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Do Not Try Indulging in Overoptimistic Claptraps!
Leadership is a people process. The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. It calls for the application of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that allow each of us to successfully influence thins. We know what a person thinks not when one tells us what one thinks, but by one’s actions. In the twenty-first century it is not easy to comprehend the views that prevailed a few hundred years ago as to the nature of life and living creatures. Then as now every person, every day of one’s life, was bombarded by evidence for the orderly operation of cause and effect in biological phenomena. If the body was cut with a knife, blood would flow; if food was long withheld, weight would decrease; if the nostrils and mouth were tightly closed, death would result. Nevertheless, in the nonscientific intellectual climate that prevailed during the Middle Ages, such clear-cut evidence that living creatures, like inanimate objects, are controlled in at least some aspects of the behaviour by regular natural laws had little effect on popular ideas about biology. Vitalism in its most extreme form governed whatever thought there was on the subject. Living creatures, and especially humans, were thought to lie outside the realm of subject matter suitable for investigation and understanding; life and the living body were believed to be replete with mysteries that must forever lie beyond the comprehension of mortal humans. Not only was it therefore hopeless to try to make careful observations and deductions on life process, it was also, in some dark and frightening way, wrong to do so. Magic potions and incantations were employed to combat disease and injury, not just because nothing better was available but also because such techniques were clearly best suited to deal with the nonphysical mysteries believed to underlie the afflictions under treatment. It is likely that the gradual emergence of biology as a field of study and activity appropriate to its name—the science of life—would have commenced many years earlier than it did had it not been for the delaying effect of mystical belief in an unbridgeable chasm separating animate and inanimate processes. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Nevertheless, a start was finally made. It came in the early 1600s, when William Harvey made his observations and put forth his deductions upon the movements of the heart and blood. While every schoolboy learns William Harvey to be called “the father of modern biology.” Harvey’s great fame rests on two bases, one of one’s own making and the other a philosophic consequence of his discovery. Harvey’s first claim to fame was based on the thoroughly scientific method he employed in arriving at his conclusions. Not only had preceded him (unsound though many of them were), but her performed a long series of experiments of his own. He dissected and minutely described what he saw in dogs, pigs, serpents, frogs, fishes, slugs, oysters, lobsters, and insects. He watched fluid circulating in the transparent shrimp and the unhatched chick. He traced the arteries and veins of valves in both heart and blood vessels. He actually calculated the capacity of each ventricle and estimated the resulting rate of flow of the blood. He observed the results of obstructing the flow of blood in selected arteries and veins and performed other experiment to test his theories. In short, Harvey employed the same sequence of careful observation, hypothesis formation, testing of hypothesis by new observation, and modification of hypothesis to fit the new data that describes all modern scientific research. In the early seventeenth century this was unique in biological investigation. It was a tremendous departure from the mixture of unsupported speculation and religious mysticism that had permeated the work of most of Harvey’s predecessors. Although the introduction into biology of the scientific method was accomplishment enough to justify Harvey’s fame, the philosophic implications of his discovery were probably even more important to future of biology. For Harvey had shown that ordinary physical laws—in particular, those governing the pumping and flow of liquids—were capable of accounting for the functions performed by the heart, an organ that had previously clearly belonged in the realm of the unknowable. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Harvey’s explanation of the properties of the circulatory system constituted the first important evidence that the principles of physical science were relevant to at least some of the process underlying the phenomena of life. It would carry us too far afield to trace in detail the historical development of understanding the functions of the various organs of the body tht has followed the pioneering work of William Harvey. Suffice it to say that faith in the hypothesis that such functions can be understood through the applications of the principles of physics has not led to disappointment. In addition to knowledge that the heart is a pump, we now know that the lungs comprise a mechanism for the introduction of oxygen into the body’s chemical plant and for the extraction of gaseous waste products; we understand a great deal about the digestive process in the stomach and intestines; we can follow the transport of oxygen, food, waste products by the blood; the chemical purification activities of the kidneys and the liver are pretty well detailed; the glandular secretion of hormones and the resulting stimulation of specific chemical reactions in remote organs of the body are no longer the mystery they once were. The validity of our understanding of the functioning of the organs of the body is evidenced by spectacular recent developments in surgery. The employment of heart/lung machines to substitute for the natural organs during lengthy operations on the respiratory or circulatory system is one modern example. The surgical implantation into the body of battery-powered electronic pulse generations that supplement the inadequate muscle-contracting capabilities of a defective heart is another. The artificial kidney machines, which prolong indefinitely the lives of patients with defective kidneys by periodic chemical removals of the accumulated impurities in the blood, are yet another example of success of the mechanistic approach to body function. Most spectacular of all are the transplantation of organs into human patients from other humans or animals. Despite the great difficulties occasioned by the body’s rejection mechanism, which causes a chemical reaction that frequently attacks and destroys organic transplants from others individuals, the medical literature now includes numerous reports of successful transplants of kidneys from one human to another. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
