in the later centuries of the ancient World, became (like logos) a divine power, mediating between God and the World and between God and humans. It was (again like logos) a principle of the divine self-manifestation in nature and history. According to the book of Job, God made the World while looking at “Wisdom” which was beside Him. In history it has inspired humans and showed them the right way; it has had revelatory power and it became embodied in Jesus as the Christ. Wisdom, in this sense, is the source of the tables of laws in many religions and cultures. From the point of view of humans, revelations, mediated by wisdom, are the result of both accumulated experiences and revelatory visions. As such, they are tremendous weight, but do not possess unconditional validity. They guide the conscious in concrete situations, but none of them, taken as law, has absolute validity. Even the Ten Commandments express not only living souls’ essential nature but also the wisdom and the limitations of an early feudal culture. Certainly there is risk in deviating from the wisdom embodied in a concrete tradition. However, there is also risk in accepting a tradition without questioning it. The former is an external and an internal risk, the latter only an internal risk. The former brings isolation and attack, the latter safety and praise. However, accepting or trespassing traditional morals is justified only if done with self-scrutiny, often in the pain of a spilt conscience, and with the courage to decide even when the risk of error is involved. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Most human beings follow the guidance of the moral tradition when they obey the moral imperative. Everyone needs such guidance for one’s daily life and its innumerable large and small ethical questions. A considerable amount of moral habit is necessary in order to fulfill the demands of an average existence. Therefore, the tables of laws, which are commandments of the divine-human wisdom of all generations, are gifts of grace, although they can become destructive when elevated to absolute validity and substituted for agape and its power to listen to the voice of the “now.” You hear economists saying the that the economy is doing well, and for many it is. The political attitude toward poverty is no longer part of their fighting economy theory. As labour economists, they do not have solidarity with the poor. When poverty used to be discussed by socialists—these same people younger—they theory was that in the capitalist system labour as a whole must be at the bottom and must become poorer, because the failing return on investment and its pressure on wages, because of the concentration of ownership and control and the increase of inequality, and the periodic crises and unemployment. Therefore the fight against poverty was solidary; it was the fight to improve the whole system in order to improve the position of labour. However, now the rate of interest does not fall; they system cushions its crises; there is high employment (with significant exceptions) or insurance. There is certainly a concentration of monopolistic control, but either inequality is less (that is debatable) or, certainly, workers on a fairly high standard do not much bother who has millions. Thus, nostalgic solidarity with poverty turns into philanthropy—and even into exclusion, on issues where the less affluent are unassimilable into the abundant system. One of the speakers at this conference where poverty was the theme, a labour leader, was asked whether the new income pyramid did not resemble a middle-aged gentleman. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
I did not once hear the word “proletariat,” and that made sense. For the word had been used, bitterly and nobly, in a different theory: “producers of offspring,” paid by the iron law of wages just enough to reproduce labour. Our present poor are more like the ancient Roman proletariat, producers of offspring kept on the dole for political reasons. It was clear, too, why the word “do-gooder” had fallen into mild disrepute. It used to refer, like “muckraking,” to quixotic attempts to reform the system; not it is diminishing suffering, accepting the system. (Muckraking, in turn, has become the protest of Angry Young Men.) For those excluded from the high standard and its organization, it is becoming harder to maintain any American standard at all. It is characteristic of systems geared to high pay that is hard to work for low pay. There are fewer such jobs; those there are subject to grueling exploitation without benefit of union. Low pay generally means much harder work under worse conditions. Prices are, of course, geared to the high standard; and the use of any commodity tends to be increasingly tied up with the use of many other commodities and services that cost money. For instance, it is very grim to be poor and run a jalopy. The insurance costs three times as much as the car. The old car, which is safe at 50 miles per house, is effectually barred from parkways made for cars at 65 miles per hour. The prince of gasoline pays for the parkways. The price of repairs is geared to the new cars. It costs money to have any job at all, but transportation and lunches, presentable clothes and laundry, are priced for good wages. Unless one is capable of a different, incentive or community culture altogether, a poor person can afford little recreation. The popular culture is high priced and one gets the dregs of it. One’s poverty tend to degenerate into unintelligence. One cannot afford presentable shoes for the kids to go to school; they are ashamed and will not go. Thus, poverty becomes misery, and the poor belong to society less and less. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Rose Ashby walks to the dry cleaner’s to pick up her old but finest dinner dress. Although shaken at the cost of having it cleaned, Rose tells the sympathetic girl behind the counter, “Do not worry. It does not matter. I will not be needing the money any more.” Walking through the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida, she still wishes it had been Miami. The west costs of the fountain-of-youth peninsulas is not as warm as the east. If only Chet had left more insurance money, Rose could have afforded Miami. In St. Petersburg, Rose failed to unearth de Leon’s promised fount. Last week, she told the doctor she felt lonely and depressed. He said she should perk up. She had everything to live for. What does he know? Has he lost a husband like Chet and his left breast to cancer to cancer all in one year? Has he suffered arthritis all his life? Were his ovaries so bad he had to undergo a hysterectomy? Did he have to suffer through menopause just to end up alone without family or friends? Did he have to live in a dungeon? Is his furniture worn, his carpet threadbare? What does he know? Might his every day be the last one for him? As Rose turns into the walk to her white public housing cinderblock apartment building, fat Mrs. Green asks if she is coming to the community center that evening. Who needs it? The social worker did say Rose should come. Since Rose was in such good healthy, she could help those not so well as she. Help them do what? Finger-paint like children? Make baskets like insane people? Sew? Who can see to sew? Besides, who would appreciate it? Who would thank her? Who could she tell about her troubles? Who cares? When she told the doctor she could not sleep, he gave her the prescription but said that all elderly people have trouble sleeping. What does he know? Does he have a middle-aged daughter who can only think about her latest divorce, or grandchildren who only acknowledge her birthday check by the endorsement on the back? Are all his friends dead and gone? Is all the money from his dead husband’s insurance used up? What does he know? Who could sleep in this dungeon? Who could deal with the noise from the street gang that moved in? Who has to live in fear about be assaulted, robbed, living on the streets, or becoming sick from the deplorable conditions? #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Back in her apartment, Rose washes and sets her hair. It is good she had to do it herself. Look at this hair. So thin, so sparse, so frowsy. What would hair dressers think? Then make-up. Base. Rouge. Lipstick. Bright red. Perfume? No! No cheap perfume for Rose today. Remember the bottles of Joy Chet would but for her? He always wanted to have the best. He would boast that she had everything, and that she never had to work a day in her life for it. “She doesn’t have to lift her little finger,” Chet would say, puffing on his cigar. Where is the joy now? Dead and gone. With Chet. Rose manages a wry laugh at the play on words. Slipping into her dinner dress, she looks into the dresser mirror. “It’s good you can’t see this face now, Chet. How old and ugly it looks.” Taking some lavender notepaper from the drawer, she stands at the dresser to write. Why didn’t anyone warn her the growing old was like this? It is so unfair. But they don’t care. People don’t care about anyone except themselves. Leaving the note on the dresser, she suddenly feels excited. Breathing hard now, she rushed to the sink—who could call a sink in the counter in the living room a kitchen?