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Memories of a Lifetime–I Stumbled on this Photograph
The heart is initially no more than an enlarged blood vessel, and eventually becomes the four-chambered structure found in human beings. Every great discovery is just like perception, an operation of the understanding, an immediate intuition, and as such the work of an instant, a flash of insight. They are not the result of a process of abstract reasoning, which only serves to make the immediate knowledge of the understanding permanent for thought by bringing it under abstract concepts, i.e, it makes knowledge distinct, it puts us in a position to impart it and explain it to others. The experience we undergo is the result of the interaction between reality and the particular human organism, but even though we are required to acknowledge the existence of the external stimulant, we can never know exactly what it is like it our own right. This is a unique case in that, although we can investigate the effects of the stimulant, the cause is inherently unknowable. The keenness of the understanding in apprehending the casual relations of objects which are known indirectly, does not find its only application in the sphere of natural sciences (though all the discoveries in that sphere are due to it), but it also appears in practical life. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
Since we cannot know the nature of reality apart from its effects, we are led to a belief in some Unknowable; this does not mean, however, that we are committed to a belief in the existence of God. First of all, our complete dependence on sensory data for knowledge makes it impossible for us to tell whether this Unknowable is at all comparable to any kind of divine substance. We are never in the position to test whether our idea of what the Absolute is, corresponds to what it actually is. Second, reasoning, which is no more than an advanced physical ability by which an organism can meet environmental problems, cannot cope with data that are not reducible to observables. When such an endeavor is made, reasoning, like any machine whose function is abused, breaks down. Consider what occurs when we attempt to analyze a concept whose reference is take to be necessarily outside of the domain of experience—the concept of God. All questions are either unanswerable or productive paradoxes. If there is a God, then how did he come into existence? If he created himself out of nothing, then how can something come out of nothing? #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
The fact that God is treated as an immanent, existing or operating within; inherent, permanently pervading and sustaining the Universe, rather than an external power, does not eliminate the questions that are raised with theism. It is still impossible to imagine the Universe arising uncaused out of nothing. This is why I believe that the Universe is like a sea-walnut, which produces its own light to sustain life and ward off predators, but is contained in the ocean. It is only logical that we would think of the Universe as existent in some potential form prior to its becoming actual; and even if it were meaningful to speak of the potential Universe, the question would still remain how a potential Universe could have been created. Are we then necessarily led to atheism? No. The fact that we do not know whether a God exists does not mean that therefore no God exists. The rejection of theism and pantheism entails only that we can have no knowledge about the Unknowable, not that the Unknowable does not exists. At most we can simply say that we do not know whether there is a God. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
Many religions still cling to beliefs that arose because primitive people could not account for natural phenomena. Thus, the notion of a soul, or of a ghost, arose because primitive people could not account for dreams, shadows, and reflections. All such phenomena led to the belief that people were dual personalities, one of which remains unchanged regardless of changes in the visible human. From this conception there gradually developed the theory that there were eternal, unchanging, omnipotent personalities. In this way, people came to believe in gods; and, for similar reason, the Judaeo-Christin God has many strictly human traits. This religious anthropomorphism which depicted God as filled with hatreds and desires that were appropriate only to human beings. Nevertheless, religion can serve as a means of fostering friendships and cooperation among human beings and also of guaranteeing the retention of the most worthwhile values of the past. Furthermore, religion can be useful as a way of developing interest in the various enigmas that are found in the Universe, a means of motivating people to initiate scientific inquiries. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
The fact that we can never know what the Unknowable is in itself does not imply that we cannot have any genuine knowledge. Good sense or prudence signifies exclusively understanding at the command of the will. However, the limits of these conceptions must not be too sharply defined, for it is always that one function of the understanding by means of which all animals perceive objects in space, which, in its keenest form, appears now in the phenomena of nature, correctly inferring the unknown causes from the given effects, and providing the material from which the reason frames general rules as laws of natural now inventing complicated and ingenious machines by adapting known causes to desired effects; now in the sphere of motives, seeing though and frustrating intrigues and machinations, or fitly disposing the motives and the people who are susceptible to them, setting them in motion, as machines are moved by levers and wheels, and directing them at will to the accomplishment of the ends. Deficiency of understanding is called an intellectual disability. It is dullness in applying the law of causality, incapacity for the immediate apprehension of the concatenations of causes and effect, motives and actions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
A stupid person has no insight into the connection of natural phenomena, either when they follow their own course, or when they are intentionally combined, i.e., are applied to machinery. A stupid person does not observe that persons, who apparently act independently of each other, are really in collusion; that person is therefore easily mystified; and outwitted; one does not discern the hidden motives of proffered advice or expressions of opinion. But it is always just one thing that the individual lacks—keenness, rapidity, ease in applying the law of causality, i.e., the power of understanding. The domain of phenomena of the Unknowable is characterized by features which are not controllable by our desires or even by our manipulations. Certain relationship consistently appear in spite of our objections or antagonistic attitudes. Also, in all objectsions, including ourselves, there are many varying degrees of energy—or force. These aspects of reality are manifestations of the Unknowable, and information about them is the only kind of knowledge human beings can obtain or ought to see. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
It is clear that knowledge, for human beings, is not a study of the Unknowable but rather of the manifestations of the Unknowable among phenomena. There are beginnings, middles (or periods of equilibrium), and ends; but all these processes take place in a finite space and a finite time. A person is born; one matures; one passes on, generally. Similarly, a society begins, reaches a stage of equilibrium, and is destroyed by something internal or external. All around us we can see the workings of the law of evolution and dissolution, but we can never know whether the Universe as a whole is undergoing this process. Feelings, too, arise through evolution. Life seeks to survive, and feelings of pleasure are necessary to sustain this urge. If the organism experiences no rewards for maintaining its own life and reproducing its kind, if there were no sense of accomplishment, then the urge to survive might easily be extinguished. Therefore, behavior that contributes to survival is accompanied by the feeling of pleasure, and behavior that endangers survival is accompanied by the feeling of pain. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
Similarly, feelings of sociality and sympathy developed in human beings because in the struggle for survival people came to recognize that human cooperation is necessary, and the pleasures that accrue to the feeling of sociality were the rewards that guaranteed the continuation of such cooperation. The development of the feelings of sociality and sympathy led to the emergence of a new kind of entity, society, which is the subject of sociology and ethics. Here, too, the principle of evolution holds. Society, like other organisms, has its period of infancy, of maturity, and death. Therefore, strive to possess yourself of what you have inherited from your ancestors. The problem would appear more difficult if we could admit that they leave no traces whatsoever behind them. However, our memories are colored by emotions, judgments, and quirks of personality. What we remember depends on what we pay attention to, what we regard as meaningful or important, and what we feel strongly about. Memory structure is that pattern of associations among items of information stored in the memory. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
I stumbled on this photograph, it kind of made me laugh, it took me way back, back down memory lane. I see the happiness, I see the pain where I am. I see us standing there, such a happy pair. Love beyond compare. The way you held me. No one could tell me that love would die. Why, oh why did I have to find this photograph? Gaps in memory, which are common, may be filled in by logic, guessing, or new information. Indeed, it is possible to have memories for things that never happened (such as remembering broken glass at an accident when there was none). People with pseudo memories (false memories) are often quite upset to learn they have given false testimony. A filmed automobile accident was showed to people. Afterwards, some participants were asked to estimate how fast the cars were going when they smashed into each other. For others the words bumped, contacted, or hit replaces smashed. One week later, each person was asked, “Did you see any broken glass?” Those asked earlier about the cars that smashed into each other were more likely to say yes. (No broken glass was shown in the film.) The new information (smashed) was included in memories and altered them. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
The updating of long-term memories is a common problem in police work. For example, a witness may select a photo of a suspect from police files or see a photo in the news. Later, the witness identifies the suspect in person (in a lineup or in court). Did the witness really remember the suspect from the scene of the crime? Or was it from the more recently seen photograph? Even an innocent person may be remembered as the criminal. It is quite possible for a photo to update or blend with the original memory. Many tragic cases of mistaken identity occur this way. Indeed, the fading of memories and the weak affect of impressions which are no longer recent, which we are apt to take as self-evident, and to explain as a primary effect of time on our psychic memory-residues, are in reality secondary changes brought about by laborious work. It is the preconscious that accomplishes this work. Networks of associated memories may help explain a common experience: Imagine finding a picture taken on your sixth birthday or tenth Christmas. As you look at the photo, one memory leads to another, which leads to another, and another. Soon you have unleashed a flood of seemingly forgotten details. This process is called redintegration. Redintegrative memories seem to spread through the branches of memory networks. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
Many people find that such memories are also touched off by distinctive events from past—like a visit to Grandma’s kitchen, pleasant scents, going to the farm, the seashore, a doctor’s office, the perfume or after-shave of a former lover, and so on. The key idea in redintegration is that one memory serves as a cue to trigger another. As a result, an entire past experience may be reconstructed from one small recollection. Personally, I have had no real anxiety-dreams for a few months, but I do recall one. The dream was very vivid, and showed me my beloved mother, with a peculiarly calm, sleeping countenance, carried into the room and laid on the bed by two (or three) persons with birds’ beaks. I awoke crying and screaming, and disturbed my parents’ sleep. The peculiarly draped, excessively tall figures with beaks I had taken from the illustrations of the Philippson’s Bible. I believe they represented deities with the heads of sparrowhawks from an Egyptian tomb-relief. The analysis yielded, however, also the recollection of a house-porter’s boy, who used to play with us children on a meadow in front of the house; I might add that his name was Philip. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
It seemed to me then that I first heard from this boy the vulgar word signifying sexual intercourse, which is replaced among educated persons by the Latin word coitus, but which the dream plainly enough indicates by the choice of the birds’ heads. I must have guessed the sexual significance of the word from the look of my Worldly-wise teacher. My mother’s expression in the dream was copied from the countenance of my grandfather, whom I had seen a few days before his death snoring in a state of coma. The interpretation of the secondary elaboration in the dream must therefore have been that my mother was dying; the tomb-relief, too, agrees with this. I awoke with this anxiety, and could not calm myself until I had waked my parents. I remember that I suddenly became calm when I saw my mother; it was as though I had needed the assurance: then she is not dead. However, this secondary interpretation of the dream had only taken place when the influence of the developed anxiety was ready at work. I was not in a state of anxiety because I had dreamt that my mother was dying; I interpreted the dream in this manner in the preconscious elaboration because I was already under the domination of anxiety. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
The latter, however, could be traced back, through the repression to a dark, plainly disturbing period I had in my life, which had found appropriate expression in the visual content of the dream. It was a time when I felt like savage humans were trying to break up my family, and take the only people who cared about me in the World away, and then do away with me. As I grow up, and I think most adults are the same, they fear losing their parents and siblings because you have known them all of your life and that is all you have in this World. And while after you lose a parent, you can still feel their presence and sense them looking over you, but that sense of communication in the physical World is gone and that means so much. People spend so much time on social media, but think about it this way. What if someone took away everyone you care about in your life and replaced them with social media profiles and pictures and videos was your new community and social circle, but never actually see them in person. You would feel isloated, incomplete, and alone. Do not let social media rob you of reality and life. We are only here on this planet for so long and once you lose someone you care about chances are you can never talk to them again. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