In 1953, the first successful first temporarily successful transplantation of a human kidney was performed by Dr. Jean Hamburger in Paris. A 16-ear-old boy received the kidney of his mother as living donor transplantation. In 1954, Dr. Joeseph E. Murray and his colleagues at Peter Bent Bingham Hospital in Boston performed that first truly successful kidney transplant from one twin to another. This was done without any immunosuppressive medication. Since then, kidney transplantation has become a rather standard procedure. In 1961, immunosuppression advancements allowed for the development of powerful immunosuppressives. They became widely available and, in combination, helped decreased the chance for kidney rejection. In the past patients had even lived for weeks after the implantation of kidneys from monkeys to substitute for their own nonfunctioning organs. There have been lung transplants in humans. In there 1950, there was also a report attesting to the current good state of good human health of a Brooklyn puppy more than six months after its heart had been replaced by a transplant from another, unrelated dog. Around this time, there was at least one cause on record of the transplantation of a heart in a human patient dying from failure of his own organ. Unfortunately, a human heart was not available for transplantation, and the heart of a monkey had to be used. It was inadequate and the patient died, but not for an hour or so. From the viewpoint of the patient the operations was clearly unsuccessful, but as an indication of the essential soundness of the modern understanding of the functions of the body and organs, even the temporarily successful operation of human’s circulatory system by the heart of a money must be considered to be an important accomplishment. We have dedicated this portion of the report as an inquiry into the adequacy of the purely physical laws of nature for explanation of the properties of living organisms, the successful interpretation of the functions of the body organs in terms of machinelike processes is of the greatest significance. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Our twenty-first century familiarity with current medical events such as those just cited can easily blind us to their philosophic importance. We should not forget that, before the thread of development initiated by Harvey’s pioneering work on the circulatory system, there was general belief in the essential inapplicability of physical principles to body processes. Today the population point of view is entirely different. With the possible exception of “mental” activities, most of us now would subscribe to the thesis that the essential functions of the parts of the body are all ultimately understandable in terms of the same physical las that govern the operations of inanimate machines. If we are to attain the goal of a physical interpretation of all life processes, this removal from the essential functions of the body organs of any claim of dependence on nonphysical explanation, important though it is, is only the first of many steps. As our next step, let us consider the material out of which living organisms are constructed to inquire whether non-physical, vitalistic principles are needed to account for their existence and properties. We shall commence by going back in history and tracing the development of understanding of the similarities and difference between organic and inorganic matter. With all the changes and challenges society faces, there has never been a greater need to determine our priorities, and within renewed focus, align our daily actions with our purpose or goals. When Plato said that the telos of man is “to become as much as possible similar to the God,” such a telos gives unconditional character to the more imperative. If, however, the telos is, as in the hedonistic school, the greatest possible amount of pleasure to be derived from life, no unconditional imperative is at work, but merely the very much conditioned advice to calculate well what amount of pain must be suffered in order to attain to the greatest possible amount of pleasure. Between these two extremes of the definition of man’s inner telos are several definitions which set a finite aim according to the formulation, but in which something unconditional with respect to the moral imperative shines through. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
This is true of utilitarianism, in which the moral imperative demands work for “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” Here pleasure is replaced by “happiness,” and above all, it is not the individual happiness, but that of the many, which is the aim. And the happiness of the many is not possible without self-restraint in the individual’s search for happiness. Therefore, a demand appears that cannot be derived from the merely natural trends of the individual, a demand that implies the acceptance of the other person as a person, and an unconditional element besides, whether acknowledged or not. The Epicurean deal with the problems of the telos and the moral imperative from another angle. They also use the term “happiness,” but for them happiness consists in the life of the spirit in community with friends, and in the creative participation in the cognitive and aesthetic values of their culture. The relationship to friends as well as to cultural creativity demands unconditional subjection to the norms and structures of friendship, knowledge, and beauty. Nearest to Plato’s definition of the human telos is Aristotle’s though that man’s highest aim is participation in the eternal divine self-intuition. This state can be fully reached only be entering the eternity through the “theoretical” life, the life of intuition. Wherever this state of participation is reached, there is eudaimonia, fulfillment under the guidance of a “good daimon,” a half-divine power. To reach this goal is an unconditional imperative. And since the practical virtues are the precondition for fulfillment through participation in the divine, they also have unconditional validity. We have used the Greek word eudaimonia (badly translated as “happiness”) in order to point out the moral aim as described in several ethical schools. Eudaimonia belongs to those words that have suffered a marked deterioration in meaning. Most responsible for this process were the Stoic and Christian polemics against Epicureanism, which often unjustly confused Epicureanism with hedonism. The word in itself means fulfillment with divine help, and consequent happiness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
This happiness does not exclude pleasures, but the pleasure is not the aim, nor is happiness itself the aim. It is the companion of fulfillment with divine help, and consequent happiness. This happiness does not exclude pleasure, but the pleasure is not the aim, nor is happiness itself the aim. It is the companion of fulfillment, reached together with it. If we derogate this concept of eudaimonia, we must also derogate the Christian hope for eternal blessedness. For, even though the Calvinist names the glory of God as the aim of one’s life, one experiences blessedness in fulfilling this aim and serving the glory of God. The same, of course, is true of theosis (“becoming Godlike”), fruitio Dei (“enjoying the intuition of the divine life”), or working for and participating in the “Kingdom of God” described as the aim of the individual human, of humankind, and the Universe. Happiness or blessedness as the emotional awareness of fulfillment is not in conflict with the unconditional, and therefore religious, character of the moral imperative. A conflict exists only when the function of self-transcendence in one’s finitude. However, this diminution of human to finite process has rather rarely occurred in the history of thought. Even highly secularized philosophers were conscious of the function of self-transcendence in human’s spirit, and consequently of dimension of the unconditional or the religious dimension. There are two concepts in the preceding discussion that have been frequently used without having been thoroughly discussed. The one is “conscience,” the channel through which the unconditional character of the moral imperative is experienced, and the other is the term “religious.” Regarding the concept of religion, I cannot restrict myself to the following summary: the fundamental concept of religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, by an infinite interest, by something one takes unconditionally seriously. It is in view of this concept that we have formulated the main proposition, namely, that there is a religious dimension in the moral imperative itself. Derived from the fundamental concept of religion is the traditional concept that religion is a particular expression, in symbols of thought and action, of such ultimate concern within a social group as, for example, a church. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
If the moral imperative were derived from religion in the traditional sense of the word, secular ethics would have to sever any ties with religion, for it rejects direct dependence on any particular religion. If, however, the religious element is intrinsic to the moral imperative, no conflict is necessary. Babylonia had cloisters of wealth women—the naditus—dedicated to Sama, the Sun God. Though many cities had these convents, only the nadistus of Sippar were celibate. The naditu institution existed in the Old Babylonian era and peaked under Hammurapi and his son Samsuiluna (1792-1712 B.C.). In fact, Hammurapi had a personal stake in it, because his sister Iltani was a naditu. Naditus dedicated to Samas, as opposed to other gods, enjoyed the highest status of any nuns and, like the vestal virgins, had unusual economic clout for women Becoming a naditu was a family decision, never a question of religious vocation. First daughters were designated at birth as future naditus and were “raised to the god” until they entered the cloister. Naditus were initiated when they were about fifteen years old, always in the first three days of the Babylonian month of Tebet, our December-January. On the first and third days, offerings were made to Samas and his wife, Aja. Day two was a festival in memory of deceased naditus and ended with a banquet. On this day as well, a thread symbolic of her future union with the god Samas was placed on the naditu’s hand, and the cloister made her a bridal gift or food, drink, and silver. Additional ceremonies were performed for high-ranking naditus, such as the Princess Iltani, to obtain divine consent before the initiates could be consecrated. The initiation, like that of the vestal virgins, included important financial transaction between the naditu’s family and the cloister. The family provided an impressive dowry consisting of a portion of the father’s estate, jewelry, furniture, dishes, looms, cows, and sheep. One naditu also received nine slave girls, twenty-four gowns, forty-two headdresses, and even the shroud for her far-off funeral. Initiated naditus gained the legal authority to administer their own property or they could appoint their brothers to do so. A naditu whose dowry did not include property had the right to share her father’s estate equally with her brothers. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Oddly, many of the initiates could not enter the cloister until years later, when space became available. It was, in fact, unlike any other cloister. Instead of communal buildings, such as the Atrium Vestae, the naditus lived in individual houses within a walled compound. The houses were expensive, and though some naditus bought more than one, others had to be content with renting rooms. The cloister housed one hundred to two hundred naditus, and though they were not forbidden to leave, this rarely happened. Several male administrators also lived there, and male relatives visited. Nonetheless, the naditus were expected to maintain lifelong celibacy, though the penalty for lapses was less severe than it was for unchaste high priestesses or wives, who were executed. In fact, during Hammurapi’s reign, two naditus gave birth and were neither disgraced nor expelled from the cloister. Naditus who lived outside its walls, however, or who entered a tavern, were sentenced to death by burning. The daily life of a naditu was a mixture of religious and secular activities. She made twice-daily offerings, and on the twentieth of each month, a say sacred to Samas, she had to provide a heartier oblation of met and beer. She also participated in some of the seven annual festivals and in various religious banquets. A typical naditu also devoted much energy to managing her estate, trading in silver and barely, and renting out fields, orchards, houses shops, slaves, and oxen. One naditu, for instance supervised 117 employees. Many naditus were involved in cooperative ventures, and they often acquired lands adjacent to each other’s own and co-owned fields. Though the naditus were an economic force, their power and privileged status embittered some male business associates. After business had been transacted, it was not uncommon for these men to turn on the naditus and pummel them. Because the celibate naditus remained childless, they were permitted to adopt younger naditus or slave girls to care for them in their old age. This was an important consideration, for naditus were typically long-lived. The Princess Iltani, for instance, served for over sixty years before her gods invited her to a feast, the happy euphemism for a naditu’s death. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
The cloistered naditus survived for over three centuries. Their dedication to Samas and Aja provided religious security for their families because of their intimate connection to these important deities. The secular benefits were equally significant. Their celibacy was a guarantee against the overpopulation that divided inherited Babylonian estates into puny strips. In return, the naditus were rewarded with status and privilege, and financial independence unique among Babylonian women. People have always believed—have seemed driven and determined, in the face of overwhelming countervailing evidence, to believe—that moral society as well as moral individua life is possible; that however rare or partial its actual achievement, it is in principle possible for individuals to live morally with the advantages of security, order, and opportunity provided by a powerful state, and for that state itself to behave morally with its constituent’s and with its neighbours. It was the accomplishment of Machiavelli, in a kind of Godel’s proof of political economy, to show that such is not the case, that the good and moral life within an orderly society is contingent on the amorality of the state that males in possible. When individuals come together to form a social entity, there must be a period during which the association is revocable; the individuals may find themselves subject to more constraint than they are willing to accept, and may opt out. This revocable period is the hinge of life or death for the social organism; for if the individuals disperse, the larger entity disappears. This larger entity, driven by its own will to power, will therefore do everything it can to end this period of revocability as quickly as possible; for so soon as the association achieves such specialization as to make it impossible for the parts to opt out and survive, at just that point the association becomes irrevocable, and the organism no longer in danger of perishing by virtue of the wiled dispersion of its components. Aggregates, therefore, always act to increase the dependence of member components. The aggregate wants to bring it about that when the aggregate itself is endangered, its components parts will have no choice but to remain loyal. My country is right or wrong. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