—and gets a glass of water. Trying to relax, Rose arranges the folds in her skirt as she settles down on the chaise. Carefully sipping the water as she takes all the capsules so as to not smear her lipstick, Rose quietly begins to sob. After a lifetime of tears, these will be her last. Her note on the dresser is short, written to no one and to everyone. You don’t know what it is like to have to grow old and die. In the New World society, the elderly are more likely to commit suicide than people in any other age group. About 19 of every 100,000 persons over the age of 65 in the United States of American commit suicide. Elderly persons commit over 19 percent of all suicides in the United States of America, yet they account for only 12 percent of the total population. Many factors contribute to this high suicide rate. As people grow older, all too often they become ill, lose close friends and relatives, lose control over their lives, and lose status in our society. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Such experiences may result in feelings of hopelessness, loneliness, depression, or inevitability among aged persons and so increase the likelihood that they will attempt suicide. In one study, 44 percent of elderly people who committed suicide gave some indication that their act was prompted by the fear of being placed in a nursing home. Also, the suicide rate of elderly people who have recently lost a spouse is relatively high. The risk is greatest during the first years of bereavement, but it remains high in later years as well. Elderly persons are typically more determined than younger person in their decision to die and they give fewer warnings of their intent, so their success rate is much higher. Apparently one of every four elderly persons who attempts suicide succeeds. Given the resolve of aged persons and their physical decline, some people argue that older persons who want to die, are clear in their thinking, should be allowed to carry out their wishes. However, clinical depression appears to play an important role in as many as 60 percent of suicides by the elderly, suggesting that more elderly persons who are suicidal should be receiving treatment for their depressive disorders. The suicide rate among the elderly in the United States of America is lower in some ethic groups. Although Native Americans have the highest overall suicide rate, for example, the rate among elderly Native Americans is relatively low. The aged are held in high esteem by Native Americans and looked to for the wisdom and experience they have acquired over the years, and this may help account for their low suicide rate. Such high regard is in sharp contrast to the loss of status often experienced by elderly European Americans. Similarly, the suicide rate is only one-third as high among elderly African Americas as among elderly European Americans. One reason for this low suicide rate may be the pressures of assailing African Americans: “only the strongest survive.” Those who reach an advanced age have overcome great adversity and often feel proud of what they have accomplished. Because reaching the golden years is not in itself a form of success for capitalistic Americans, their attitude toward aging is more negative. Another possible explanation is that mature African Americans have successfully overcome the rage that prompts many suicides in younger African Americans. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Our political institutions also reflect an out-of-date organization of knowledge. Every government has ministries or departments devoted to discrete fields such as finance, foreign affairs, defense, agriculture, commerce, post office, or transportation. The United States of America’s Congress and other legislative bodies have committees similarly set aside to deal with problems in these fields. What no Third Wave government—even the most centralized and authoritarian—can solve is the inter-weave problem: how to integrate the activities of all these units so they can produce orderly, wholistic programs instead of a mishmash of contradictory and self-canceling effects. If there is one thing we should have learned in the past few decades, it is that all social and political problems are interwoven—that energy, for example, affects economics, which in turn affects health, which in turn affects education, work, family life, and a thousand other things. The attempt to deal with neatly defined problems in isolation from another—itself a product of the industrial mentality—creates only confusion and disaster. Yet the organizational mentality—creates only confusion and disaster. Yet the organizational structure of government mirrors precisely this Third Wave approach to reality. This anachronistic structure leads to interminable jurisdictional power struggles, to the externalization of costs (each agency attempting to solve its own problems at the expense of another), and to the generation adverse side effects. This is why each attempt by government to cure a problem leads to a rash of new problems, often worse than the original one. Governments typically attempt to solve this inter-weave problem through further centralization—by naming a “czar” to cut through the red tape. One makes big changes, blind to their destructive side effects—or one piles on so much additional red tape oneself that one is soon dethroned. For centralization of power no longer works. Another desperation measure is the creation of innumerable interdepartmental committees to coordinate and review decisions. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
The result, however, is the construction of yet another set of baffles and filters through which decisions have to pass—and a further complexification of the bureaucratic labyrinth. Our existing governments and political structures are obsolete because they view the Old World through the Third Wave lenses. In turn, this aggravates another problem. It is an inexorable fact, which no politician can controvert by other facts but only by windy oratory and glib promises, that the causes of international tension friction and war will never be removed except by removing the egotisms, the greeds, the wraths, and other negatives from humans’ nature. Until then, we shall get rid of one old cause only to find a new one springing up in its train. Until they inwardly recognize and publicly realize the overriding importance of thought and feeling in these matters, their remedies will be illusory, their hopes denied, and their forebodings fulfilled by the course of events. Those who are led by religious enthusiasts to expect a miraculous conversion of humankind to goodwill peace and wisdom overnight, expect the impossible and are preparing themselves for bitter disappointment. Human character grows gradually; it does not improve by magical transformation. It is better to be realistic, to face the unpalatable truth, than to surrender ourselves to wishful thinking and be deceived thereby. For emotion and passion are still the real rulers of humankind, say what you will. How society has always had its problems and even more so in our times. However, the larger the number of problems, the larger number of agencies seeking to solve them grows. Why do we have to solve every problem with which the World is confronted? Why can we not leave the alone, indifferent, and attended solely to our own problems? Why must we meddle in affairs we ill understand? The answer is that we fail to see that the World is itself the great problem for which there is no solution. There can be no perfect solution to the World’s troubles because there can be no permanent one. All changes, all is transient. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