Make more time for your family and spend time with the people you love. Ask your grandparents to recall vivid and important autobiographical memories and what do you get out of it? Up to a point, the results are like the memories of people at any age: Most recollections come from the 2 or 3 most recent years. Fewer and fewer autobiographical memories come from earlier years, tapering off back to childhood. However, something interesting occurs for older adults as they scan over a lifetime. If you tally their memories, you will find a bulge or bump in the curve between the ages of 10 and 30. In other words, many more memories come from this period than would be expected. Why do memories from this period of life stand out for older adults? Because memories formed during this time are encoded in ways that make them easier to retrieve later in life. Just why these years are so memorable is not known. However, if you are between the ages of 10 and 30, take note: These are the days, my friend. You know me. Every time you try to forget who I am, I will be right there to remind you again, you know me. Answer me when I call, God, defender of my cause; you set me free when I am hard-pressed; have mercy on me and hear my prayer. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
A Charm against Yielding to Temptation
Things perceived as real are real in their effects. As from the direct light of the Sun to the borrowed light of the moon, we pass from the immediate idea of perception, which stands by itself and is its own warrant, to reflection, to the abstract, discursive concepts of the reason, which obtain their whole content from knowledge of perception, and in relation to it. As long as we continue simply to perceive, all is clear, firm, and certain. There are neither questions nor doubts nor errors; we desire to go no further, can go no further; we find rest in perceiving, and satisfaction in the present. Perception suffices for itself, and therefore what springs purely from it, and remains true to it, for example, a genuine work of art, can never be false, nor can it be discredited through a lapse of time, for it does not present an opinion but the thing itself. However, with abstract knowledge, with reason, doubt and error appearing in the theoretical, care and sorrow in the practical, illusion may at moments take the place of the real. Chance actions differ from erroneously carried-out actions only in that they disdain the support of a conscious intention and really need no pretext. They appear independently and are accepted because one does not credit them with any aim or purpose. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
In the sphere of abstract thought, error may reign for a thousand years, impose its yoke upon whole nations, extend to the noblest impulses of humanity, and, by the help of its slaves and its dupes, may chain and fetter those whom it cannot deceive. We execute them without thinking anything of them, by mere chance, just to keep the hands busy, and we feel confident that such information will be quite sufficient should one inquire as to their significance. In order to enjoy the advantage of this exception position, these actions which no longer claim awkwardness as an excuse must fulfill certain conditions: they must not be striking, and their effects must be insignificant. It is the enemy against which the wisest people of all times have waged unequal war, and only what they have won from it has become the possession of humankind. Culture is constantly threatened by a relapse into barbarism and disorder that would make history sheer meaningless succession. Against perpetual decadence people struggles heroically to establish limited zones of law, order, and cultural significance. To succeed is this for a time, they must do violence to their own natures by imposing on themselves a hard discipline and accepting moral isolation amid their mediocre fellows. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
This means living in conformity to the ethic of the producers and seeing the good life to be a cooperative creative enterprise carried on in a self-reliant spirit. Against the good things to be obtained rather than a way of acting. In the consumers’ view typical goods are welfare, prosperity, distributive justice, and the classless society, things to be aimed at for the future and enjoyed if secured. Enterprises undertaken in that spirit were based on envy and inevitably fell under the control of adventure (usually intellectuals) who duped the masses. Such instances are citizens revolting, peasant wars, anti-Semitism, and contemporary welfare-state socialism. It has often been said that we ought to follow the truth even although no utility can be seen in it, because it may have indirect utility which may appear when it is least expected; and I would add to this, that we ought to be just as anxious to discover and to root out all error even when no harm is anticipated from it, because its mischief may be very indirect, and may suddenly appear when we do not expect it, for all error has poison at its heart. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
The symbolism in the infantile life of the normal plays a greater role than was expected psychoanalytic experiences. A doctor, on rearranging his furniture in a new house, came across a straight, wooden stethoscope, and, after pausing to decide where he should put it, was impelled to place it on the side of his writing-desk in such a position that it stood exactly between his chair and the one reserved for his patients. This act in itself was certainly odd, for in the place, the straight stethoscope served no purpose as he invariably used a binaural one; and in the second place, all his medical apparatus and instruments were always kept in drawers, with the sole exception of this one. However, he gave no thought to the matter until one day, it was brought to his notice by a patient who had never seen a wooden stethoscope, asking him what it was. On being told, she asked him why he kept it there. He answered in an offhand way that that place was good as any other. This, however, started him thinking, and he wondered whether there had been an unconscious motive in this action. Being interested in the psychanalytic method, he asked me to investigate the matter. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
The first memory that occurred to him was the fact when a medical student, he has been struck by the habit his hospital interne had of always carrying a wooden stethoscope in his hand on his ward visits, although he never used it. He greatly admired this interne, and was much attached to him. Later on, when he himself became an interne, he contracted the same habit, and would feel very uncomfortable if by mistake he left the room without having the instrument to swing in his hand. The aimless of the habit was shown, not only by the fact that the only stethoscope he every used was a binaural one, which he carried in his pocket, but also in that it was continued when he was a surgical interne and never needed the stethoscope at all. From this, it was evident that the idea of the instrument in question had in some way or other become invested with a greater psychic significance than normally belonged to it—in other words, that to the subject it stood for more than it does for other people. The idea must have become unconsciously associated with some other one which it symbolized, and from which it derived its additional fullness of meaning. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
I will forestall the rest of the analysis by saying what this secondary idea was—namely, a phallic one; the way in which this curious association had been formed will presently be related. The discomfort he experienced in hospital on missing the instrument, and the relief and assurance the presence of it gave him, was related to what is known as a castration complex—namely, a childhood fear, often continued in a disguise form into adult life, lest a private part of his body should be taken away from him, just as playthings so often were. The fear was due to paternal threats that it would be cut off if he were not a good boy, particularly in a certain direction. This is a very common complex, and accounts for a great deal of general nervousness ad lack of confidence in later years. The stethoscope association was formed through many connections. In the first place, the physical appearance of the instrument—a straight, rigid, hollow tube, having a small bulbous summit at one extremity and a broad base at the other—and the fact of its being the essential part of the medical paraphernalia, the instrument with which the doctor performed his magical and interesting feats, were matters that attached his boyish attention. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
He had had his chest repeatedly examined by the doctor at the age of six, and distinctly recollected the voluptuous sensation of feeling the latter’s head near him pressing the wooden stethoscope into his hat; he found it interesting that the doctor should carry his chief instrument concealed about his person, always handy when he went to see patients, and that he only had to take off his hat (i.e., a part of his clothing) and pull it out. At the age of eight, he was impressed by being told by an older boy that it was the doctor, who was young and handsome, was extremely popular among the women of the neighborhood, including the subject’s own mother. The doctor and his instrument were therefore the objects of great interest throughout his boyhood. Probably because the boy also wanted to be popular as an adult. It is probable that, as in many other cases, unconscious identification with the family doctor had been a main motive in determining the subject’s choice of profession. It was here doubly conditioned by the superiority on certain interesting occasions of the doctor to the father, of whom the subject was very jealous, and by the doctor’s knowledge of forbidden topics and his opportunity for illicit indulgence. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
The subject admitted that he had on several occasions experienced erotic temptations in regard to his women patients; he had twice fallen in love with one, and finally had married one. This shows that the way a lot of adults act and the things they do, are behaviors they learned in their childhood, which appear to be enjoyable or pleasurable to them and they want to do these things to others when adults. For me as a boy, when I would visit my doctor, Dr. Ezekiel, would have Gold Dial soap in his office and when I would wash my hands I remembered how good it smelled, and if a doctor used it, it must be good stuff. So, that Gold Dial is the only hand and bath soap I used because I want to smell good like Dr. Ezekiel. Also, as a child growing up, we lived in a nice suburban community where everything was new and clean and nice and quiet, and everyone had jobs, and so that is what kind of life style I want for my adult life. When people ask me about what I like most about being a son, I always reply, “Everything.” And even when talking to my parents now I try to conceal my true feelings at times and say something pleasant. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
Like, if I do not like someone and do not want to go to their party and my parents ask me about it, I will say something like, “I am very excited about the party, but I am busy that day. I am sure they will have good company and food as always.” Sometimes, however, I feel like I try too hard to be nice and pleasant and it really takes a lot of energy. I am more of a person who likes to be quiet, mind my own business and keep to myself, but when living in a city and not the suburbs, it requires one to be more social. Now back to the subject, the next memory he has was of a dream, plainly of a homosexual-masochistic nature; in it a man, who proved to be a replacement figure of the family doctor, attacked the subject with a sword. The idea of a sword, as is so frequently the case in dreams, represented the same idea as mentioned above to be associated with that of a wooden stethoscope. The thought of a sword reminded the subject of the passage in the Nibelung Saga, where Sigurd sleeps with his naked sword (Gram) between him and Brunilda, an incident that had always greatly struck his imagination. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
The meaning of the symptomatic act now at last become clear. The subject had placed his wooden stethoscope between him and his patients, just as Sigurd had placed his sword (an equivalent symbol) between him and the maiden he was not to touch. The great act was a compromise-formation; it served both to gratify in his imagination the repressed wish to enter into nearer relations with an attractive patient (interposition of phallus), and at the same time, to remind him that this wish was not to become a reality (interposition of sword). It was, so to speak, a charm against yielding to temptation. I might add that the following passage from Lord Lytton’s Richelieu made a great impression on the boy: “Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword. I wear my pen as others do their sword,” and that he became a prolific writer and uses an unusually large fountain pen. When I asked him what need he had of this pen, he replied in a characteristic manner, “I have so much to express.” We all live in different psychological Worlds, there is no correct view of a life situation. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
A person who feels that his or her view of a life situation has been understood feels freer to examine it objectively and to question it. (Accepting and understanding the perspective of another person can be especially difficult when cultural differences exist.) Heavenly Father, you have filled the World with beauty: Open our eyes to behold your gracious hands in all your works; that rejoicing in your whole creation, we may learn to serve you with gladness; for the sake of the one through whom all things were made. May we commend to your fatherly goodness all those who are in any ways afflicted or distressed, in mind, body, or estate; [especially those whom our prayers are desired]; that it may please you to comfort and relieve them according to their several necessities, giving them patience under their sufferings, and a happy issue out of their afflictions. God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus Christ, your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the ignorance and arrogance and hatred which infects our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purpose on Earth. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11
The World is My Idea—I Gave My Heart to Thee
The World is my idea—this is a truth which holds good for everything that lives and knows, though human beings alone can bring into reflective and abstract consciousness. A useful approach is to let the love for God replace the willfulness that is driving the seeking. One can release all desire to seek and realize that the thought that there is anything else but God is a baseless vanity. It can be seen that both the body and the mind are the result of the innumerable conditions of the Universe and that one is at best the witness of this concordance. Out of an unrestricted love for God arises the willingness to surrender all motives, and expect to serve God completely. If one really does this, he or she has attained to philosophical wisdom. It then becomes clear and certain to that individual that what one knows is not a Sun and an Earth, but only eyes that sees a Sun, hands that feels an Earth; that the World which surrounds us is there only as an idea, i.e., only in relation to something else, the consciousness, which is oneself. If any truth can be asserted a priori, it is this: for it is the expression of the most general form of all possible and thinkable experience: a form which is more general than time, or space, or causality, for they all presuppose it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
Time, space, and causality, which we have seen to be just so many modes of the principle of sufficient reason, is valid only for a particular class of ideas; whereas the antithesis of object and subject is the common form of all these classes, is that form under which alone any idea of whatever kind it may be, abstract or intuitive, pure or empirical, is possible and thinkable. No truth therefore is more certain, more independent of all others, and less in need of proof than this, that all that exists for knowledge, and therefore this World, is only object in relation to subject, perception of a perceiver, in a word, idea. This is obviously true of the past and the future, as well as of the present, of what is farthest off, as of what is near; for it is true of time and space themselves, in which alone these distinctions arise. All that in any way belongs or can belong to the World is inevitably thus conditioned through the subject. The World is idea. I have noticed in the course of our psychoanalytical work that the psychological state of an individual in attitude of reflection is entirely different from that of a person who is observing the psychic processes. Light is a great enemy to mystery, and mystery is a great friend to enthusiasm. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