When the mountain men came down out of the Rockies in the nineteenth century and took up life in the village, there was a period in which, if community constraints proved too onerous, they could pack back into the mountains and resume their isolated and independent existences. The present-day citizen of Denver or Butte or Taos has lost this option, is no longer capable of wilderness survival, and is held, moreover, by ties to the union or the grange, to the American Legion or the Rotary Club, and by Social Security, whence will come one’s pension. The aggregate is not satisfied, however, to have its component parts stick together only because they could not survive on their own. Such allegiance is halfhearted. (“We have a terrible president, the country is on a disastrous course, but I guess we have to rally behind him. We have no choice.”) The aggregate wants to generate patriotic fervour, to being it about that individuals lose sight of their separate lives, lose awareness of their ubiquitous conflict with the state, that their identification with the state expunge the purview of individual life with its joys and sorrows, its hopes, its ideals, and particularly its ability to criticize the state in terms of reason, of common sense, and of the discrepancy between the announced aims of the state and the actions the state is undertaking. The unison of Sieg Heil by the packed and disciplined masses at Nuremburg, that is what the state wants; or the faith of Nikolai Rostov, who in holy warlike exaltation charges forward alone, an embodiment of the Russian spirit, against the massed French forces at Austerlitz. Think not of what your country can do for you, said President Kennedy, but of what you can do for your country. There is, therefore, a constant struggle between the individual and the state. For the state would like to eat up all individual power, all independence, discretion, freedom, autonomy. The individual opposes this demand, insists that the state not take any more. In times of danger to the state, however, individual can be persuaded to relinquish additional bits of freedom, since the security of the individual rests ultimately with the security of the state. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
In the state, knowing this, is always tempted to create crises that will justify arrogating to itself additional increments of the independence of its components. In this continuing struggle, the last century has witnesses a decisive shift in favor of the state. The Fascists and Communist movements since 1917 managed to appropriate vastly more power than citizens had ever in the past been willing to give up. The values of art, of individual conscience, of personal preference and belief, all presumably secure withing the private realm, have in our times been confiscated by the state. Nor is this a vicissitude; it is a tendency. A tendency made almost invincible by modern technology, which by virtue of its ever-increasing size, cost, complexity, and power, is, in this conflict, intrinsically on the side of the state. The nature of modern commerce and communication automatically empower the state at the expense of the individual. Television exerts a steady pressure on the private person to live in the public World, in the ambience of the aggregate, with the values and the assumptions of the aggregate, rather than in the private sphere. Whatever is being shown on the screen, whether debates or advertising or talk shows, the viewer is always being instructed on how to live in the public World, while the private World is being subtly and insidiously impugned, is being made to disappear. We in America like to think that our government is accountable. We are relieved when the president, though gaining power at an alarming rate, is reined by Congress or the courts. However, as we take comfort in the prudence of our constitutional checks and balances, we fail to note that nothing limits the action of the state as whole. If the president and Congress concur in an action then, thought it be a monstrous crime, we will do it. At no time has this nation been willing to subject itself to the authority of a World court. We are willing to given an accounting of our actions to the United Nations, but if that body brands our account as lies—as at times it is—we will ignore and go our own way. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
The deplorable state of the World today testifies silently to the widespread spiritual ignorance which is at the root of the trouble. Class hates class, group strives against group, selfishness is prevalent everywhere—this situation could only arise amongst creatures ignorant of the higher purpose on this Earth. Consequently, to help make available knowledge of the truth and to elevate moral character constitute the noble task to which nay human could devote oneself. The ways of arbitration—like the way of contractual treaties—for the purpose of avoiding war presupposes a loyal respect for promises and a level of simple honesty, an expression of obligations in deeds rather than oratory which, we know now from painful experience, does not exist in imperfect humanity. It is merely wishful dreaming to propose it as the practical alternative to war. The brutal realities of our situation have to be squarely seen without illusion. Nor is the bringing of the system of military naval and air defense to ever-increasing magnitude an effectual alternative. The same procedure is sure to be followed in the opposite camp. The result one day in some moment of emotional reaction to tragedy or of national cupidity will be an explosion of all these massed and concentrated engines of violence. Sloppy sentiments about human brotherhood are not t all needed to pad out the plain fact that all of us ought to work with goodwill for the general good. The dark possibility tht destroys our future can give place to a brighter one only when enough philosophically illumined people are to be found in each country. Nor need that be many—a few in each city would throw out enough influence to bring about this charge. It is the tragedy of our own age that philosophical thoughts should be classed with idle dreams when they are the most practical of all today. The present situation shows the utter failure of religion to control humans; it will never be more than a temporary palliative; TRUTH alone can solve all national and international problems as much as it solves the personal one. However, truth is based on intelligence and humankind’s intelligence still lags remarkably behind. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