There would be more peace in countries and between nations, in families and between neighbours, if people stopped meddling in other people’s affairs or interfering in each other’s lives or fanatically forcing their doctrinaire ideas and beliefs where these are repugnant. Love is the one remedy for all ills. We must be lovers and at once the impossible becomes possible. Our history for these 1,000 years has not been the history of kindness but of selfishness. Love would put a new face on this weary old World, in which we dwell as enemies too long. Love will accomplish that which force could never achieve. Once or twice in history, kindness has been tried in illustrious instances, with signal success. Love is victorious in attack, and invulnerable in defense; Heaven arms with love those it would not see destroyed. Censorious minds have doubtless much to pick on which is wrong or rotten in our society, but until they have something better to replace it with, some really worthwhile alternative, of what use is the destruction and liquidation of that which has been built up? The spiritual progress of human beings’ winds upward by devious routes, by slow wanderings, and by periodic lapses. However, its ultimate character as progress remains assured. Slowly, out of all these wartime reflections and peacetime crises, these dangers, agonies, and calamities, the World is becoming aware that it must find for its day-to-day activities a strong support, a better faith, and a truer ideology. Many leaders such as Churchill, and even the Pope, have talked of a new World to be built. Their aims are excellent but it will not suffice to change things externally alone; people must be educated aright, which means they must be educated in truth. The time to sit in seclusion or to enjoy one’s inner peace all alone will then have gone. Service and Action will be the keynote. The justification of the higher philosophy is what it can do ultimately, not merely what it can think. It alone has a sane view because it alone knows the need of a sound foundation in correct thinking plus an active effort afterwards, erected on such a foundation. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
How hard this ultimate teaching is as a way of life until one becomes habituated to it! For one has to feel that all the World is but a dream, even horrid wars, and yet one will have to know it as actual and act as though it were real. For ultimately it is real. Just as all the events, people, and objects of a dream are after all nothing but mind, in essence, because they are ideas and Mind is their reality, so in this World we have to understand that that which is regarded Mind, unified, all around us is the real. It is because ignorant people concentrate only on their material beliefs, taking body and environment as matter, and regarding everything as individual and separate, that they can never get at this higher realization. If one remembers that all golden rings, watches, tie pins, and so on, are in essence only one substance—gold—so one may remember that all bodies, things, and events are in essence also one substance—Mind. The actualized Christians are the people who holds firmly to this double “vision” or rather understanding and has made it one’s own by unremitting effort. So much progress that humans hope for from a science-based, politically guided civilization turns out to be a chimera. There is no good that science gave them without its costly price, no promise held out by political shifts without its revelation of the evil in humans. Real peace, true progress, genuine prosperity can come only by a different road. Those utopians who look for a quick abatement of human selfishness—and a consequent quick abatement of all the ghastly evils, sins, and comes which come out of it—look in vain. However, what cannot come quickly on a mass scale can, and will, come from scattered individuals. First the killing instinct will have to go, then the fighting instinct will have to follow. To eliminate the frictions in the World it would be necessary to eliminate those between human beings. Those who do not know that human evolution moves through double rhythms of ascension and declension, talk cheerfully of an increasing spiritual revival moving triumphantly to the complete change of our species. However, the fact is that what we aww are vestiges of medieval faith rather than a rising spirituality. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Even if the World crashed in a nightmare of hate, evil, and ruin all around us, those who gave their allegiance to Goodness and Wisdom were not wrong not their efforts a total failure. The nations can use nuclear energy to explode bombs or they can use it to power engines: they must choose between these two alternatives. If they try to evade the choice and to have both, they will end my losing both in the annihilation of nuclear war. As of now, we grapple with truth, lies, markets, and money. Today’s wealth revolution will unlock countless opportunities and new life trajectories, not only for creative business entrepreneurs but for social, cultural, and educational entrepreneurs as well. It will open fresh possibilities for slashing poverty both at home and around the globe. However, it will accompany this invitation to a glowing future with a warning: Risks are not merely multiplying but escalating. The future is not for the fainthearted. Today emails and blogs bombard us, they are life for so many people and businesses. EBay marks marketers of us all. Corporate and government megascandals burst into the headlines. Drugs are belatedly pronounced too dangerous and yanked off the market. Robots go to Mars and land with exquisite precision. Meanwhile, criminal street gangs from Los Angeles roam across Central America and build a quasi-army. To escape—or at least forget—what appears like chaos, millions turn to television, where “reality TV” fakes reality. Thousands form “flash mobs” and gather to have pillow fights, popcorn, and movie nights. Elsewhere, players of online games pay thousands of dollars in real money for nonexistent, virtual swords that their virtual selves can use to win virtual castles or maidens. Irreality spreads. More important, institutions that once lent coherence, order and stability to society—schools, hospitals, families, courts, regulatory agencies, trade unions—flail about in crisis. And it is against this background that America’s trade deficit soars to unprecedented levels. Its national budget staggers like it is coming around from general anesthesia. The World’s finance ministers wonder out loud if they should risk triggering a global depression by recalling the billions they lent to Washington. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Meanwhile, China, we are told-again and again—is certain to become the next World Superpower, dethroning the United States of America and tearing apart the rules-based international system that America and its allies have built since the end of World War II. The United States of America faces myriad conventional and unconventional threats from organizations from abroad. Yet, China wants to achieve the World’s next superpower by primarily going after economic, industrial, and technological targets that will offer competitive advantage to Chinese economic and technological sectors. Where it is these blueprints may have been borrowed from America’s enameled steel, stainless steel, or anodized aluminum flat files. In order to surpass the United States of America, China needs to continue its economic growth and technologically outmatch the United States of America and the result of the World. Already China under current president Xi Jinping is a global superpower. With the World’s second-largest economy, a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council, a modernized armed force, and an ambitious space program, China has the potential to become number one. One of the things needed in this World to generate capital is people. China has 1.42 billion, that is compared to the 333 million Americans. That is important because while China has all these people, their GDP is approximately $15 trillion (USA), and the United States of America has a GDP of 21 trillion. This is important because as more Chinese grow out of poverty and start working, this will increase their GDP. However, it is also interesting to note the America has a much smaller population and still a higher GDP. China has an army of 4,015,000 personnel, and America has an America of 2,233,050. To stay number one, America will need to produce more college graduate with high paying jobs to build up GDP and also bulk up its army. In this case, visually, numbers do matter. Nonetheless, the combination of economic high-wire acts and institutional failures leaves individuals back home face-to-face with potentially devastating personal problems. They question if they will ever receive the pensions for which they have worked, or whether they can afford the rocketing costs of gasoline and health care. They agonize about appalling schools. They worry about whether crime, drugs, and an anything-goes morality will destroy civil life. How, everyone wants to know, will this seeming chaos affect out wallets? Will we even have a wallet? #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Why Do You Close Your Eyes to Pray?