It is curious to imagine people of the World, busy in thought, turning their eyes towards the countless sphere that shine above us, and making them reflect only images their minds contain. In reflection, there is a greater play of psychic activity than in the most attentive self-observation; this is shown even by the tense attitude and the wrinkled brow of the individual in a state of reflection, as opposed to the mimic tranquility of the person observing. In both cases, there must be concentrated attention, but the reflective person makes use of their critical faculties, with the result that one rejects some of the thoughts which rise into consciousness after one has become aware of them, and abruptly interrupts others, so that one does not follow the lines of thought which they would have otherwise open up for the individual; while in respect of yet other thoughts one is able to behave in such a manner that they do not become conscious at all—that is to say, they are suppressed before they are perceived. In self-observation, on the other hand, one has but one task—that of suppressing criticism; if one succeeds in doing this, an unlimited number of thoughts enter one’s consciousness which would otherwise have eluded one’s grasp. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
We cannot deny the existence of matter, that is, of solidity, impenetrability, and extended figure (to deny which would be lunacy), but in correcting the popular notion of it, and in contending that is has no essence independent of mental perception; that existence and perceptibility are convertible terms. These words adequately express the compatibility of empirical reality and transcendental ideality. With the assistance of the material thus obtained—material which is new to the self-observer—it is possible to achieve the interpretation of pathological ideas, and also that of dream-formations. As will be seen, the point is to induce a psychic state which is in some degree analogous, as regards the distribution of psychic energy (mobile attention), to the state of the mind before falling asleep—and also, of course, to the hypnotic state. On falling asleep, the undesired ideas emerge, owing to the slackening of certain arbitrary (and, of course, also critical) action, which is allowed to influence the trend of our ideas; we are accustomed to speak of fatigue as the reason of this slackening; the emerging undesired ideas are changed into visual and auditory images. The inward reluctance with which any one accepts the World as merely one’s idea, warns one that this view of it, however true it may be, is nevertheless one-sided, adopted in consequence of some arbitrary abstractions. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
In the condition which it utilized for the analysis of dreams and pathological ideas, this activity is purposely and deliberately renounced, and the psychic energy thus saved (or some part of it) is employed in attentively tracking the undesired thoughts which now come to the surface—thoughts which retain their identity as ideas (in which the condition differs from the state of falling asleep). Undesired ideas are thus changed into desired ones. And yet, it is a conception from which one cannot free oneself. There are many people who do not seem to find it easy to adopt the required attitude toward the apparently freely rising ideas, and to renounce the criticism which is otherwise applied to them. The undesired ideas habitually evoke the most violent resistance, which seems to prevent them from coming to the surface. However, the essential condition of poetical creation includes a very similar attitude. If you complain of a lack of creative power, the reason for your complaint lies, it seems to me in the constraint which your intellect imposes upon your imagination. Apparently, it is not good—and indeed it hinders the creative work of the mind—if the intellect examines too closely the ideas already pouring in, as it were, at the gates. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
Regarded in isolation, an idea may be quite insignificant, and venturesome in the extreme, but it may acquire importance from an idea which follows it; perhaps, in a certain collocation with other ideas, which may seem equally absurd, it may be capable of furnishing a very serviceable link. The intellect cannot judge all these ideas unless it can retain them until it has considered them in connection with these other ideas. In the case of a creative mind, it seems to me, the intellect has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell, and only then does it review and inspect the multitude. You worthy critics, or whatever you may call yourselves, are ashamed or afraid of the momentary and passing madness which is found in all real creators, the longer or shorter duration of which distinguishes the thinking artist from the dreamer. Hence your complaints are of unacomplished aspirations, for you reject too soon and discriminate too severely. And yet, such a withdrawal of the watchers from the gates of the intellect, such a translation into the condition of uncritical self-observation is by no means difficult. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
Most of my patients accomplish it after my first instruction. I myself can do so very completely, if I assist the process by writing down the ideas that can flash through my mind. The quantum of psychic energy by which the critical activity is thus reduced, and by which the intensity of self-observation may be increased, varies considerably according to the subject-matter upon which the attention is to be fixed. The theme to which these point is, of course, always the history of the malady that is responsible for the neurosis. Pay attention to what occurs to you in connection to your dream, and interpret the details, not the mass; like this, it conceives the dream, for the outset, as something built up, as a conglomerate of psychic formations. While overcrowding and pollution rank high on the list of environmental stresses, they are only two of the many challenges that press for attention. Let us sample some of the solutions that psychologist have provided for environmental problems. Many problems that we are seeing arise is urban fears. The way people think about the environment greatly affect their behavior. Mental maps of various areas, for instance, often guide actions and alter decisions. A case in point is a study done in Sacramento, California USA. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
In Sacramento, California USA, researchers found that an existing school bus route contributed to truancy. The problem was that many of its stops were where children where afraid of being attacked and beaten. The solution was that by doing an environmental assessment, psychologist developed a picture of environments as they are perceived by the people using them. An assessment often includes such things as charting areas of highest use in buildings, using attitude scales to measure reactions to various settings (such as school, businesses, and parks) and even having people draw a version of their cognitive map of a building, campus, or city. In the case of the school children, residents of the neighborhood were asked to rate how much stress they felt when walking in various areas. The result was a contour map (somewhat like a high- and low-pressure weather map) that showed the areas of highest perceived stress. This stress map was then used to reroute school buses to low-pressure areas. Cause and effect thus constitute the whole nature of matter; its true being is this action. This relation is no conclusion in abstract conceptions; it does not arise from reflection, nor is it arbitrary, but immediate, necessary, and certain. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
When the children had been tested, prior to rerouting the school buses, the test showed that the noise they were facing was quite damaging. Children from the noisy schools were compared with similar students attending schools farther from the disturbances. These comparison students were from families of comparable social and economic makeup. Testing showed that children attending noisy schools had higher blood pressure than those from quieter schools. They were more likely to give up attempts to solve a difficult puzzles. And they were poorer at proofreading a printed paragraph—a task that requires close attention and concentration. A recent study of children living near a fairly new airport in Munich, Germany, found similar damaging effects. The greater tendency of the noisy-school children to give up or become distracted creates a serious and unnatural intellectual disability, which can be corrected by a reduction of external threats and noise pollution. This situation may even reveal a state of learned helplessness caused by daily, uncontrollable blasts of sound. Even if such damage proves to be temporary, it is clear that noise pollution (annoying and intrusive noise) is a major source of environmental stress for children, adults, nature, and pets. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
Researchers have linked noise with impaired learning ability, less tolerance for frustration, and a reduced willingness to help others. A major finding of environmental research is that much of our behavior is controlled, in part, by specific types of environments. Society is an aggregate of interacting individuals whose relations are governed by role-confronting rules and practices which give their actions their characteristic significance. Moreover, communities seem to have a lifespan greater than that of any generation of individual members, which cannot be explained, as might that of a corporation, by the continuities of constitutional procedures. It is, rather, that from generation to generation there passes an attachment to a common set of symbols and a common history, a participation in a collective representation in a collective consciousness—a common culture, in short—which enables members to identify one another where other criteria are uncertain, which gives the society its cohesion, and which provides the standards by which its members’ actions are regulated and assessed. Boundary maintenance is a necessity for every society. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
To possess an identity, a society must furnish criteria whereby its members can identity one another, since their actions and attitudes toward one another will be different from those toward outsiders. Society’s existences depend so crucially on commitment to common values and collective components that the political boundary tends to settle automatically the limits of the society. People have talked of the society to which they belong, they have thought primarily of the social order contained within the boundaries of a state and sustained by its organized power. Our notion of a society as the most inclusive framework of social interaction depends on the political not only for its boundary maintenance but also for its very identity. There may be a danger that pressing the antitotalitarian, pluralistic account so far that it dissolves the state, it will lose thereby its capacity to define the society. We cannot tax our way out of problems either. So many people are worried about their retirements because the rents are going up so high, cities becoming overpopulated and democrats spent all the Social Security money, so we had to sell the post office to pay the rent on the White House. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
The California bag ban, which requires stores to stop including the price of bags with the food, but to charge the consumers an extra fee per bag, was a tax disguised as an environmental protection project, and has killed more than 2,000 manufacturing jobs, slowed down lines at grocery stories, which reduced productivity, and it has also eliminated the jobs of the people who bag your food and help you push your cart out to your car. Not only that, but the bags are thicker, and more harmful to the environment and wildlife. And many people get back to the house and find they have squashed their bread, broken their eggs, or spilled shampoo all over the meat by trying to force more than they should into into a bag. People who are trained to package your food know how to properly distribute the amount and types of food per bag, and have it down to a science, where consumers do not. Also because bags are an option, people are now going into stores a wheeling out carts loaded with goods and not being immediately detected, which is causing store to reduce hours, services, and cut back on jobs to offset cost, and charging consumers more for items to make up for lost revenue. In addition, people who buy food on credit cards, at the end of the year, end up possibly spending hundreds of dollars on plastic bags for their food. Then the cigarette tax in California, comes at a time when the state makes the cultivation, sale and distribution of marijuana legal, in hopes that people will not spend $10.00 on a pack of cigarettes, but instead buy some weed, get high, and forget that they are going broke. Just puff on a joint all day long. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
We do not want people smoking marijuana, and I cannot even believe the state of California would make it legal for recreational use. People walk down the streets getting high and you and your kids are stuck behind them and getting contact high. Marijuana alters your state of mind and is a dangerous controlled substance, which the federal government still deems as illegal. Then, it was pretty much a law that all liquor had to be carried out the stores in bags, so that kids would not see it and be influenced to drink. However, with the bag ban, people are now walking around sucking on cans of Colt 45, pints of vodka, and jugs of Carlos Rossi. The concept of community in California is getting lost, and being replaced by a model of conflicting pressure groups operating within a very nebulously defined area. A civil society has social organization including the market economy and the forces of civil order, and realizes the ethical ideas and ethical spirit. Under leadership of Governor Jerry Brown, the rifts developed in the social fabric are an effort to keep people in ignorance. Idols and sources of delusions set forth in California, and as rationalists, we need to unmask these ideologies. The reality would offer a different face in society. Under Jerry Brown, no one has stopped to see how these circumstances have influenced social forces on the human mind. We need a superstructure, which is the starting point in the development of the modern society of knowledge. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
It is not our consciousness which determines our existence, but on the contrary our social existence which determines our consciousness. Be wary of false preachers who smile a lot, dripping with practiced sincerity. Chances are they out to rip you off some way or another. Do not be impressed with charisma; look for character. Who preachers are is the main thing, not what they say. A genuine leader will never exploit your emotions or finances. People who are insincere are not good and will be punished by God. Infinitely merciful God, most tender Father of souls, and in a particular way, you carry with special tenderness between your divine arms, I come to you and ask you, through love and merits of your sacred heart the grace to comprehend and to do always your holy will, the grace to confide in you, the grace to rest securely through time and eternity in your loving divine arms. If life be harder, love makes it also stronger, and only this love can be blessed a thousand times. I believe in you Lord, and strengthen my faith. I give my heart to thee and I so enclose it in thee that it may never be separated from thee. I am all thine, and take care of my promise. It is time to restore sanity, justice, and to do your fair share, obey the laws and practice righteousness. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
But Why do You Want an Ornament for the Nursery?—You Who had Your Child Killed!