So the adepts contribute their little will come through evolution, and then humans will learn one’s personal responsibility for all deeds under the laws of re-embodiment and compensation; later one will learn that one cannot separate oneself from the ALL, that the same Mind runs though us all, and that humanity is just a big family wherein the older members are responsible for the welfare of the younger ones, the rich for the poorer, and so on. Universal compassion will then be the only right outlook for a properly educated humans. Where would the crude racial separatism or the equally crude hatred of the bourgeoisie be then? This divine consciousness dissolves intenerate prejudice and removes embittered passion. However, no human will can manufacture it. The World must acknowledge a higher authority than fleshly desire and evolve by self-striving beyond its present materiality before the Overself’s grace will confer such an exalted state. Without trying to indulge in overoptimistic claptrap, it may nevertheless be predicted that, as the twenty-first century advances, human life will change both physically and culturally in an astounding way. It is true that no particular war can possibly end all war. It is the untamed animal in humans which causes all their personal fights, tribal aggressions, and national wars. It is the spiritual nature of humans which urges them to live peaceably and harmoniously with one’s fellows. That humans can rid themselves of external bloodshed without troubling to rid themselves of its internal causes within oneself, is one of their intellectual-born illusions. It may be kept at a distance for a longer time than before but it cannot be kept there permanently while the passions of hatred, anger, and greed thrive in one’s heart. However, it is also true that one’s instruments of collective violence have now become so destructive, so terrible, and so cruel that their very results are forcing one to contemplate abandoning such violence altogether, and to turn towards peaceful discussion for the settlement of one’s disputes. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
At the very simplest and most immediate level, why not create a cadre of professional and paraprofessional “life-organizers”? For example, we probably need fewer psychotherapist burrowing molelike into is and ego, and more people who can helps us, even in little ways, to pull our daily lives together. Among the most widely heard do-you-not-believe-it phrases in use today are: “Tomorrow I will get myself organized” or “I am getting my act together.” Yet structuring one’s life under today’s conditions of high social and technological turmoil is harder and harder to do. The breakup of normal Second Wave structures, the overchoice of lifestyles, schedules, and educational opportunities—all, as we have seen, increase the difficulty. For the less affluent, economic pressures impose high structure. For the middle class, and especially their children, the reverse is true. Why not recognize this fact? Some psychiatrists today perform a life-organizing function. Instead of years on the couch, they offer practical assistance in finding work, locating a girl or boyfriend, budgeting one’s money, following a diet, and so forth. We need many more such consultants, structure-providers, and we need feel no shame about seeking their services. In education, we need to begin paying attention to matters routinely ignored. We spend long hours trying to teach a variety of courses on, say, the structure of government or the structure of the amoeba. However, how much effort goes into studying the structure of everyday life—the way time is allocated, the personal uses of money, the places to go for help in a society exploding with complexity? We take for granted that young people already know their way around our social structure. In fact, most have only the dimmest image of the way the World of work or business is organized. Most students have no conception of the architecture of their own city’s economy, or the way the local bureaucracy operates, or the place to go to lodge a complaint against a merchant. Most do not even understand how their own schools—even universities—are structured, let alone how such structures are changing under the impact of the Fourth Wave. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
We also need to take a fresh look at structure-providing institutions—including cults. A sensible society should provide a spectrum of institutions, ranging from those that are free-form to those that are tightly structured. We need open classrooms as well as traditional schools. We need easy-come-easy-go organization as well as rigid monastic orders (secular as well as religious). Today the gap between the total structure offered by the cult and the seemingly total structutrelessness of daily life may well be too wide. If we find the complete subjugation demanded by many cults to be repellent, we should perhaps encourage the formation of what might be called “semi-cults” that lie somewhere between structureless freedom and tightly structured regimentation. Religious organizations, vegetarians, and other sects of groupings might actually be encouraged to form communities in which moderate to high structure is imposed on those who wish to live that way. These semi-cults might be licensed or monitored to assure that they do not engage in physical or mental violence, embezzlement, extortion, or other such practices, and could be set up so that people in need of external structure can join them for a six-month or one-year hitch—and then leave without pressure or recriminations. Some people might find it helpful to live within a semi-cult for a time, then return to the outside World, then plug back into the organization for a time, and so forth, alternating between the demands of high, imposed structure and the freedom offered by the larger society. Should this not be possible for them? Such semi-cults also suggest the need for secular organizations that lie somewhere between the freedom of civilian life and the discipline of the army. Why not a variety of civilian life and the discipline of the army. Why not a variety of civilian service corps, perhaps organized by cities, school systems, or even private companies to perform useful community service on a contract basis employing young people who might live together under strict disciplinary rules and be paid army-scale wages. (To bring these paychecks up to the prevailing minimum wage, corps members might receive supplementary vouchers good for university tuition or training.) #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