Demonic activity is not uniform in the World over nor in historical experience. It appears that there was a great increase in demonic activity preceding and during the life of the Lord Jesus Christ here on Earth. There does appear to be a present increase of an awareness of the part of the powers of darkness that their time is short and that the second coming of Christ is at hand. It is therefore particularly imperative for Christians to be informed in spiritual warfare. There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. My file of occult cases has already grown to other 20,000 in number in regards to the Winchester Mansion. A woman, one of Mrs. Winchester’s servants, appeared at the police station and stated that she had just shot and killed her son. A demon had told her that her son would never regain his full mental health. Wanting to save the boy from his terrible future, she shot and killed him. The woman was arrested and finally sentenced after a long trial. This day-to-day experience show the suggestive powers and effects that demons and spirits have. This is an age of phenomenal progress in human’s conquest of the Universe. Awestruck observers are flocking to the altars erected by science to revere human achievements in the realm of the natural laws. Meanwhile, the alters of God are forsaken as naturalism in theology threatens to eliminate the supernatural from every day life. The situation is particularly ironical to the Christian who sees God permitting man to achieve feats bordering on the miraculous. Why should humans become skeptical and apathetic toward religious supernaturalism at a time when science is demonstrating how “close” the natural and supernatural can be? The fact that supernaturalism embraces not only the morally good—God and his elect angels—but the morally evil—Satan and the fallen angels or demons—aggravates modern human’s unbelief. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
For while some people have always denied the existence of God and the holy angels, skepticism has especially attended the sphere of evil supernaturalism. Many who profess faith in God question the existence of personal devil and casually relegate evil spirits or demons to the realm of folklore and superstition. If Satan and demons are merely the creation of superstition and imagination, the whole filed of demonism belongs to the World of fairytale and folklore, and not to the sphere of Christian theology. If there are n demons, evil cannot be traced to their activity and depraved aspects of human behaviour must be attributed to other cases. The Word of God attests the reality of evil supernaturalism through the career of both Satan and his myriads of helpers called demons or evil spirits (Luke 10.17, 20). Satan is presented as Lucifer, the first and most glorious creature of God, who subsequently sinned (Isaiah 14.12, 13; Ezekiel 28.11-19; Revelation 12.7-10). In his rebellion, Lucifer drew a multitude of angels with him and became “Satan,” a Hebrew word meaning “opposer” or “adversary.” Satan reigns over a kingdom of darkness organized in opposition to God (Matthew 12.26). This opposition crystallized in connection with humans and God’s purpose for him upon the Earth (Genesis 3.1-15). The angels who followed Satan became the demons or evil spirits, Satan’s minion. Apparently Lucifer, the first of the angels, was created to have dominion over the Earth (Job 38.1-7; Ezekiel 28.11-19). Satan was exalted and sinless before he rebelled and brough judgment and chaos upon the Earth. The Creator was now faced with the problem of evil and sin in a hitherto sinless Universe. God chose the Earth as the theater in which to present the great drama of human redemption. This great redemptive demonstration not only shows how God, in his infinite love and holiness, deals with evil, it will culminate in the conquest of sin, its banishment from a sin-scarred Universe, and its rigid isolation for all eternity, together with its perpetrations, in a place of confinement called “the lake of fire,” Gehenna or eternal hell (Revelation 20.11-15). #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
The Old Testament is replete with demonological phenomena because since the Fall of man in the Garden of Eden, God’s saints have been the object of satanic attack (Genesis 4.1-6; 6.1-10). Israel was surrounded by pagan nations which manifested the whole gamut of demonological practices and beliefs and clashed with Israel’s monotheistic faith. The New Testament presents overwhelming evidence for the existence of demons. Jesus’ powerful spiritual ministry precipitated a violent outburst of evil supernaturalism. Satan and demons opposed his mighty mission among humans, know well it could lead to their own undoing (Matthew 4.1-10; Mark 5.1-10). Our Lord gave his disciples authority to expel demons (Matthew 10.1) and expelled them himself (Matthew 15.22, 28), viewing his conquest over the demons as over Satan (Luke 10,17, 18). The New Testament speaks of demons (James 2.19; Revelation 9.20), described their nature (Luke 4.33; 6.18), their activity (1 Timothy 4.1; Revelation 16.14), their opposition to the believer (Ephesians 6.10-20), their abode (Luke 8.31; Revelation 9.11) and their eternal doom (Matthew 25.41). The tormentors and troublemakers of nature offer an interesting analogy to the evil agencies of the spiritual realm. In the planet kingdom, pest, insects, and blight continually harass the famer. In the animal kingdom, all creatures have their deadly enemy. And the human body is relentlessly attacked by a multitude of bacteria which cause disease and death. Those who hesitate to accept the testimony of Scripture about the reality of demons may thus find both scientific and philosophical corroboration in the nature which has been called God’s “oldest testament.” The natural World vividly illustrates the activity of demonic beings in the spiritual World. Of all the current methods of foretelling the future, the most popular is astrology. Astrologers claim that by observing the position of the sun, moon, fixed stars, and planets they can predict significant events that will take place on Earth. Palm reading is another method of fortunetelling, but it is close related to astrology that it does not require special consideration. The person who engages in this practice divides the hand into seven mounds which are named after Heavenly bodies—Venus, Mercury, Apollo (the Sun), Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and the Moon. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
In addition, the palm has four lines, which are “read” by the palmist. He calls them the heart, head, life, and fate lines and sees each of them as having special significance. Everything we will say about the evils, dangers, and deceitfulness of astrology applies to palmistry as well. One must, however, recognize that astrology is classified as a pseudoscience, and it should not be confused with astronomy, a legitimate field of study Astrology originated about 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia and flourished in Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, Persia, and Greece. It began with people who worshipped the sun, moon, and the five known planets of that time as gods They thought each of these seven deities owned a certain section of the Heavens as his “house.” They there established the zodiac the wild belt of fixed starts that appear in the course of a year, and divided it into twelve “houses.” As a result, there were twelve dwelling places for seven deities. The early astrologers decided that the sun and moon needed only one “house” each, and therefore assigned two dwelling places to Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Mars, and Mercury. These planets had one “house” for the day and another for the night. This heathen concept of the planets as gods with dwelling places in the Heavens gradually developed into a detailed system of religion. Men carefully studied the Heavenly bodies, and noted how they positions of the planets changed. They theorized that whenever two or more of these planets (which they considered gods) were positioned in a direct radial line or within a ten-degree angle, some extremely significant events World occurs upon the Earth. They called this a “conjunction” of the planets. Since the movements of the Heavenly bodies is perfectly predictable, they had given to each of the “houses” through which the planet moved. For many years educated people mingled their astrological superstitions with their studies of nature, mathematics, physics, and astronomy. Some have assumed that the Magi, who came to Jerusalem looking for the King of the Jews when Jesus was born, came because of an astrological sign. This is a mistaken assumption, and the idea should never be used as evidence that the New Testament condones the practice of astrology. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Although the wise men as learned sages of the East undoubtedly shared in some superstitions of their day, the light that led them to make their journey to Jerusalem was a miraculously placed sign of God, not a mere configuration of the stars. It has been theorized that the conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn, which took place in 747 A.U.C (7 B.C.), or with Mars added in 748 A.U.C. (6 B.C.), led the to look for Jesus Christ. This supposition is without validity, however. In the first place, the Christian Bible nowhere declares that Heavenly bodies in their normal movements furnish this kind of information. Second, a similar conjunction of planes had taken place about fifty-nine years earlier, but this had not led an investigating body to Jerusalem. Third, when the planets move near to one another to form a conjunction, they are never so close tht they appear as one star. Fourth, the light miraculously appeared over the house where Jesus was living when the Magi arrived. These factors prove conclusively that the light in the Heavens was a miracle. We repeat, the wise men who presented their gifts to Jesus Christ did not receive information of His birth through astrology. However, I am not really convinced that astrology, all demons, and all spirits lie. I think perhaps messages are distorted or maybe they are seeing the future and warning people about what their actions will cause. Maybe some things are destined to happen and messages are incomplete. To further illustrate this example, Mrs. Winchester servant, who shot and killed her own son, after the message from a demon, perhaps what was to happen was fate and the demon was seeing the future and warning her not to shot her son. Of course, no one who is dead can regain their mental health because they cease to exist. I think that is why it is dangerous to peer into the future and listen to spirits sometimes. Maybe one may distort the message and actually cause the situation to happen. So it is not necessarily that demons and spirits are lying, but most people do not have the psychic ability to see what they see and cannot understand the context of the message. The story is told of how an astrologer Stoeffler made a complete fool of himself. He predicted a diluvian flood for February 1524. The population was terrified. Nobody wanted to work. The fields were not tilled. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
The rich either had ships built for themselves or they retreated for safety into the mountains. Even the Elector of Brandenburg made preparations to escae the flood. The great astronomer Kepler was also not free from the contamination of astrology. A well-know example of this is his prediction tht Wallenstein would die a peaceful death in his prediction that Wallenstein would die a peaceful death in his 70th year. However, he was killed in his 50th year. Yet Kepler only engaged in astrology out of economic necessity. He wrote, “Astrology is to me an unbearable but necessary slavery. To keep my yearly income, my title, and my living quarters, I have to comply with ignorant curiosity. Astronomy is the wise mother, and astrology the foolish daughter who gives herself to anyone who pays her, so that she can support her wise mother.” Maybe consulting demons reduced the life of Wallenstein by 20 years. Perhaps he unknowingly made a deal and soul his soul to a crossroads demon, and would have lived to 70 had it not made a deal with the devil. Perhaps that is why people say make the best out of your life and enjoy what is here and now, and try not to look into the future. When consulting spirits and demons, you may be unknowingly entering into a contract. And it is possible that by listening to the supernatural will sometimes avert tragedy. The demons and Satan do have dominion of this Earth, and they could be testing your faith. So when Stoeffler consulted as Astrologer, and took action, perhaps this leap of faith diverted the flood, and if they had set idol, it would have happened. It is truly hard to understand how the supernatural works, which is why so many place their faith in God and choose not to work with demons and the devil. An important witch-case occurred in Scotland in 1678, the account of which is the interest to u as it incidentally makes mentions of the fact that one of the guilty persons had been previously tried and condemned in Ireland for the crime of witchcraft. Four women and one man were strangled and burnt at Paisley for having attempted to kill by magic Sir George Maxwell of Pollock. They had formed a wax image of him, into which the Devil himself had struck the necessary pins; it was then turned on a spit before the fire, the entire band repeating in unison the name of one whose death they desired to compass. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Amongst the women was “one Bessie Weir, who was hanged up the last of the four (one that had been taken fore in Ireland and was condemned to the fyre for malefice before; and when the hangman there was about to cast her over the gallows, the devil takes her away from them out of their sight; her dittay [indictment] was sent over here to Scotland), who at this tyme, when she was cast off the gallows, there appears a raven, and approaches the hangman within an ell of him, and flyes away again. All the people observed it, and cried out at the sight of it.” A clergyman, the Rev. Daniel Williams (evidently the man who was pastor of Wood Street, Dublin, and subsequently founded Dr. William’s Library in London), relates the manner in which he freed a girl from strange and unpleasant noises which disturbed her; the incident might have developed into something analogous to the Drummer of Tedworth in England, but on the whole works out rather tamely. He tells us that about the year 1678 the niece of Alderman Arundel of Dublin was troubled by noises in her uncle’s house, “as by violent Sthroaks on the Wainsocts and Chests, in what Chambers she frequented.” In the hope that they would cease she removed to a house near Smithfield, but the disturbances pursued her thither, and were no longer heard in her former dwelling. She thereupon betook herself to a little house in Patrick Street, near the gate, but to no purpose. The noises lasted in all for about three months, and were generally at their worst about two o’clock in the morning. Certain ministers spent several nights in prayer with her, heard the strange sounds, but did not succeed in causing their cessation. Finally the natator, Williams, was called in, and came upon a night agreed to the house, where several persons had assembled. He says: “I preached from Hebrews ii. 18, and contrived to be at Prayer at that Time when the Noise used to be greatest. When I was at Prayer the Woman, kneeling by me, catched violently at my Arm, and afterwards told us that she saw a terrible Sight—but it pleased God there was no noise at all. And from that Time God graciously freed her from all that Disturbance.