Concerning self-inflicted injuries of my own experience, I cannot report anything in clam times, but under extraordinary conditions, I do not believe myself incapable of such acts. When a member of my family complains that he or she has bitten his tongue, bruised her finger, and so on, instead of the expected sympathy, I put the question, “Why did you do that?” However, I have most painfully squeezed my thumb, after a youthful patient acquainted me during the treatment with his intention (naturally not to be taken seriously) of marrying my eldest daughter, while I knew that she was then in a private hospital in extreme danger of losing her life. One of my boys, whose vivacious temperament was wont to put difficulties in the management of nursing him in his illness, had a fit of anger and threatened to kill himself: a way out suggested to him by the newspapers. In the evening, he showed me a swelling on the side of his chest which was supposedly the result of bumping against the doorknob. To my ironical question why he did it, and what he meant by it, the twelve-year-old child explained, “That was my attempt at suicide which I threatened this morning.” However, I do not believe that my views on self-inflicted wounds were accessible to my children at that time. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
My son had been behaving different, ever since he went to the mall with one of his friends from work, and would not tell me why. He had also recently fallen out with the love of his life and they ended their relationship. He locked himself up in his room and was sad, and I could feel his pain. Whoever believes in the occurrence of semi-intentional self-inflicted suicide, there also exists semi-intentional annihilation—with unconscious intention—which is capable of aptly utilizing a threat against life and masking it as a casual mishap. Such mechanisms are by no means rare. For the tendency to self-destruction exists to a certain degree in many more persons than in those who bring it to completion. Self-inflicted injuries are, as a rule, a compromise between this impulse and the forces working against it, and even where it really comes to suicide, the inclination has existed for a long time with less strength or as an unconscious and repressed tendency. Even suicide consciously committed chooses its time, means, and opportunity; it is quite natural that unconscious suicide should wait for a motive to take upon itself one part of the causation and thus free it from its oppression by taking up the defensive forces of the person. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
Some argue that the only rationally acceptable philosophy is that there is no ethical value in living just any sort of life; the only life that is worth living is the good life. We may define the good differently, but no matter what or conception of the good life is, it presupposes a physical basis—a certain indispensable minimum of physical and social well-being—necessary for even a limited realization of that good life. Where that minimum is failing together with all rational probability of attaining it, to avoid a life that at its best can be only vegetative and at its worst run the entire gamut of degradation and obloquy, what high-minded person would refuse the call of the poet mourir entre les bras du sommeil? We must recognize no categorical imperative to live, but to live well. A common thought is that is life ceases to be a pleasure, the remedy for a free person is to end it because it is regarded as part of human freedom that an individual should only continue to live by one’s own consent. Some philosophers believe that the most excusable incitements to suicide are pain, and the fear of suffering a worse death. In 1644, it was expressed that the prohibition of suicide was merely a part of the economic enslavement of laborers, who could not be allowed to escape from the tasks expected of them. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
The most excusable cause seems to be an emaciated body, when a person labours under the torture of an incurable disorder, and seems to live only to be a burden to oneself and one’s friends. And in contrast to the view expressed above, some see death as a necessity for the economy. For instance, in China, the population has been aging rapidly, increasing the stress on an already troubled health care system. There is currently 1.4 billion people living in China, the population is expected to grow 1.45 billion by 2050, and the number of elderly people is expected to reach over 330 million by 2050. The problem is many of the elderly are cared for by family and only 2 percent are institutionalized. China also does not have a system that can accommodate the elderly, and many of their children are investing their money into the care of their own children, leaving the elderly to fend for themselves. To afford medication, some of the elderly are cutting back on the amount of food they eat. If the aged and the sick did not die within no long span after they have ceased to be self-supporting, the burden on society will be disastrous. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
So, therefore, death plays a wholly favourable, indeed, essential part in human economy because the by 2050, China’s dependency ratio for retirees-those aged 65 or older divided by the total working population is expected to be 44 percent. Still, humanitarians, like myself do not believe death is the best option. Euthanasia of humans is indirectly evil, and it leads to the danger of abuse. In America, in 2014, it was ruled that terminally ill patients have the right to have assistance in self-killing, making it legal for a doctor to prescribe a lethal dose of medication to a terminally ill patient. The problem is with the elderly, disabled, and ill to be looked at as a burden on society is dangers because it can lead to abuse; the risk of an incorrect diagnosis, so someone can conduct research, kill their enemy, harvest organs, or steal someone’s material and non-material assets. Also, the risk of administering euthanasia to a person who could have later been cured by new medical developments; and the wedge argument (condoning euthanasia would lead to general disrespect for the sanctity of human life. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
No great mistake, whether acted or endured, in our mortal sphere, is every really set right. Time, the continual vicissitude of circumstances, and the invariable inopportunity of death, render it impossible. Another problem with euthanasia is that the physician, whether or not he or she may rightfully help to shorten life, may rightfully desist from attempting to prolong the life of a patient in great pain and may rightfully supply or administer pain-killing drugs even though one realizes that their effect may be not only to kill the pain, but also to shorten life. Of all the events which constitute a person’s biography, there is scarcely one to which the World so easily reconciles itself, as to one’s death. In addition, some people are also trying to kill American citizens, so they can steal their identities and sell them to illegal immigrants, then swap identities and no one would know. God alone, it is never lawful for one on one’s own authority to kill the innocent directly. When dealing with suicide, the sixth commandment can be invoked, which is regarded as applicable to self-murder. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
The mental agony of approaching death is part of the sacrifice that God demands for the sins and faults of life. Suicide is an error on the ground that it affords an apparent and not a real release from the sufferings of life. Such a release is only apparent because the will as a thing-in-itself is outside of space and time, and the person committing suicide cannot destroy the will itself, but only its manifestation at this place and time. At the same time, some do not believe that suicide should be considered a sin nor a crime. It could be considered preposterous to view suicide as a crime when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the World to which every person has a more unassailable title than to one’s own life and person. Although it is now universally conceded to be useless and harmful to punish those who attempt suicide for any reason, because the punishment of one who attempts suicide can only increase one’s depression and render a renewed attempt more likely, prevailing opinion still holds that it is right and efficacious to punish those who knowingly and willfully assist in suicides (or kill with consent), even though they act from the strongest humanitarian motives. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
There are also cases of apparently accidental misfortune which are now known to me whose surrounding circumstances justified the suspicion of suicide. For example, during an officers’ horse-race one of the riders fell from his horse and was so seriously injured that a few days later he succumbed to his injuries. His behavior after regaining consciousness was remarkable in more than one way, and his conduct previous to the accident was still more remarkable. He had been greatly depressed by the death of his beloved father, had crying spells in the society of his comrades, and to his trusted friend has spoken of the taedium vitae. He had wished to quit the service in order to take part in a war in Africa which had no interest for him. Formerly a keen rider, he had later evaded a riding whenever possible. Finally, before the horse-race, from which he could not withdraw, he expressed a sad foreboding; in the light of our conception that it is quite comprehensible without any further cause that a person in such a state of nervous depression cannot manage a horse as well as on normal days. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
I was quite agreeable that depression could affect the way ability to handle a horse, only I should like to look for the mechanism of this motor inhibition through nervousness in the intention of self-destruction here emphasized. It is evident that the situation of a battlefield is such as to meet the requirement of conscious suicidal intent with, nevertheless, shuns the direct way. “They said he wished to die.” Suicide is probably a problem of psychiatry or social engineering rather than of abstract morals. The rejection of suicide is implicit in the belief that life is worth living. Another analysis of an apparently accidental self-inflicted wound, detailed to me by an observer, recalls the saying, “He who digs a pit for others falls in himself.” Mrs. X, belonging to a good middle-class family, is married and has three children. She is somewhat nervous, but never needed any strenuous treatment, as she could sufficiently adapt herself to life. One day, she sustained a rather striking through transitory disfigurement of her face in the following manner: She stumbled in a street that was in the process of repair and struck her face against the house wall. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
The whole face was bruised, the eyelids blue and oedematous, and as she feared that something might happen to her eyes, she sent for the doctor. After she was calmed, I asked her, “But why did you fall in such a manner?” She answered that just before the accident she warned her husband, who had been suffering for some months from a joint affection, to be very careful in the street, and she often had the experience that is some remarkable way those things occurred to her against which she warned others. I was not satisfied with this as the determination of her accident, and asked her whether she had not something else to tell me. Yes, just before the accident, she noticed a picture in a shop on the other side of the street, which she suddenly desired as an ornament for her nursery, and wished to buy it at once. She thereupon walked across to the shop without looking at the street, stumbled over a heap of stones, and fell with her face against the wall without making the slightest effort to shield herself with her hands. The intention to buy the picture was immediately forgotten, and she walked back to the house in haste. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
I asked her why was she not more careful. She told me it was perhaps only a punishment for that episode which she had confided to me. I could not believe that episode was still bothering her. However, she said that she regretted it very much; and considered herself wicked, criminal, and immoral, but at the time, she was almost crazy with nervousness. She was talking about an abortion which was started by a quack and had to with the consent of her husband, as both wished on account of their pecuniary circumstances to be spared from being additionally blessed with children. She said that she often reproached herself with the words, “You really had your child killed,” and she feared that such a crime could not remain unpunished. After I assured her there was nothing seriously wrong with her eyes, she was quite assured that she had already been sufficiently punished. This accident, therefore, was on the one hand a retribution for her sin, but on the other hand it may have served as an escape from a more dire punishment which she had feared for many months. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16In the moment that she ran to the shop to buy the picture, the memory of this whole history, with its fears (already quite active in her unconscious at the time she warned her husband), became overwhelming and could perhaps find expression in words like these: “But why do you want an ornament for the nursery?—you who had your child killed! You are a murderer! The great punishment is surely approaching!” This thought did not become conscious, but instead of it she made sue of the situation—I might say of the psychological moment—to utilize in a commonplace manner the heap of stone to inflict upon herself this punishment. It was for this reason that she did not even attempt to put probably lesser, determinant of her accident was obviously the self-punishment for her unconscious wish to be rid of her husband, who was an accessory to the crime in this affair. This was betrayed by her absolutely superfluous warning to be very careful in the street on account of the stones. For, just because her husband had a weak leg, he was very careful in walking. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
If such a rage against one’s own integrity and one’s own life can be hidden behind apparently accidental awkwardness and motor insufficiency, then it is not a big step forward to grasp the possibility of transferring the same conception to mistakes which seriously endanger the life and health of others. Human life is of no more importance to the Universe than that of an oyster. If the disposal of human life were reserved to the Almighty, almost any action would become an encroachment of his privilege. “If I was attacked by a gang and robbed and suffered a fatal blow to the head, I disturb the course of nature and I invade the peculiar providence of the Almighty by lengthening out my life beyond the period, which, by the general laws of matter and motion, he has assigned it to. However, are we not all guilty of extending our lives beyond their natural capacity with medical care, vaccines, and the like? In considering the true nature of God, one must first consider the nature of human beings and the Universe, for without understanding oneself or the Universe in which one lives, how can we approach an understanding of God? #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
Each human possesses a consciousness independent of any other creature. One is aware of a separation between oneself and the World around one. One experiences images, sounds, scents, tastes, and physical forms through what one perceives as one’s physical body. Each one of us also experience thoughts, emotions, and other phenomena which do not manifest either visibly or audibly but which influence us nonetheless and which we perceive as coming from within or consciousness. From the earliest time, human beings have attempted to reconcile this condition of separation from the Universe. Early humans, in terror of the images and sounds which bombarded them from all directions and of the Earth which seemed ready to swallow these beings once more as if the Universe itself realized that is had made a terrible mistake, scared of this thing called life and yet equally scared of death, began to imagine hideous gods and demons all about them. These monsters appeased or else death could be imminent. As human beings survived fire and flood, disease and famine, the anxiety they felt concerning their condition lessened. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
Humans learned to live and even thrive in a hostile and evil World. Civilizations rose to power and raised animistic deities as gods who now demand worship and sacrifice in return for their beneficence and bleeding. The threat was no longer against an individual human, but against an entire society. To gain the favor of the gods, these deities had to be appeased or else famine, pestilence, or war might come upon a nation and destroy it. Ultimately, the priests of many of these gods decided that their particular deity was the true God, that all other gods were Devils, and that the followers of other gods had to be converted or destroyed. Satan has certainly been the best friend the church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all these years. On Saturday night, I see men and women at the club lusting after half-naked guys and ladies dancing on the dance floor, talking about “Booty me down.” On Sunday morning, these same people are sitting in the pews with their wives, husbands, lovers, and children, asking God to forgive them and purge them of carnal desires. And the next Saturday, they are back at the club turning tricks. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
The battle with these demons will either be won or lost. Find out what all of their legal rights are with that person, then get all of them properly taken care of and broken with the Lord, and then the demons will have absolutely nothing else left to be able to hold onto. If those heavier types of sins are being done on some kind of regular basis for quite a long period of time with no intent by the person to try and pull out of it, that means you are committing direct and willful sins against the Lord, and that is a major door opener for demons. Many people believe that God will turn a blind eye to the sin of fornication. However, if by chance you are fornicating with a partner who has demons attached to them, then you will give full legal rights for the demons to be able to come directly after you if God will allow a hole to occur in the protective armor that he has set up on you and your life. Dear Lord in Heaven, you are all our riches, and you suffice for us. God, you are justice and moderation, peace, joy, and gladness. You are our protector and defender, courage, faith, and our great consolation. God, you are our eternal life, Great and Wonderful Lord. God Almighty, Merciful Savior please protect us all, and let people know, young and antiquated that their lives are valuable. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
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Murder by Doctor and Suicide by Police Officer?