A “pollution crops,” a “public sanitation corps,” a “paramedic corps,” or a corps designed to assist the elderly—such organizations could yield high dividends for both community and individual. In addition to providing useful services and a degree of life-structure, such organization could also help bring much-needed meaning into the lives of their members—not some spurious mystical or political theology but the simple ideal of service to community. Beyond such measures, however, we shall need to integrate personal meaning with larger, more encompassing World views. It is not enough for people to understand (or think they understand) their own small contributions to society. Even if inarticulate, they must also have some sense of how they fit into the larger scheme of things. As the Fourth Wave arrives we will need to formulate sweeping new integrative World view—coherent syntheses, not merely blips—that tie things together. No single World view can ever capture the whole truth. Only by applying multiple and temporary metaphours can we gain a rounded (if still incomplete) picture of the World. However, to acknowledge this axiom is not the same as saying life is meaningless. Indeed, even if life is meaningless in some cosmic sense, we can and often do construct meaning, drawing it from decent social relations and picturing ourselves as part of a larger drama—the coherent unfolding of history. In building Fourth Wave civilization, therefore, we must go beyond the attack on loneliness. We must also begin providing a framework of order and purpose in life. For meaning, structure, and community are interrelated preconditions for a livable future. In working toward these ends, it will help to understand that the present agony of social isolation, the impersonality, structurelessness, and sense of meaninglessness from which so many people suffer are symptoms of the breakdown of the past rather than intimations of the future. It will not be enough, however, for us to change society. For as we shape Forth Wave civilization will in turn shape us. A new psycho-sphere is emerging that will fundamentally alter our character. And it is to this—the personality of the future—that we next turn. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
However, let us return to our theme of vocation and develop it a step further. Perhaps the young fellows really want to do something, that is, something worthwhile, for only a worthwhile achievement finishes a doing. A person rests when one has finished a real job. (The striking illustration of this is that, statistically, the best mental health used to be found among locomotive engineers, and is now found among air-line pilots! The task is useful, exacting, it sets in motion a big machine, and when it is over, it is done with.) If the object is important, it gives structure to many a day’s action and dreaming—one might even continue in school. Unfortunately our society balks us, for it simple does not take seriously the fact, or the possibility, that people want this; nor the philosophic truth that excepts in worthwhile activity there is no way to be happy. For instance, in a standard questionnaire for delinquents, by Milton Barron, in a hundred headings there do not appear the questions, “What do you want to be? What do you want to work at? What do you want to achieve?” (But Donald Taft’s Criminology, which Barron is adapting, has the sentence: “Absence of vocational interest at the age when it is normal…is tell-tale of a starved life.”) In despair, the fifteen-year-olds hand around and do nothing at all, neither work nor play. Without a worthwhile prospect, without a sense of justification, the made-play of the Police Athletic League is not interesting, it is not their own. They do not do their school work, for they are waiting to quit; and it is hard, as well shall see, for them to get part-time jobs. Indeed, the young fellows (not only delinquents) spend a vast amount of time doing nothing. They hang around together, but do not talk about any thing, nor even—if you watch their faces—do they passively take in the scene. Conversely, at the movies, where the real scene is by-passed, they watch with absorbed fantasy, and afterward sometimes mimic what they saw. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
If there is nothing worthwhile, it is hard to do anything at all. When one does nothing, one is threatened by the question, is one nothing? To this insulting doubt, however, there is a lively response: a system of values centering around threatened grownupness and defensive conceit. This is the so-called “threatened masculinity,” not in the sense of being called a girl, but of being called, precisely, “boy,” the term of insult to some cultures. With this, there is an endless compulsion to prove potency and demand esteem. The boys do not talk about much of interest, but there is a vast amount of hot rhetoric to assert that oneself is “as good as anybody else,” no more useless, stupid, or cowardly. For instance, if they play a game, the interest in the game is weak: they are looking elsewhere when the ball is served, there are lapses in attention, they smoke cigarettes even while playing handball. The interest in victory is surprisingly weak: there is not much glow of self-esteem. However, the need for proof is overwhelming: “I won you, didn’ I? I won you last week too, didn’ I?” During childhood, they played games with fierce intensity, giving themselves as a sacrifice to the game, for play was the chief business of growth, finding and making themselves in the World. Now when they are too old merely to play, to what shall they give themselves with fierce intensity? They cannot play for recreation, since they have not been used up. The proving behaviour is endless. Since each activity is not interesting to begin with, its value does not deepen and it does not bear much repetition. Its value as proof quickly diminishes. In these circumstances, the inevitable tendency is to raise the ante of the compulsive useless activity that proves one is potent and not useless. (This analysis applies equally to these juveniles and to status-seeking junior executive in business firms and on Madison Avenue.) It is not surprising then, that, as Frederic Thrasher says in The Gang, “Other things being equal, the imaginative boy has an excellent chance to become the leaders of the gang. He has the power to make things interesting for them. He ‘thinks up things for us to do.’” At this point let us intervene and see what the Official Spokesmen say. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Come before the Father in prayer, wearing the breastplate of righteousness. Then you can stand in the throne room and say, “Father, I stand before You because of the righteousness of Your Son Jesus Christ. I come boldly before You without fear or condemnation or a sense of inferiority.” Someone may say, “You mean you think you are not inferior to God?” I did not say I was not. It is His righteousness that is not inferior. I am a partaker of that righteousness. (A Corinthians 5.21.) The Word says I am a joint-heir with Jesus. Do you think Jesus is inferior? We are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. God’s righteousness cannot be inferior or unworthy. When you put all this armour on, you will have on God’s clothes. When you stand before the devil to resist him, he thinks God is inside that armour and He really is. (John 14.23.) With God’s armour on, Satan does not see you; he sees God’s clothes. However, the minute you raise up your helmet and say, “I prayed, but it is not working out” or “I do not feel healed,” Satan knows that it is not God because He does not talk that way. Put on the prayer armour. Gird your loins with the Truth for this part holds all the armour in place. If you do not have the Truth, you are defeated going somewhere to happened! If you do not have the Truth, you do not know how to pray accurately. If you do not have the Truth, you will not know who you are in Christ Jesus. Prayer is your legal right to come to God’s throne, wearing the breastplate of righteousness and the helmet of salvation with your loins girt about with the Truth, your feet shod with the gospel of peace, holding up the shield of faith, and having the Sword of the Spirit in your mouth. “The heart of the wise teacheth one’s mouth,” reports Proverbs 16.23. Love animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble their joy, do not harass them, do not deprive them of their happiness, do not work against God’s intent. Humans, do not pride yourself on superiority to animals; they are without sin, and you, with your greatness, defile the Earth by your appearance on it, and leave the traced of your foulness after you—alas, it is true of almost every one of us! #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