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Many strange stories of apparitions seen in the air come from all parts of the World, and are recorded by writers both ancient and modern, but there are certainly few of them that can equal the account of that weird series of incidents that was seen in the sky by a goodly crowd of ladies and gentlemen in Co. Tipperary on 2nd March 1678. “At Pointstown in the country of Tepperary were seen drivers strange and prodigious apparitions. On Sunday in the evening several gentlemen and others, after named, walked forth in the fields, and the Sun going down, and appearing somewhat bigger than usual, they discoursed about it, directing their eyes toward the place where the Sun set; when one of the company observed in the air, near the place where the Sun went down, an Arm of a blackish blue colour, with a ruddy complection’d Hand at one end, and at the other end a cross piece with a ring fasten’d to the middle of it, like one end of an anchor, which stood still for a while, and then made northwards, and so disappeared. Next, there appeared at a great distance in the air, from the same part of the sky, something like a Ship coming towards them; and it came so near that they could distinctly perceived the masts, sails, tacklings, and men; she then seem’d to tack about, and sail’d with the stern foremost, northwards, upon a dark smooth sea, which stretched itself from south-west to north-west. Having seem’s thus to sail some few minutes she sunk they perceived her men plainly running up tacklings in the forepart of the Ship, as it were to save themselves from drowning. Then appeared a Fort, with somewhat like a Castle on the top of it; out of the sides of which, by reason of some clouds of smoak and a flash of fire suddenly issuing out, they concluded some shot to be made. The Fort then was immediately divided in two parts, which were in an instant transformed into two exact Ships, like the other they had seen, with their head towards each other. That towards the south seem’d to chase the other with its stem [stern?] foremost, northwards, till it sunk with its stem first, as the first Ship had done; the other Ship sail’s some time after, and then sunk with its head first. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
It was observ’d that men were running upon the decks of these two Ships, but they did not see them climb up, as in the last Ship, excepting one man, whom they saw distinctly to get up with much haste upon the very top of the Bowsprit of the second Ship as they were sinking. They supposed the two last Ships were engaged, and fighting, for they saw the likeness of bullets rouling upon the sea, while they were both visible. Then there appear’d a Chariot, dawn with two horses, which turn’d as the Ships had done, northward, and immediately after it came a strange frightful creature, which they concluded to be come kind of serpent, having a head like a snake, and a knotted bunch or bulk at the other end, something resembling a snail’s house. This monster came swiftly behind the chariot and gave it a sudden violent blow, then out of the chariot leaped a Bull and a Dog, which follow’d him [the bull], and seem’d to bait him. These also went northwards, ad the former had done, the Bull first, holding his head downwards, then the Dog, and then the Chariot, till all sunk down one after another about the same place, and just in the same manner as the former. These meteors being vanished, there were several appearances like ships and other things. The whole time of the vision lasted near an hour, and it was a very clear and calm evening, no cloud seen, no mist, nor any wind stirring. All the phenomena came out of the West or Southwest, and all moved Northwards; they all sunk out of sight much about the same place. Of the whole company there was not any one but saw all these things, as above-written, whose names follow: “Mr. Allye, a minister, living near the place. Lieutenant Dunsterville, and his son. Mr. Grace, his son-in-law. Lieutenant Dwine. Mr. Dwine, his bother Mr. Christopher Hewelson. Mr. Richard Foster. Mr. Adam Hewelson. Mr. Bates, a schoolmaster. Mr. Larkin. Mrs. Dunsterville. Her daughter-in-law. Her maiden daughter. Mr. Dwine’s daughter. Mrs. Grace, and her daughter.” The first of the sixteen persons who subscribed to the truth of above was the Rev. Peter Alley, who had been appointed curate Killenaule Union (Dio. Cashel) in 1672, but was promoted to livings in the same diocese in the autumn of the year the apparitions appeared. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
There is a townland named Poyntstown in the parish of Buolick and barony of Sliveardagh, and another of the same name in the adjoining parish of Fennor. It must have been at one or other of these places that the sights were witnessed, as both parishes are only a few miles distant from Killenaule. Another supernatural event was Mrs. Winchester’s arrival to the Santa Clara Valley in the late 1800’s was a sensation event. Our valley was thrilled by this dramatic entrance of a millionairess; by those freight cars sidetracked in Sant Clara, unloading rich imported furnishings; by building a two-story farm house into a 26-room mansion, in the first six months, and she did not stop going, she kept building for 38-years. Mrs. Winchester had nine cooks, and supervised 113 employees. She also devoted much energy to managing her estate, trading in gold and diamonds, renting out fields, orchards, houses, employees and horses. Here was fair gamed for all! The town talked about Mrs. Winchester! Gossiped would be a more fitting word, gossip no one claimed to like—but everyone enjoyed Talk begat rumors and as the years passed and new towers gables rose behind the six-foot hedge of Llanda Villa, the rumors grew to established legend. We shall recall a few, some containing a faith faint hint of truth, others, the inevitable product of unbridled conjecture. I want to share some of the astounding things that took place in the famous Blue Séance Room of Mrs. Winchesters mansion. Her family gathered there frequently before going to bed to find out what the spirit World might reveal to them. Here they experienced the thirteen séances of spiritualism: passivity, vocal reality, golden key revelation, lights, transfiguration, and levitation. Séances are noted for quietness. As the participants enter and meditate, they block out their tensions, worries, anxieties, and problems. Through mental discipline they try to be as passive as possible, with eagerness and expectation for what the spirit has for them. Lights are turned down at every séance. Shades are drawn in the daytime and at night. At some places rheostats dramatically control the lighting. Once when Mrs. Winchester asked a spirit why the lights were turned down, the reply was, “My daughter, why do you close your eyes to pray?” “For better concentration,” she said. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
“Just so it is,” said the spirit, “that you turn down the lights. It is for better concentration.” Séances always start on time. The exact hour is eagerly anticipated. To arrive late would grieve the spirits. Séances have top priority in the plans of those who attend regularly. Young people give the séance priority in their schedules over athletic events and other school activities. Sometimes the spirit messages came to them in other languages. Mrs. Winchester heard Spanish, German, French, and the language of the Chippewa Indians being spoken. When they did not recognize a language the control spirit would tell then what is was and would interpret the central message. It often went something like this: “Jesus Christ is coming soon. He is even now at the threshold of the parapet of the Heaveniles awaiting the word of the great spirits of lights. Wherefore, comfort ye one another with these words, and be ye ready; for ye know not what hour he will come.” When Mrs. Winchester asked the spirit how they could be ready, the answer was always,” “Live a good life, my child. Follow in the steps of the master the greatest medium of all.” This was a vague reference to Jesus Christ, without instructing them in what those steps were. When a medium went into a trance for any length of time, his or her body became very tired, causing the medium to spend a day or two in bed after the séance. Because of this, they could not have a séance as often as they wanted in Mrs. Winchester’s Castle and they went to séances in the homes of other mediums. However, the most striking phenomenon was a séance of vocal reality some witnessed in Mrs. Winchester’s estate in connected with her deceased cousin, Richard Pardee, who had been in the Spanish American War; he was a drummer. During the séance they wars feet marching in perfect cadence, the music of a fife, and the beat of drums. Each time, the music was a popular tune of the times, “The Jingo’s Soliloquy.” No one knew how all these sound vibrations could be distinctly produced through the vocal apparatus of the medium. The spirit constantly reminded them that public manifestations were for a later time, and so they must keep those revelations to themselves. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