Some believe that death plays a wholly favourable, indeed an essential, part in human economy. A great majority of so-called attempted suicides are not in fact single-minded efforts at self-destruction, but have a hidden appeal character; in others words, the suicide seemed to gamble with one’s life, consciously or subconsciously hoping that either the attempt would succeed or, if it failed, one’s life would be improved as a consequence of the attempt. Attempted suicide ceased to be punishable during the nineteenth century in Europe, either as a matter of law of in the practical application of law. Religious and ethical difference still affect the treatment of those who assist the suicide, particularly in the case of the doctor who assists his suffering patient to commit suicide. (Closely analogous is the case of the doctor who himself kills his patient, perhaps without the patient’s consent, for humanitarian reason; in law, this is murder on the part of the doctor, not suicide on the part of the patient, but from the ethical point of view there is little difference. Both are forms of what is commonly called euthanasia. God knows how much each person needs. Suffering for the Christian is not absolute evil, but has redeeming features. It may be occasion for spiritual growth and an opportunity to make amends for sin. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
The prohibition suicide, or self-killing, can be looked upon as a matter of natural aversion, primitive superstition, religious belief, or philosophical argument; but there has always been a current of libertarian opinion which has succeeded in removing most of the penal sanction against suicide. Suicide differs from euthanasia in that the latter is either assisted suicide or a killing by another for humanitarian reasons and by merciful means, generally with the consent of the person killed, in which case it is referred to specifically as voluntary euthanasia. Suicide by police officers occurs when people want to die, but do not want to kill themselves, so the individual puts him or herself in a position where a police officer is forced to shoot them. Voluntary euthanasia by police officer could be for political and financial gains. In 2016, police killed 1,091 people, and more than 250 of them were Black. With so much attention being placed on the number of Black men killed by police, some may seek to be voluntarily euthanized because they do not see their lives as valuable, to become famous, to provide a hearty settlement to their families in a wrongful death civil suit, and also to exacerbate the explosive situation of racial tension in the United States of America, in hopes of starting an all-out revolution. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
In Saint Paul, Minnesota USA, the officer who shot and killed Philando Castile (age 32) was acquitted in the killing, meaning he was found not guilty. The killing happened in 2016, when Officer Yanez, pulled Mr. Castile over, because the two people in the car looked suspicious. As the car was pulled over, Mr. Castile’s girlfriend Diamond Reynolds was recording the event, as if they knew something was going to go wrong. When officer Yanez approached the car, they told him that Mr. Castile had a gun, the officer told him not to reach for the gun, but supposedly Mr. Castile was reaching for his identification to give to the officer, when the officer felt his life was in danger and shot Mr. Castile. The shooting set off large marches across Minnesota, and blocked off major highways as the public was enraged that another Black man had been killed by an officer. And the sitting President, Barack Obama asked, “Would this have happened if the driver were White, if the passenger were White?” However, the fact of the matter is Mr. Castile admitted to having a gun, officer Yanez told Mr. Castile not to reach for his gun, and he should have let the officer guide him out of the car and remove the gun off of his person, then furnished officer Yanez with his documents. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
It is possible that some people do not want to live anymore, and want to provide a way for their families and go down in history and by being voluntarily euthanized is a way to do that people these cases involving police create a lot of media attention and there is usually a high settlement paid out to the families that lose a loved one. I watched the footage and think it is possible that the two adults made a suicide pact with each other, and in this pact Mr. Castile knew that his actions would cause him to get shot, while the girlfriend videotaped the event and the little girl in the car was there to heighten tensions and make it look like a vicious murder. Mrs. Reynolds was being calm the entire time, and if I had seen someone’s brains blown out in front of me, I would probably be frozen in fear, so it is possible that this was a premeditated situation. Suicide by officer occurs more frequently than most people would imagine. Sometimes people want someone else to kill them because they fear the wrath of God, experience deep shame and extreme distress of poverty, or affliction by any extraordinary sorrow or inevitable turn of fortune. Some people also view suicide as an act of cowardice and an offense against the state. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
The soul is a depositum received from God, so a person is seen to be acting wickedly in casting it from his or her body, unless it was done through force or coercion. In subjective matters, like suspected suicide by police officers, one cannot definitively say that was the case, all one can do is speculate. Only God truly knows for sure. Furthermore, some Christians commit suicide to avoid the sins of the Word, and the only logical answer from the church is that suicide is itself a greater sin than any that could be avoided by it. Yet, we are not here to judge people and that is God’s job, and none of us would ever want to be in the position that we felt taking our own life was the only answer. I am sure some of these people are forgiven by God because their circumstances are beyond our understanding. Only God can judge you. However, one thing about suicide is that it deprives people of the opportunity for penitence and by trying to escape the ills of life, some may be acting ignobly. Suicide, generally speaking, acts contrary to natural inclination, natural law, and the charity a person owes to oneself; these individuals deprive society of their activity, and usurped the function of God. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
When the soul is separated from the body, there is no less order and regularity in the Universe. On the other hand, a being is compounded of two parts, body and soul, and the necessity of preserving their union is the greatest mark of submission to the decrees of the Creator. Some people have also been involved in situation where they knew they could die, from let us say a loss of blood or something, and have been in so much pain and could foresee a dark future, so they made up their minds to go ahead and die. However, maybe someone convinced them to get a few blood transfusions or whatever. And I think that is the right thing to do, in some cases, because by extending your life, even if you were to die at a young age, you have more time to make things right in this life and humble yourself to God, and learn about the love of God and how beautiful the World is. It would be nice if no one died and we had enough resources to make sure everyone lived comfortably and was mentally sound and peaceful and someday, God promised that will be a reality. So, give everyone the liberty of finishing his or her part on the stage of the World, in what scene God has placed you in. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Will Spaceship Earth Endure?
In the course of a person’s life, there are moments of clarity and there are instances of darkness. There are many behavioral challenges that accompany life in restricted environments. At optimal mental operations, one experiences great clarity of thought and profound realization of all the opportunities in the World. At the low, people experience depression, anger, or sadness. What will it take to sustain emotional well-being and efficient performance? Drugs, chemicals, foods, and lifestyle changes may affect an individual’s thought process in various way. Provisions must be made for regular exercise and full-body showers. As trivial as it might seem, a lack of showers has been a major complaint among people in confined living spaces, like high rises. Ideally, there should be some flexibility in the use of living and work areas inside a house or apartment. Behavior patterns change over time, and being able to control one’s environment helps lower stress. At the same time, people need stability. Psychologist have found, for instance, that eating becomes an important high point in monotonous environments. Eating at least one meal together each day can help keep people working as a social unit. #RandolphHarrs 1 of 13
Sleep cycles must be carefully control to avoid disrupting bodily rhythms. In many communities, people have found they could not sleep while other community members continued to work and talk. Problems with sleep will be worsened by the constant noise in any community. At first, such noise is annoying. After weeks or months, it can become a serious stressor. Researchers are experimenting with various earmuffs, eyeshades, and sleeping arrangements to alleviate such difficulties. Disregarding for the moment the objective existence of spirits or demons, ritual magic is a way to control the mind. Without the use of drugs or chemicals, one who practices the occult controls directly his or her level of conscious awareness. An individual experiences being awake mentally, a state which the mundane only experiences after large amounts of coffee or other stimulants. The spirits or demons one calls upon exist within the subjective mind and respond to that individual’s invocation. As the person practices the occult, one gains control over one’s emotions and experiences more peaks of optimal performance than lows and disability. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
Psychologists are helping engineers design habitats so they meet human needs for privacy. However, privacy must be based mainly on temporarily blocking out visual and auditory contact with others. Forced togetherness is stressful mainly because temporary retreat from others is difficult or impossible. Thus, control over the amount of group contact is more important than actually having a private residence or room. Designers do recognize, however, the need to define private territories. It is important to identify small areas that can be personalized and owned by each individual. Desks, lofts, offices, bed rooms, and the like, could fill this need if they are not shared with others. Sensory monotony will be a problem in any community, even with the magnificent vistas of Earth. (How many times would you have to see a garden, park, or statue before you lose interest?) Researchers are developing stimulus environments that will use music, videotapes, and other diversions to combat monotony and boredom. Again, they are trying to provide choice and control for people. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
Studies of confined living make it clear that one person’s symphony is another’s grating noise. Where music is concerned, individual earphones may be all that is required to avoid problems. Most people in restricted environments find that they prefer non-interactive pastimes such as reading, listening to music, looking out windows, writing, and watching films or television. As such as anything, this preference may show again the need for privacy. Reading or listening to music is a good way to psychologically withdraw from the group or community. A variety of passive entertainment looks like a must for any community. Russian community members, who make much use of music, have also reacted with delight to grab bags containing unexpected toys or novelties. I am quite ready to postpone the gratification, but how do I know whether I shall still be alive tomorrow? I am quite willing to give up all the paths to gratification interdicted by society, but I am sure that society will reward me for this renunciation by opening for me—even after a certain delay—one of the permitted paths? #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
One can plainly tell what these witticisms whisper, namely, that the wishes and desires of human beings have a right to make themselves perceptible next to our pretentious and inconsiderate morality. And in our times, it has been said in empathic and striking terms that this morality is merely the selfish precept of the few rich and mighty who can gratify their desires at any time without deferment. As long as the art of healing has not succeeded in safeguarding our lives, and as long as the social organizations do not do more towards making conditions more agreeable, just so long cannot the voice within us which is striving against the demands of morality, be stifled. Every honest person finally makes this admission—at least to oneself. The decision in this conflict is possible only through the roundabout way of a new understanding. One must be able to knit one’s lift so closely to that of others, and to form such an intimate identification with others, that the shortening of one’s own term of life becomes surmountable. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
One should not unlawfully fulfill the demands of one’s needs, but should leave them unfulfilled, because only the continuance of so many unfulfilled demands can develop the power to recast the social order. However, not all personal needs allow themselves to be displaced in such a manner and transferred to others, nor is there a universal and definite solution of the conflict. The objective existence of spirits or demons does not need to be proven in order to show the effectiveness of the occult. Parapsychologists have shown, through years of research and investigation which only the most cynical will deny, the definite existence of telepathy or mental communication. The human brain operates like a radio, receiving the brain waves broadcast by others of similar frequency. For this reason, telepathy is most common among twins, close friends or family members. One who practices the occult may be seen, then, as someone who has converted the receiver of one’s brain into a transmitter. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
At first, one may only be able to influence those who are on a similar frequency to his or her own will, but to learn how to change frequency in order to influence those on different frequency, which takes intense control over your own thoughts and emotions. The more powerful one’s transmitter becomes, the more people one will be able to influence directly. The quickest and most direct route to the brain is through the optic nerve. Mental transmissions from the brain are sent through the optic nerve to the eyes and out through the eye cavities. This is the origin of the evil eye and fascination, as well as the expression the eyes are the window to the soul. In the Middle Ages, witch-hunters used to remove the eyes of witches so that they would not be able to look upon them and curse them. Once a person who has tapped into the occult has acquired control of one’s own mental states (through ritual magic), and has converted the receiver in one’s brain into a transmitter, one is able to influence rather than be influenced. One may feel contempt for those who are led around upon rash emotional whim without the slightest balance or direction. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