O God, I thank thee for all the creatures thou hast made, so perfect in their kind—great animals like the elephant and the rhinoceros, humorous animals like the camel and the monkey, friendly ones like the dog and the cat, working ones like the horse and the ox, timid ones like the squirrel and the rabbit, majestic ones like the lion and the tiger, for birds with their songs. O Lord give us such love for Thy creation, that love may cast out fear, and all Thy creatures see in man their priest and friend, through Jesus Christ our Lord. I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions, and as a mist thy sins; return unto Me, for I have redeemed thee. Sing, O ye Heavens, for the Lord hath done it; shouted aloud, O depths of the Earth; break forth into singing, ye mountains and forest, and every tree therein; for the Lord hath redeemed Jacob, and doth glorify Himself in America. Our redeemer, the Lord of Hosts is His name, the Holy One of America. O America, that art saved by the Lord with an everlasting salvation, ye shall not be ashamed nor confused, World without end. And ye shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and shall praise the name of the Lord your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you; and My people shall never be put to shame. And ye shall know that I am in the midst of America, and that I am the Lord your God, and there is none else; and My people shall never again be put to shame. For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Behold is my salvation; I trust Him and I will not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and song; and He is become my salvation. Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation. And in that day shall ye say: Give thanks unto the Lord, proclaim His name, declare His doings among the peoples, record that His name is exalted. Sing unto the Lord, for He hath done gloriously; let this be made known in all the Earth. Sing for joy, O inhabitants of America; for the great is the Holy One of America in your midst. And it shall be said on that say: Lo, this our God in whom we placed our hope that He might save us; this is the Lord for whom we have waited; we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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It Was the Control Spirit–Shall I Never be Delivered from this Mystery?
The Christian Bible tells us plainly there will be a great increase in demon activity as we approach the end of human history. The Apostle makes specific reference to this in 1 Timothy 4.1. The Book of Revelation, chapters 16 and 18, predicts almost universal demonic domination in the final days of God’s judgments on the Earth. This surge of demonism will be amazingly deceptive, luring the masses and even converting nominal Christians. Veneration for the evil spirits will lead to depraved conduct, and the pinnacle of demonic achievement will be their control of World leaders. As incredible as it may seem, this revelation from the Word of God assures us that dependence on these unseen spiritual forces will increase even as scientific knowledge increasing. There is a lot of reality and power that evil spirits possess. Many people have become involved in communication with evil spirits, these spirits—both appealing and loathsome—enslave them, but Jesus Christ can set them free. There are people in this World that have firsthand experience dealing with spirits. Spiritualism is very attractive because it promises knowledge of the future and communication with dead loved ones. Many people will be influenced by demonic spirits in this way without realizing it. However, the only sure guide into the shadowy spirit World is the Christian Bible, and we neglect it at the peril of our souls. The person who denies the phenomena of spiritism today is not entitled to be called a skeptic, one is simply ignorant. A finial, clinching reason for our refusal to consider any of today’s seers as divinely inspired is our conviction that the gift of prophecy ceased when the Scriptures were completed. Prophets uttered truths they had received directly from God, and the Lord used this means of revelation during the years from the creation of man until the time of Malachi. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
From Malachi until John the Baptist can on the scene, Israel had not prophets. Then, in the brief period between Christ’s ascension and the completion of the gospels and epistles, the gift of prophecy was present in the Church. However, gradually the New Testament writings took the place of a prophetic ministry. The apostles were aware that God had given them special authority when they wrote, and that believers were to place greater value upon these gospels and epistles than so-called prophetic declarations. For example, although Paul was not speaking primarily of prophets, he definitely asserted the authoritative nature of his writings when he made the demand, “if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him,” reports 2 Thessalonians 3.14. Again, writing to the Christians in Corinth, he said that his words were they very commandment of God, and that they constituted the standard by which God’s people could evaluate the declarations of men considered to be prophets. “If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord,” reports 1 Corinthians 14.37.” The priority of these apostolic writing over the declarations of other humans who claimed to be prophets is further indicated by the apostle John as he brought the book of Revelation to a close. He know that he was writing the authoritative message of God, and therefore could issues this strong warning: “For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book; and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book,” reports Revelations 22.18, 19. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