The séances of lights were always preceded by a half hour or so of passive meditation during which each person prepared oneself by discipline of mind and emotions for the coming of the spirit. In this séance, the darkened room was filled with drifting lights until it became a mass of colours, each light indicating the spirit of someone who had passed on Each colour had significance. Little blue lights meant that the spirit of a departed baby was present. There were large orange lights and many yellow and green lights. Green represented spirits that were growing or progressing to a higher plane of spiritual development. A white light indicated a spirit that had progressed to the level of the master oneself. Spiritual advancement at this level was signified by the size of the white light. A read light was considered an “evil” spirit. It was greeted in the circle with a gasp of disappointment and sometimes fear. If a read light appeared, all the other lights would disappear, usually ending the séance. In the séance of transfiguration, the transfigured form of a loved one who has died appears. Mrs. Winchester was really plagued by a lot of deaths in a short time. It started with a new born daughter, her parents, mother and father-in-law, then her husband. You can be she was grieving to have almost her entire family wiped out like, many all within the same year. During a séance her deceased mother seemed to appear, cloth with light. Sarah W. Burns Pardee drifted across the room to her daughter, Sarah Winchester, stopped and gave her a gentle smile. Them medium said she was trying to tell Mrs. Winchester she was proud she was building a house for earth bound spirits. Mrs. Winchester shouted “Mother!” she leaped up to embrace her, only to have her disappear. Little is known about the séance of levitation. Levitation is sometimes called “soul travel,” the phenomenon of spirit development whereby a medium or advances convert to spiritualism can leave one’s body by complete yieldedness to control spirit. One is not completely disunited from one’s body, but is able to take conscious flight from it to distant places. Mrs. Winchester said she experienced this: she was taken into the spirit dimension and witnessed indescribable beauties. It was something she did not want to talk about, but tried to reproduce in her mansion and the Victorian gardens. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Two people in Mrs. Winchester’s spiritualist group enter the stated of levitation from time to time. During these periods they could read the headlines of the Oakland Tribune as it came off the press before it hit the city streets. Because Mrs. Winchester took architectural precautions to enlist the assistance of her friendly spirits, they were able to protect her from the Great San Francisco Bay Area Earthquake of 1906. The quake registered 8.3 on the Richter scale and stretched all the way from Oregon to Los Angeles It severely damaged Mrs. Winchester’s home, toppling the nine-story Observation Tower and some cupolas. She herself was badly shaken in her favorite Daisy Bedroom near the front of the mansion. It took several servants hours to locate her and then pry open the bedroom door and recue her, but Mrs. Winchester and everyone in the estate survived. Mrs. Winchester, however, felt the Earthquake was a warning from the spirits that they did not want her estate visible from the freeway that would be built in the future and also that such a large estate of 500 rooms, a nine-story tower, and 65,000 square feet would be too expensive to maintain after her passing, so she removed the tower, and much of the fourth floor. However, scientists, to this day, have said the mansion is one of the saftest places in the state to be during an Earthquake. Later, after having the structural damage repaired, the spirits ordered Mrs. Winchester to immediately bored up the front thirty rooms—including the Daisy Bedroom, Grand Ballroom, and the beautiful front doors—sealed up. The heavy, ornate front doors, which had just been installed just prior to the Earthquake had only been used by three people—Mrs. Winchester and the two carpenters who installed them. Apparently, the spirits used the reflections of spiritual light in the Daisy-stained glass windows to power beams of light energy to protect her and not allowed the nine-story tower to crash on the house and rip the mansion in pieces. Matter is composed of energy and energy is never destroyed. When the voltage of an electric current to atom-smashing velocity, certain elements, when they are bombarded with this electrical force, can be transformed into other elements. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Perhaps, similarly, the energy in humans can be attuned to a vital spiritual force to make matter visible. The number 13 occurs often on the grounds as well as in the house; for example, there are 13 cupolas in the greenhouse, and 13 fan palms lining the front gate. A craftsman in Italy, called Pietro Bossi, was told by a spirit to create an ornate sink made of Italian porcelain with 13 drain holes. There is a striking account that in which the a medium’s control spirit much wanted this sink and it appeared in the table in the Blue Séance Room from 6,212 miles away and there was a receipt explaining it had been paid for in gold and was addressed to Mrs. Winchester. There was a convincing story of the events. Mr. Bossi was renowned for his Neoclassical fire surround with exquisitely detailed inlaid marble work and specialist craftsmanship. Very little is known about Pietro Bossi. He was a man of mystery, and it is not known when or where he died. His legacy, however, has had long lasting implications for this history of art and design. Spiriting writing is accomplished by a medium who possessed the gift of writing while under the power of a spirit. The medium takes pen or pencil in hand and relaxes one’s arm on a table. One goes into a trance, yielding completely to the spirit force. The following is an actual sample of spirit writing. While Mrs. Winchester was alive, a tree in front of the Winchester mansion turned blood-red and it was blood. (The tree actually did exist and was cut down approximately in the first decade of the 2000s.) Huge slate-coloured clouds gathered around the tree. They whirled as they feel, and became darker It was symbolic of the waste of blood. The deadly clouds portend the battle of the near future when they very tree of life, every branch leaf, shall suffer unto death, for as this tree is, so is the World scene and its many branches, its may countries, for every branch shall be affected. Prepare the way for the Lord and He shall do battle He shall make war with the elements, and you shall stand. Yes, in the midst of chaos, ye shall stand and messengers of peace, love and unity. The battle will rage and rage, but by the law of polarity it will be met by its own destruction. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