Many people carry around with them subconscious masochistic tendencies, causing them to do thing which will bring pain or misery upon themselves. This is called a curse. In its most severe form, the human mind becomes unbalanced, resulting in mental illness, paranoia, psychosis, or schizophrenia. Many people have cursed themselves or have been cured by others, either intentionally or unintentionally. Wishing to place a cure on one’s enemy, an accomplished individual may enter into a ritual chamber (in a waking state in which one’s mind is fully active), invoke a spirt of destruction (create the mental image of the spirit within one’s subjective mind), and command the spirit to go forth and destroy one’s enemy (send out the mental transmission of hate.) Love is one of the most intense feelings felt by people; another is hate. Forcing yourself to feel indiscriminate love is very unnatural. If you try to love everyone you only lessen your feelings for those who deserve your love. Repressed hatred can lead to many physical and emotional aliments. By learning to release your hatred towards those who deserve it, you cleanse yourself of these malignant emotions and need not take your pent-up hatred out on your loved ones. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and they in turn, treat you badly, it goes against human nature to continue to treat them with consideration. You should do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but if your courtesy is not returned, they should be treated with the wrath they deserve. The person who takes every opportunity to pick on others is often mistakenly called sadistic. In reality, this person is a misdirected masochist who is working towards his or her own destruction. The reason a person viciously strikes out against you is because they are afraid of you or what you represent, or are resentful of your happiness. They are weak, insecure, and on extremely shaky ground when you throw your curse, and they deserve it. I believe that our God is a God of perfect order and reasoning. And if demons are able to get inside of a person’s body, then there has to be come kind of specific reason that has allowed this to occur within them. Otherwise, we would all be having demons living inside of us. Bottom line—demons cannot enter into a person’s body without having some kind of legal permission and legal right to be able to do so. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
They need some kind of entry, and it matters not whether spirits exist objectively or not. They are real to the occult member who invokes them and to the victim who suffers the force of the mental transmission. If spirits or demons exists objectively, as actual intelligent beings, then one might think that they would have more important things to do than appear before a magic circle and serve the whims of mere mortals. Many spirits are accredited with giving knowledge of arts and sciences. The Lesser Key of Solomon, a book of goetic sorcery, list 72 demons which Solomon allegedly bound inside a brazen vessel. The word demon comes from the Greek daemon, an influencing spirit of intelligence. Djin (or genie) is also the foundation of the word genius. Although the word genius is often used by the mundane, one who is called a genius is said to be under the influence of an intelligence, daemon, or genie. If demons do not exist objectively (only subjectively), then the question arises: how can we explain sudden knowledge acquired through contact with a spirit? #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
Parapsychologists, in the study of telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition, have only been able to prove the existence of telepathy. The reason for this is that, while there is a great deal of evidence concerning the precognition of future events, it can always be attributed to telepathic communication. The same is true of clairvoyance and clairaudience. The clairvoyant who sees the spirit of a woman’s dead grandfather standing beside her does not see the actual spirit of the man but, instead, reads the mind of the woman and, from the image of the man in her mind, imagines him as a spirit. In dealing with the question of acquired knowledge, we may consider that all of unknown subject thousands of miles distant, the one dabbling in the occult may acquire instant knowledge of various arts and sciences. This does not prove the objective existence of demons, only the ability of the human mind to become a powerful receiver and transmitter of telepathic signals. Unlike the mundane, who are influenced continuously by thoughts which are not their own, the person involved in the occult may receive the information one desires without being controlled by the desires or aims of others. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
There is an interesting phenomena which occurs in magic and which involves the creation of thought-forms. The person practicing the occult can create an image within his or her subjective mind and impose it upon the objective World so that it influences the subjective minds of all those individuals who come into contact with it. Objects may be charged with this magical energy and become charmed or cursed. Within a magical group or coven, a group-consciousness develops and acts as if it were an individual entity. These thought-forms are also responsible for buildings and locations assuming an aura; becoming sacred, holy, defiled, unholy, and so forth. These thought-forms were used by Egyptian magicians to guide burial chambers and resulted in the deaths of archaeologist, after they raided the tombs thousands of years later. This phenomena cannot be explained by telepathy, but is rather a form of magnetism or mesmerism, concerning which much research has also been done. If this is, in fact, the case, then those who have a great understanding of the occult may use telepathic (and vocal) communication to communicate with (summon) all manners of gods, angels, and demons as well as to control the minds of others. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Many studies have shown steady declines in motivation by those who think they are cursed or who have done a lot of evil things in their lives. Most inhabitants intend to use their free time for creative pursuits. In reality, they end up marking time and may become apathetic. As many as 5 percent of subjects might experience some psychological disturbance. Most often the problem will be depression. However, in rare instances people have become paranoid, psychotic, suicidal, or uncontrollably aggressive. The threat of nuclear war, social conflict, crime, prejudice, infection disease, over-population, environment damage, famine, homicide, economic disaster—these and most other major problems facing us are behavioral. Will spaceship Earth endure? It is a psychological question. Oh, God, teach my heart this day where and how to see you, where and how to find you. You have made me and remade me, and have bestowed on me all the good things I possess, and still I do not know you. I have not yet done that for which I was made. Teach me to seek you, for I cannot seek you unless you teach me, nor find you, unless you show yourself to me. Let me seek you in my desire, let me desire in seeking you. Let me find you by loving you, let me love you when I find you. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
How do I Love Thee?
Soul food taste better when listening to soul music like Stevie Wonder, BB King, Eartha Kit, Sade, Anita Baker, and Earth, Wind, and Fire. Correspondingly, life is better with love. Millions of people go by, but they all disappear from view—because I only have eyes for you. I can spend more time gazing into your eyes since you are the only person I see. Those who are married know that when their relationship with their spouse is healthy, everything else seems a little better, a little lighter, and sounds a little better. When the relationship goes bad, dark clouds or doom and gloom seem to hover over other aspects of life, making us more anxious, fearful, angry, and defensive. Primary emotions can be reduced to just two categories: optimistic and pessimistic emotions. Ordinarily, we might think that good emotions and negative emotions are opposite. However, this is not the case. Emotional feelings are a person’s private emotional feelings. People sometimes have mixed emotions. For example, ten-month-old Leo feels both joy and fear as he eats a cookie he took without permission, when he was supposed to have vegetables. The result? Guilt—as you may recall from your own childhood. Likewise, jealousy could be a mixture of love, anger, and fear. Emotional health comes from knowing what you want to do, not dwelling on what you should do, ought to do, or should want to do. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Another way of stating this idea is that emotional health comes from taking full responsibility for one’s feelings and actions. People are urged to stop intellectualizing and talking about feelings. Instead, one must learn to: live now; live here; stop imagining; experience the real; stop unnecessary thinking; taste and see; express rather than explain, justify, or judge; give in to unpleasantness and pain just to pleasure; surrender to being as you are. As in the case of Leo’s cookie guilt, it implies that people can experience good and negative emotions at the same time. How is that possible? Recordings of brain activity show that good emotions are processed mainly in the left hemisphere of the brain. In contrast, negative emotions are processed in the right hemisphere. The fact that optimistic emotions and pessimistic emotions are based on different brain areas helps explain why we can feel happy and sad at the same time. Soul-love replicates the longing and loneliness associated with real-love. When was the last time you felt lonely for God? Not simply making intellectual statements of need, but really longing for him? #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
Falling in love is a lot like learning how to spell, it takes a long time. We know that we are supposed to love God with all of our heart and everything that we have, we must have a high-quality relationship with God that is based on secure, companionate love. Psyche, the Greek word for soul, denotes the point of contact between the material and immaterial, the connection between the outside and inside, the link between the inner and outer person. Soul stands for the whole person in all one’s faculties and facilities. When you fall in love with another person, no one is sure what happens, but it has something to do with how you smell. That is why showers, perfume, and deodorant are so popular. Friendship love makes time, speaks truth, corrects errors, forgives faults, and goes on loving in common acts of friendship. Love is unselfish, unconditional, unattached. It seeks one’s highest good on the basis of a decision of the will and an inclination of the heart. Real love is not accidental, haphazard sensation. Love cannot be coerced, because a lover must decide to love the loved one. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Do you freely and really choose me as your first and real love, because by choosing me, you will create and acknowledge my increasing importance in your life until I really pull into first and foundational place among your allegiances? The soul not only grounds one’s actions, it is the source of emotions and desires. Soul love must also be filled with that emotional aspect. Obviously, we must be able to love with our soul for Jesus tells us that doing so is the most important thing in life. The human soul is the very essence of a person. It is your life, given to you by your creator. And while your soul has something to do with your body, your feelings, your mind, your will, and your relationships, it is also beyond all those things, not limited to any of those things, and perhaps even greater than the sum total of these elements. When know you it is real, love is all you feel. Love until the stars are dancing in the sky lighting up your life, showing you a true love. In critical ways, your enthusiasm for a particular object reveals what you feel about it. And vice versa. Sometimes you need more than you can say, taking it all inside. Longing just to hear the words he or she will say. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Your emotions reveal what your heart and soul have selected as value to you. Love until it hurts to walk away. In all loves, the value of the beloved is an importance in itself to me. And keep in mind, that being in love should make you feel good or happy, and secure and desirable. The purpose of loving is satisfaction, but there is danger in expecting to live forever on a romantic cloud of milk and cookies. When you love, elevate the values that are good in themselves, like honesty, trust, kindness, understanding and compassion, and love them because they make us feel better. However, numerous dangers lurk within a subjective reading of truth and reality. To follow your heart, to discover your soul, to obey your intuition can cause you to follow hazardous paths. Recently, Conrad Roy III loved someone so much, that by her advice, he tried to die, and when he wanted to back out of this dying, she convinced him it was the right thing to do and he ended up passing away. Others have moved to overseas for love and they have found themselves sad and wanting to die because you need more in your life than love. Love is important, but it cannot be your main focus or reason to live. Couples sometimes reach a point where there is little passion or intimacy left in their relationship. If they stay together merely out of commitment or habit, they experience empty love. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
No matter how close a relationship may be, it is probably impossible to completely know another person. You see, your soul, is the deepest part of who you are, and it was created for being connected. We are built to have foundations and be in places that are deeply satisfying. Break away from all conventions that do not lead to your Earthly success and happiness. God, you already see the ways I fall short and mess up. However, right now, I consciously switch your whisper of absolute love for me into the deepest part of my heart. I recognize your love for me is not based on my performance. God, give me strength in my weakness. Give me faith in my fear. Give me peace in my powerlessness. I am trusting you. Grant me tenacious winsome courage as I go through life. When I am tempted to give up, help me to keep going. Grant me a cheerful spirit when things do not go my way. And give me courage to do whatever needs to be done. When a person commits a wrong, one realizes that it is natural to make a mistake—and if one is truly sorry about what one has done, one will learn from it and take care not to do it again. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
If an individual is not honestly sorry about what one has done, and knows one will do the same thing over and over, that individual has no business confessing and asking forgiveness in the first place. When demons enter in on the inside of a person’s body, they need something specific to feed on. In order for a person to be able to be set free from the demons who are attached to them, they have to be willing to go before the Lord in sincere and heartfelt prayer, and confess out their drug usage, dabbling in the occult, or whatever it may be. When dealing with the occult, the Devil is in the details and often the buyer pays the price. Demons can also attach themselves to buildings. A sinner has to be willing to repent and renounce this sin, telling God that they will never go back to it again. Once that person has fully confessed and repented of their sins, then the demons will no longer have any more legal rights to be able to stay attached to that person, and they will leave once this person starts commanding them to leave. However, it is right to be involved with loving God, preoccupied with loving Jesus, simply because God is God, our creator. Have we become a nation of people who would sell the Sunset if someone would put a price on it? Money degrades all the gods of humans and converts them into commodities. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
In Loving Memory of Conrad Roy III
Do you Believe you have a Soul?