The light of the higher forces, God-sent, shall redeem the World. Yes, even as the twinkling of an eye can this be made to pass. Again, the servant of the Light are countless—their name is Legion. Have no fear, ye of Christ, for ye shall see what ye shall see—miracles. Yet shall ye know them as the working of the Word of Light, for surely one in the power of Light may rule this World unto its God-purpose. So from the realms of light I come—I am that I am. Amen. Mrs. Winchester said Emoah and Amoah were two of the control spirits she had when she was in spiritualism. In the séance wither one could be a control spirit, or they might speak occasionally when another control spirit was presiding. Hundreds of spirit messages came through the seances. They referred to God as Light and always contain a smattering of Scripture. Because these messages used scared terminology and came from a spirit, many people accepted them as God’s messages. When the construction workers were working on the Winchester Mansion, an occasional black spot, dotted against the grey distance, marked a hay-rick or labourer’s cottage on the estate. Mrs. Winchester provided a tenth of her income to provide for the poor farmers in California. One night on the Winchester estate, it was beginning to rain steadily. A worker, Jesse Evans, could see that he was in for dirty weather, and became a little anxious about how he was to get back to his cottage, especially as it was now rapidly growing dark. So thick was it that one could not see the low land anywhere, and could only judge of its position by remembering where the mansion was. He had not seen sign of a human being the whole day. It was not likely anymore would be about at night. However, he shouted as loud as he could, and then waited to hear if there were any response. There was not a sound, only the wind moaned slightly through the trees, and something creaked loudly. The prospect was not inviting. The light was dim; Jesse could scarcely make out objects near him, all else was obscurity. What little light there was came through the mansion’s windows. A small round speck of light looked at him out of the darkness ahead. Jesse took this as a sight to take shelter in the mansion. Groping his way with increasing caution, he stepped across the field and made his way to an opened window. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
In the window was blackness itself. He felt it would be useless to attempt to go further. As Jesse stood looking into the darkness, a cold chilly shudder passed over him, and with a shiver he turned round to look. Deeper patches of darkness on his right suggested it was best seek refuge inside the mansion. Here at least he could find rest, if he found it impossible to get to his cottage on the estate. Having some wax vestas in his pocket, he struck a light and examined the room. It was better than he had expected, It was quite clear that Jesse must pass the night here. Before going to look around, he shouted at the top of his voice, more to keep up his own spirits than with any hope of being heard and then paused to listen. Not a sound of any sort replied. Jesse now prepared to make himself as comfortable as he could. However, the silence only seemed the more oppressive, and the blackness all the darker. “It is no good; I will turn in,” Jesse though dejectedly. By contriving a succession of matches, Jesse was enabled to have enough light to see to eat his frugal supper; for he had kept a little sherry and a few sandwiches to meet emergencies, and it was a fortunate thing he had. The light and the food made him feel more cheery, and by the time the last match had gone out, he felt worse might have happened to him by a long way. As Jesse lay still, waiting for sleep to come, the absurdity of the situation forced itself upon him. As if he were cast away upon a desert island, here was Jesse, to all intents and purposes as much cut off from all communication with the rest of the World. The silence of the place was perfect; and if silence can woo sleep, sleep ought very soon to have come However, when one is hungry and we, and in a beautiful and uncanny place, besides being in one’s clothes, it is a very difficult thing to go to sleep. After sighing and groaning for sometime, Jesse sat up for change of position, and nearly fractured his skull in so doing. There was nothing for it but to it still, or lie down and wait for daylight. He had no means of telling time. Fixed upon the arduous business of counting an imaginary and interminable flock of sheep pass one by one through an ideal gate, he went to sleep. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
He was awakened by the sound of the two most horrible yells ringing through the darkness. Jesse sat bolting upright; and as a proof that he senses were “all there,” he did not bring his head up this time. There was another sound. The silence was as absolute as the darkness. He though his must have been dreaming, but the sounds ringing in his ears, and his heart was beating with excitement. It would have been madness to attempt to move in that blackness. And so he lay still and tried to sleep. However, now there was a sound, indistinct, but no mere fancy; a muffled sound, as of some movement in the forepart of the mansion. What was the sound? It did not seem like Mrs. Winchester’s dog Zip. It was a full, shuffling kind of noise, very indistinct, and conveying no clue whatever as to its cause. It lasted for only a short time. However, now the cold dam air seemed to have become more piercingly chilly. The raw iciness seemed to strike into the very marrow of his bones, and his teeth chattered. Rising to put this resolve in execution, he was arrested by the noise beginning again. Jesse listened. This time he distinctly distinguished two separate sounds: one, like a heavy soft weight being dragged along with difficulty; the other like the hard sound of boots on boards. Could there be others in the mansion after all? If son, why had they made no sound when he made his present noticed by shouting and firing his gun? Clearly, if there were people, they wished to remain concealed, and his presence was inconvenient to them. However, how absolutely still and quiet they had kept! It appeared incredible that there should be anyone. Jesse listened intently. The sound had ceased again, and once more the most absolute stillness reigned around. A gentle swishing, wobbling, lapping noise seemed to form itself in the darkness. It increased until Jesse recognized the chattering and bubbling of water. And he could not get rid of the chilly horrified feeling those two screams had produced. He derided the fear of the supernatural when comfortably seated in a drawing-room well lighted, and with company. Jesse felt her could face any number of spiritual manifestation. But the icy coldness of the air was eating into his bones, and he shivered until his teeth chattered. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Suddenly he became all attention again. An entirely different sound now arrested him. It was distinctly a low groan, and followed almost immediately by heavy blows—blows which fell on a soft substance, and then more groans, and again those sickening blows. He was frightened. He heard shrieks, the blows, the groans, the dull thumping sounds, and it compelled him to suspect the worse—to feel convinced that he was actually within some few feet of a horrible murders then being committed. Jesse could form no idea of who the victim was, or who was the assassin. He actually heard the sounds and they were growing louder and more distinct. He was painfully aware The horror of the situation was intense. Bump, thump, the thing was dragged up the steps with many pauses, and at last it seemed to have reached the landing. A long pause now followed. The silence grew dense around. Jesse dreaded the stillness—the silence that made itself be heard almost more than the sounds. What now horror would that awful quiet bring forth? He felt something drop on to his head and slowly trickly over his forehead. It was blood. The bewildering realization that he was not in bed, that he did not know where he was, which way to go, or what to do to get back again; everything he touched seem strange, and one piece of furniture much the same as any other. The reality of his struggles had almost made him forget the mysterious phenomena he had been listening to. No one knows what became of Jesse. The fact is, we cannot, in this prosaic age, cannot dismiss the supernatural. Mental illness, drugs, money, and the supernatural can be a dangerous combination. People let their id (the id operates based on the pleasure principle, which demands immediate gratification of needs. Many people confuse the id with ego. However, the ego eventually emerges to moderate between the urges of the id and demands of reality. The id tends to be infantile, instinctive and primal; it is not in touch with reality, or logic, or social norms.) If the ego cannot balance the id, people began to think they are a god, always right, better than others because of their economic standing, and they turn into everything the Bible calls a demon. God tells people to be humble, love thy neighbour, share, and forgive. I would say, be careful when consulting the supernatural and with judgment. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
Winchester Mystery House
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Randolph Harris II International 