Humans are beings of love through and through. Why? Because human beings are Earth beings. The Earth is the cosmos of love, meaning that wisdom, and the soul of the World, is destined to become consciousness and this takes place through wisdom transformed into love. While the constant flux of human relationships creates enormous variance that is problematical and troublesome from a scientific point of view, it also provides us with the best hope of understanding what it is about human companionship that prevents premature death. Who are we? Are we parasites living on Earth? Imagine someone incapable of developing the force of love. Without love we would actually perish, physically die. There are literally thousands of exceptions to the general statistical rule that unmarried men and women die prematurely. One cannot be blind to the fact that there are many happy and healthy 80- and 90-year-old unmarried individuals, and many people who live active, productive, and happy lives for decades after they have lost a husband or wife. Their physical and psychological adjustment must be carefully studied, for their lives clearly point out that being unmarried need not be a physical state itself that leads to disease and death, but rather one’s social adjustment to it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
The future of love concerns the full development of individuality, which is responsible for the creation of a new, conscious unity of the World, brought forth out of the freedom of love. It is amazing that some people love one so much that even though they see an individual trying to build a career, when they see that person is being used as a slave, they will remove them from that situation, which totally makes sense. If you want animals to stop attacking your house, you remove their food source. The forms of love from the past have been severely damaged as a result of the kind of consciousness responsible for nuclear weapons. None of these forms has the strength to hold together relationships without being renewed through the development of individual love. Individual love, on the other hand, cannot develop in isolation from the World because individual love is at the same time World oriented. One of the best things you can do when you are hurting is go out and help someone else who is in pain. Get your mind off your problems and pain by helping someone else in need. When you help others in your time of need, you are creating a separate, but equal reactions (Newton’s III Law of Physics) and God can use this to change your situation. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
There is much talk these days about the living Earth. When you walk on the Earth, imagine that this is the skin of a living being. Imagine the flow of the waters in the streams, ocean, and rivers as the blood of this being, and the air you breathe is the breath of the Earth. This simple act of caring will bring an uncanny experience that will help you love other living beings. What is it about human contact that makes it so important to our health? Why should marriage be statically so beneficial to the health of the heart? Why is loneliness so physically destructive? Why do people die of broken hearts? Human beings are a manifestation of consciousness. They are the quality of warmth, of feeling. The quality of warmth of consciousness, the feeling of this warm creates a dream like state and gives beings the motivation to keep on living. Money can only buy so much happiness and if you are poor it is the love of your family that gives you the drive to keep striving, the love of God the forces you to open your eyes and breath. When the source of love is not there, it is as if the dream is over, and one has difficulty in trying to consciously make the dream reappear or stay clear. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
When the attraction of love between people exists, the quality of love tends to be more permanent. We know that we cannot buy love, we cannot force people to love us, and even when we do kind things for others out of love, they may use us and expect our help and give nothing back in return, but pain. All human beings are bound by identical obligations, although these are performed in different ways according to particular circumstances. No human being, whoever he or she may be, under whatever circumstances, can escape them without being guilty of crime. It is eternal and unconditional, the World has an elementary sense of justice, the ability to see things as others do, a sense of transcendental responsibility, archetypical wisdom, good taste, courage, compassion, and faith in the importance of particular measures that do not aspire to be a universal key to salvation. Soul, individual spirituality, firsthand personal insight into things; the courage to be oneself and go the way of one’s conscience points, humility in the face of the mysterious order of being, confidence in its natural direction and, above all, trust in one’s own subjectivity as one’s principal link with the subjectivity of the World—these are qualities that people of the future should have? #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
All of the living makes the mistake of drawing too sharp distinctions. Angels (it is said) would be often unable to tell whether they moved among the living or dead. Our impoverished state is marked by our awareness that we are not very reliably at home in the interpreted World. Hence, in order to regain for ourselves something that would equal spiritual and existential fervor that characterized the ages of faith, we must take upon ourselves the task of endowing the World (the World of things of the intimate personal relations) with the inwardness of feeling that other ages directed toward a divinity. Joy, love, and above all suffering and pain should not diffuse sensations accompanying an unending series of vague hopes and regrets; they must become the objects of a total commitment. Thus, since we are not yet strong enough to give ourselves totally in love, we have better follow the example of the lover and draw our strength from an unrequited, uninterrupted feeling, or indeed of Narcissus, who used the natural World as a magnifying mirror of his feelings. In a World in which all actions are liable to remain uncompleted, I know my redeemer lives. God will pay you back double what you have loss and the rest of your life will be the best of your life. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
God will always have another plan in store for you. The truth is you need prayer more than a friend. Arise from the depression in which the circumstances have kept you. Rise to a new life. Notice, if you want a new life, there is something you have to do. You cannot sit back and focus on negativity. You have a full life ahead of you. God will bind up your broken heart, and help you proclaim freedom as you are released from darkness. We must pray for the grace to endure problems as our spiritual will is perfected. This is not a social phenomenon, but a pageant of situations and persons in whom the ideal of completion and strength of feeling is realized, just as the contemporary World is a series of images that portray our deprivations and stunted responses. To make something of one’s fate, of one’s experiences, is to give them the permanence (essentially poetic) of a moment of intensity. Similarly, the supreme task, set by the imminence of death, is to repair the adventitiousness of death by drawing into my life, by making of it my own death. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
The immensity of the task of creating a new spirituality is betrayed by the complex, and quite conscious, ambiguities of transcendence, chief of which is the image of the Angel. He is a messenger (angelos) from another sphere; hence, there must be one who spent him. However, the Angel comes upon us with a terrible majesty and strength which, to us who are weak, is all his own. The Angel is pure and necessary contradiction and he sees the foundation of our being: only living in total commitment to the Earth, the here and now, can we transform it into the heart’s inner space, and thus wrest some eventual transition into a soundless Beyond. This is the creative act, stills all strife by transforming it into a song, eternalizes the moment by making of it a monument of inwardness, and transfixes suffering into the eternally valid image of God. In a World of yearning for the security of faith and finding it in ideology, there is a new purpose for living, as all concerted action is an escape from defective selfhood. God has a specific plan by which great blessing will come out of difficulty. Arise and wipe away your tears and press on. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
God Wants to Heal your Broken Heart and Love your Soul
There is a widespread belief in our modern culture that love is a word which has no meaning. A whole generation of detached, independent, self-sufficient, noncommitted individuals agree. However, human relationships do matter. Yet, people think you can be intimate with someone and then leave then, and nothing bad will happen. As a matter of fact, that is not true because human relationships are desperately important to both our mental and our physical well-being. The fact is that social isolation, the lack of human compansionship, death or absence of parents in early childhood, sudden loss of a love, and chronic human loneliness are significant contributors to premature death. My hope is that the powerful impact of human companionship on our general physical and mental well-being will come into clearer focus. Ouite literally, we must learn to live together or face the possibility of prematurely dying alone. When you face situations that seem impossible, I dare you to pray. When you pray, God releases favor and the angels go to work, and you will see the greatness of God’s power. God has promised to give us the desires of our hearts. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
The true greatness wears an invisible cloak, under cover of which it goes in and out among people without being suspected; if its cloak does not conceal it from itself always, and from all others for many years, its greatness will erelong shrink to very ordinary dimensions. What, then is the good of being great? You may understand greatness better in others, whether alive or dead, and choose better company from these and enjoy and understand that company better when you have chosen it—also that you may be able to give pleasure to the best people and live in the lives of those who are yet unborn. Great minds must trust to great truths and great talents for their rise, and nothing else. An affection towards self-good may be a good affection or a bad one. If this private affection is too strong (as when excessive love of life unfits a creature for any generous act) then it is undoubtedly vicious; in which case the creature who is moved by it is viciously moved, and will always be somewhat vicious when moved by that affection. A person is only truly great when one acts from the passions; never irresistible but when one appeals to the imagination. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
There are so many things wrong and difficult in the World, that no person can be great—one can hardly keep themselves from wickedness—unless one gives up thinking much about pleasure or rewards, and gets strength to endure what is hard and painful. If some creature’s earnest and passionate love of life leads one accidentally to do some good, one is not a good creature because of this good deed one does, any more than a person is made honest or good for pleading a just cause or fighting in a good cause merely for the sake of a fee. Great people think they must do right things in the common way. If an action motivated purely by an affection towards self-good happens to be advantageous to the species, that implies goodness in the creature only to the extent that the affection itself is good. However, much good one does by one particular at, if it came solely from that selfish affection then one is in oneself still vicious. And the same holds for any creature whose passion towards self-good, however moderate it is, is one’s real motive in doing something that one ought to have been led to by a natural affection for one’s kind. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
And whatever external helps a badly disposed creature may find to push one on towards performing a good action, none of this will make one good until one’s temperament changes and one is led directly towards good and against bad—led by some immediate affection, not accidentally. For instance: when a species is thought to be by nature tame, gentle, and favourable to humankind, and a member of it is fierce and savage contrary to one’s natural constitution, i.e. the constitution that is natural to one’s species, we instantly notice the breach of temperament and agree that the creature is unnatural and corrupt. If later one the same creature comes—through good fortune or proper management—to lose one’s fierceness, becoming tame, gentle, and treatable like the rest of one’s species, we will agree that the creature thus restored becomes good and natural. However, if one’s tame and gentle conduct comes only from one’s fear of one’s keeper, and would instantly change if that fear were lost, then one’s gentleness is not one’s real temperament, and one is still as bad as ever. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
People need hardheaded everyday good sense. Confronted with the grandiose ornamentation and willful obscurity of both the antiscientific armchair pseudoscience and the vaguely rhapsodical metaphysics that are carried on in the name of philosophy and news, we can only regard them as some elaborate but pointless intellectual rituals. To continue to philosophize and generate fake news to make it look like you are working and collect a pay check in this new tradition is worse than a waste of time. It can only too easily confuse and mislead the unwary into mistaking long words for great ideas and into reposing in the comfort of a wholly illusory intellectual self-satisfaction. Because know of the truth is necessary for human salvation, God has supernaturally made them known. Revelation is the communication of some truth by God to a rational creature through means which are beyond the ordinary course of nature. A particular conception of the nature of revelation involves a precise conception of nature of faith, as a human being’s response to revelation. When revelation is conceived as the divine disclosure of religious truths, faith is necessarily understood as the obedient believing of these truths. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
Faith is a supernatural virtue whereby with the inspiration and help of God’s grace, we believe that what he has revealed is true, not because its intrinsic truth is seen with the natural light of reason, but because of the authority of God who reveals it. Scriptures have been called the Word of God and have been virtually identified with revelation. The Bible, as we have revealed in the recent past, is accordingly thought of as being ultimately of divine authorship; it has been written by human beings, but in the writings of it, their minds were directed by the Holy Spirit. Because the scriptures were written as a result of the prompting of the Holy Spirit, they have God for their author. It is no uncommon event, in the experience of us all, to see the possessors of exalted ability occasionally humbled to the level of the most poorly-gifted people about them. Because every effect somehow bears the trademark of the first cause, God’s existence can be proved from the World of nature. We must start a good war. It is better to fight against falsehood and malice with a certain amount of discord, then, by dissimulating, to give way to malice and falsehood for the sake of harmony. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
A good creature is one who is through one’s natural temperament or the slant of one’s affections carried primarily and immediately, and not secondarily and accidentally, to good and against bad. A bad creature is one who lacks the right affections of the force needed to carry one directly towards good and against bad; or who is carried by other affections directly towards bad and against good. The mind, which is spectator or auditor of others minds, must have its eyes and ears, so as to discern proportions, distinguish sound, and scan each sentiment or thought that comes before it. It cannot let anything escape its judgment. It feels the soft and harsh, the agreeable and disagreeable, in the affections; and it finds a fair and foul, a harmonious and dissonant, as really and truly here as in any piece of music or in the external shapes and appearances of sensible things. And it cannot withhold its admiration and ecstasy, its aversions and scorn, anymore in what relates to one than in what relates to the other of these subjects. There is a common and natural sense of what is sublime and beautiful in things; and someone who denies this would not be taken seriously by anyone who has attended properly to the facts. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
We need something timeless in order to extract an objective sense from the temporal course of history, so we formed an anti-death clause. While this periodization cannot be verified empirically, it is an example of the critical approach to the question of the unity of historical development. Although it is purely theoretical, it nonetheless gives an axiological grounding to the results of empirical research. How are we to measure the utility of goods that are acquired not for consumption but to be exchanged for other commodities? These goods acquire their utility from the consumption goods for which they are finally exchanged. The utility of such goods is called acquired utility. What we know as the principle of diminishing marginal utility, stats that as the consumption of a good increases, its marginal utility decreases. Consumers will maximize their total utility by purchasing so that the last unit of money spent for any one good gives the same marginal utility as the last unit spent for any other. It is possible to compare the utility one person receives from consuming another glass of beer with the utility another person would receive from consuming another pair of shoes or another beer. Great minds cannot avoid doing extraordinary things. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
Like a pyramid, a great person stands on a broad base. It is only the prattle porcelain pagoda that tottles on a toe. It is fitting that we should hold the young in awe. How do we know that the generations to come will not be the equal of the present? Only when an individual reaches the age of forty or fifty without distinguishing oneself in any way can one say, I suppose, that one does not deserve to be held in awe. One cannot but give assent to exemplary words, but what is important is that one should rectify oneself. One cannot but be pleased with tactful words, but what is important is that one should reform oneself. I can do nothing with an individual who gives assent but does not rectify oneself or the individual who is pleased but does not reform oneself. Make it your guiding principle to do your best for others and to be trustworthy in what you say. Do not accept as friend anyone who is not as good as you. When you make a mistake do not be afraid of mending your ways. The Three Armies can be deprived of their commanding officer, but even a common person cannot be deprived of one’s purpose. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it—I see that my letter hurt you, but for a little while—yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but Worldly sorrow bring death. See what this Godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done. At every point you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter. So even though I wrote to you, it was not on account of the one who did the wrong or of the injured party, but rather that before God you could see for yourselves how devoted to us you are. By all this we are encouraged. I arise today through the strength of Heaven; light of the Sun, splendor of fire, speed of lightning, swiftness of the wind, depth of the sea, stability of the Earth, firmness of the rock. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
I arise today through God’s strength to pilot me; God’s might to uphold me, God’s wisdom to guide me. God’s eyes to look before me, God’s ears to hear me, God’s word to speak for me, God’s hands to guard me, God’s way to rest before me, God’s shield to protect me, God’s hosts to save me afar and anear alone or in multitude. I arise today through the mighty strength of the Lord of creation. And I know that the rest of my days will be the best of my days. Revelation, understood in this way, presupposes faith as its correlate. That God is at work in a certain situation, seeking to draw people into a new life in relation to God. God has revealed himself to a special group. Divine revelation embodies in its life which God has opened a new and better life to humankind. The form of apologetic appropriate to this view is one that defends the right of the believer, as a rational being, given the distinctly religious experience out of which one’s faith has arisen, to trust that experience and to proceed to live upon the basis of it. And in the naked light I saw ten thousand people, maybe more. People talking without speaking, people hearing without listening, people writing songs that voices never shared, no one dared disturb the sounds of silence. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11
In Loving Memory of Todd Harris and Adam West.
This is a kind of Spiritual Adultery that is Spearing Across the Earth
By withdrawing oneself from society and into contemplation, the social nature of human beings and one’s ability to perform good works becomes insignificant, unimportant, and irrelevant. How can we then uphold the requirement of performing good works found in the scriptures? The mysterious process by which our Earthly life instructs us for another state of being tells of that our action obey an unknow law, implicit in ourselves, but which does not conform to our logic. We know that every creature has a private good and interest of one’s own, which nature has compelled one to seek. We know that there is in reality a right and a wrong state of every creature; and that one’s right state is forward by nature and affectionately sought by oneself. And because every creature has a certain interest or good, there must be also a certain end or purpose to which everything in one’s constitution must naturally be related. If anything in one’s appetites, passions, or affections runs contrary to this end, we must count it as being bad for one. In this way, one can be bad with respects to oneself; just as one is certainly bad with respects to other of one’s kind when any of one’s appetites or passions make one any way injurious to them. Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into still subtler form. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
When first formed visionary schemes, we know them to be absurd, but familiarize them by degrees, and in time lose sight of their folly. This is unacceptable because any interpretation that disallows humans their ability to understand the scriptures produces moral ramifications. Religion undoubtedly contains some perfect daemonists, people who believe that the governing mind or minds are not absolutely and necessarily good—are not confined to what is best, but are capable of acting according to mere will or fancy, because we know whole nations who worship the devil or fiend to who they sacrifice and offer prayers and supplications, really just because they fear him. And we know very well that in some religious there people who do not proclaim any idea of God except that of a being who is arbitrary, violent, a cause of bad, and condemning people to misery—which amounts to substituting a daemon or devil in place of God. One who has nothing external that can divert one must find pleasure in one’s own thoughts, and must conceive oneself what one is not, for who is pleased with what one is? A person can be more an atheist than a theist, or more a daemonist than a theist, depending on which of the relevant opinions predominates thought. Moral standards are to be severe and rigorous in order to prevent condemning the masses to Hell. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
This globe, the Earth, appears to have a real dependence on something beyond it (e.g. the Sun, the Galaxy, or its fellow planets), then it—the Earth—really is only a part of some other system. And if there is similarly a system of all things, and a Universal nature, every particular being or system must be either good or bad in that general system of the Universe. What about something insignificant and useless? That would be an imperfection, and so would be bad in the general system. Therefore, a being cannot be wholly and really bad except by being bad with respect to the Universal system; and in that case the system of the Universe is bad or imperfect. However, if the evil of one private system is the good of others, if it contributes still to the good of the general system (as when one creatures lives by the destruction of another, one thing is generated from the corruption [= ‘rotting’] of another, or one planetary system or vortex swallows up another) then the evil of that private system is not really bad in itself; any more than the pain of cutting new teeth is bad in a system or body which is so constituted that without this episode of pain it would suffer worse by being defective. The Bible is for everyone to understand and practice, including the poor and uneducated. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
So we cannot say of any being that it is wholly and absolutely bad unless we can show for certain that what we are calling bad is not also good in some other system or in relation to some other order or economy. However, if the World contained one species of animals that were destructive to every other species, that could rightly be called a bad species, because it is bad in the animal system. And if in any species of animals (for example the human species) one person has a nature that makes one pernicious to the rest, then one can in this respect rightly be called a bad person. Prediction is vague. The notion of prediction is unquestionably an essential part of the subject matter of logic, but the predicates might be extralinguistic and even extramental entities. Thus crucial vagueness, which was to some extend also the source of the medievals’ concer with universals, left open to the possibility that logic might be essentially a science of reality, resembling or subsumed under metaphysics. Prediction occurs only in a proposition, and the only constituents of propositions are utterances; thus, only utterances may be predicated. Some utterances are significant; some are not. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and will all thy mind. You do not need me to go through envy, malice, ill-temperament, or other such hateful passions to show how each is bad and makes the creatures that has them bad. However, perhaps I should point out that even kindness and love of the most natural sort (e.g. a creature’s love for its offspring) is vicious if it is immoderate and beyond a certain degree of intensity. Why? Because excessive tenderness destroys the effect of love, and excessive pity makes us incapable of giving help. Thus, excessive motherly love is a vicious fondness; excessive pity is effeminacy and weakness; undue concern for self-preservation is meanness and cowardice; having too little concern for self-preservation, or none at all, is rashness; and the opposite concern (namely a passion leading to self-destruction) is a mad and desperate depravity. God was manifest in flesh, justified by the Spirit, seen of angels, preached to the Gentiles, believed on in the World, and received up into glory. With God all things are possible, but oftentimes he does his work with awful instruments, there is a peacemaker called Death. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
To be sure, proof in existence of the ineligible World, also known as the mind of God, the environmental movement protested the consequences of abundant consumption. Yet, it did not therefore, rethink the practices and aims of living itself, but only those of living too extravagantly. Air, water, space, nature: these are the subject of scarcity. Economics focuses on the scarcity of time in which to enjoy abundance. Thus, for the first time ever, humans are faced with this real, permanent problem—the World being overpopulated and there not being enough money nor resources to take care of the rapidly expanding population. While people demand letting illegal immigrants inhabit America, they are not paying attention to the fact that we are losing jobs, for instance, Sears is closing 149 stores this year. Also, new houses, which are 300 square feet, and would not uphold in a storm and have no foundation, are being built in parking lots because people with jobs can no longer afford food and a traditional house or an apartment, but yet Americans want to keep adding more of a strain on their resources. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
The permanent problem on Earth—how to use this freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy leisure which science and compound interest will have won for them, to live wisely and agreeably and well. A builder of larger social whole, the instinct for peace and quiet, for respite for respite from stimulation and disturbances, in short, for death (not in death as destruction, but death as peace) is an expression that has emerged out of the experiences of immature minds as mediator between this pleasure-seeking mass of instinct and of the reality principle. You cannot always get what you want, but if you try some time, you might just find what you need. We must turn work into something enjoyable. We must treat the World as a garden to cultivate, not as a storehouse to pillage. For as by the existence of the creatures, we come to know there is a creator, so by their loveliness is that we come to know that their Author, and come to love him. We must first experience and come to know the things on Earth before we can come to know and love God. Experience is not only critical to general knowledge, but it is absolutely necessary to our ability to know God and to know the duties of a good life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
Love is to be inherently centered upon God. Love is the movement of the soul towards good, or God. Love is a disposition or act of the mind as a reaction to anything which we find pleasure. When we love the creature, we are then wishing something good for it, that is be improved or endure; this love is referred to as benevolence and charity. This love cannot apply to God because we cannot wish upon God anything more since he is absolute. Thus, our love for creatures is the love of benevolence (since we wish them well), but this is not equivalent to what we might call real live, these are only acts of charity. Therefore, we must love God with the love of desire. For our love of God brings no additional goodness to God, but benefits only us; to love creatures would be sinful. Love of desire is a complete love, while benevolence is only partial love. We cannot love something fully if it is not completely loveable. Our heart is so much God’s property and peculiar, and out so entirely to be devoted to him, that this is a kind of Spiritual Adultery to admit any creature in a partnership with one in our love. It is in loving something partially that is completely loveable that we are depriving it of our love and committing ourselves to sin. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
This World and this life matters. God created our sense organs and real flowers. This World is not just an illusion. The material World is important. If none of this matter, if Earth was not our home, then there would be no reason at all for God to have created our sense organs or any real flowers to begin with. God could easily produce in us the ideas and sensations of flowers with or without there being actual flowers. Likewise, God would have worked in vain in creating our sense organs since these would have nothing to contribute in our experience of the World. For if we must love nothing but what is lovely, and nothing is lovely but what is our good, and nothing is our good but what does us good, and nothing does us good but what causes pleasure in us. I fear so many people live and die as idolaters, and the greatest part of the future will do so; since I guess not one in a million will be found capable of apprehending, and being convinced of this new hypothesis of seeing all things in God. The purpose of Christian doctrine is to enable its subscribers the opportunity for a good life entailing the need for good actions. Turn your heart over to God and know that he is the creator of all that is good and pleasurable and the rest of your life will be the best of your life. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
Randolph Harris II International Institute 