No one claiming a prophetic gift had any right to tamper with the written Word. It is obvious, therefore, that the inspired writing of the apostles gradually superseded prophetic utterances in the early church. Special gifts like prophecy, knowledge, wisdom, healings, and tongues were gradually withdrawn, and in 1 Corinthians 13 Paul declared that the quiet, unselfish pursuit of love is a far more excellent path than that of always desiring the more spectacular activities. He continued, “whether there be prophecies, they shall be done away; where there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophecy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, the that which is in part shall be done away,” reports 1 Corinthians 13.8-10. When Paul writes these words, the New Testament as a whole was not yet in existence, but he declared that special gifts of the Holy Spirit such as prophecy and tongues would become a thing of the past. They would merge into the complete revelation of the New Testament and no longer be needed. They belonged to the childhood state of the Church; therefore, we conclude that the gift of prophecy cannot be in existence today. God has spoken in the Scriptures, and it is to them that we must turn to find His message to us. No one today can rightly claim that he speaks a message by direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit. We do not believe that anyone today who claims to receive visions directly from the Lord should be acknowledged as a spiritual leader. None of these so-called prophets are correct in every single prediction they make, and therefore they do not meet the test the Lord prescribed in Deuteronomy 18. Most of them are also guilty of disobeying the Biblical warnings of Paul against occultism. In addition, they tend to speak ambiguously and manifest an ignorance of what the Bible really teaches. Finally, we believe that we have logical, historical, and Biblical grounds for affirming that the gift of prophecy was temporary, and that it gave way and disappeared from the Church when the New Testament was completed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
In the year, 1663, a quaintly humorous story of a most persistent and troublesome ghostly visitant comes from the Ireland, though in this particular instance its efforts to right the wrong did not produce a lawsuit: the narrator was Mr. Alcock, who appears in the preceding story. One David Hunter, who was neat-herd to the Bishop of Down (Jeremy Taylor) at his house near Portmore, saw one night, as he was carrying a log of wood into the dairy, an old woman who he did not recognize, but apparently some subtle intuition told him that she was not of mortal mould, for incontinent he flung away the log, and ran terrified into his house. She appeared again to him the next night, and from that on nearly every night for the next nine months. “Whenever she came he must go with her through the Woods at a good round rate; and the poor fellow look’d as if he was bewitch’d and travell’d off his legs.” Even if he were in bed he had to rise and follow her wherever she went, and because his wife could not restrain him she would rise and follow him till daybreak, although no apparition was visible to her. The only member of the family that took the matter philosophically was Hunter’s little dog, and he became so accustomed to the ghost that he would inevitably bring up the rear of the strange procession—if it be true that the lower classes dispensed with the use of night-garments when in bed, the sight must truly have been a most remarkable one. All this time the ghost afforded no indication as to the nature and object of her frequent appearances. “But one day the said David going over a Hedge into the Highway, she came just against him, and he cry’d out, ‘Lord bless me, I would I were dead; shall I never be delivered from this misery?’ At which, ‘And the Lord bless me too,’ says she. ‘It was very happy you spoke first, for till then I had no power to speak, though I have followed you so long. My name,’ says she, ‘is Margaret—-. I lived here before the Wat, and had one son by my Husband; when he died I married a soldier, by whom I had several children which the former Son maintained, else we must all have starved. He lives beyond the Ban-water; pray go to him and bid him dig under such a hearth, and there he shall find 28s. Let him pay what I owe in such place, and the rest to the charge unpay’d at my funeral, and go to my Son that lives here, which I had by my latter Husband, and tell him that he lives a very wicked and dissolute life, and is very unnatural ad ungrateful to his Brother that nurtured him, and if he does not mend his life God will destroy him.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
David Hunter told her he never knew her. “No,” says she, “I died seven years before you came into this Country”; but she promised that, if he would carry her message, she would never hurt him. However, he deferred doing what the apparition bade him, with the result that she appeared the night after, as he lay in bed, and struck him on the shoulder very hard; at which he cried out, and reminded her that she had promised to do him hurt. She replied that was if he did her message; if not, she would kill him. He told her he could not go now, because the waters were out. She said that she was content that he should wait until they were abated; but charged him afterwards not to fail her. Ultimately he did her errand, and afterwards she appeared and thanked him. “For now,” said he, “I shall be at rest, and therefore I pray you lift me up from the ground, and I will trouble you no more.” So Hunter lifted her up, and declared afterwards the she felt just like a bag of feathers in his arms; so she vanished, and he heard most delicate music as she went off over his head. In the late 19th century, Mrs. Winchester used to have séances in the Blue Séance Room in her mansion, which was constantly being expanded and remolded for 38 years. It once stood nine stories high, had 500 rooms, and was approximately 65,000 square feet. Here is the transcript from one of her sessions: “I could hardly wait for the next séance to take place so I could talk to my departed husband….six more days seemed like an eternity. I had not doubt that William would be present, though we had failed on the first attempt. I had talked with the spirit World many times in in my forty-four years, just as I talked with anyone else. I had listened to the spirits give lectures, sermons, exhortations, and counsel to the construction crew assembled at the seances in my mansion. However, I never tired to talk with a dead person. My family, especially my mother’s relatives, had been involved with spiritualism for several generations. They came to the United States of America on the Mayflower. My father was a very religious mand. He often remarked that if any of his children were to die, he would become a spiritualist. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
“On March 7th 1881, my brave forty-four-year-old husband died, and soon afterward a family from New Haven, Connecticut, told me they had contacted the spirit of my dead husband and the he was eager to talk to me. I was very excited, and I agree to let the spiritus to come to my home at the appointed time for a séance in the Bule Séance Room. There were perhaps thirteen people gathered in my home for the séance. We sat quietly, meditatively, and expectantly. The medium sat at one end of our circle of chairs and led us in singing hymns and prayer. It did not seem strange to us to open the séance by saying the Lord’s Prayer. We even ended: ‘…in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.’ A prayer for a séance went like this: ‘Eternal God and Father of Lights, we gather as thy expectant children. We are eager to communicate with the spirit World and the spirits of our departed friends and loved ones. We pray that you would look favorably upon us. Bless us this night with communications from our friends in the spirit World. In the name of the great Father of Lights. Amen.’ Then we sang familiar church hymns such as: ‘Face to Face,’ ‘In the Garden,’ ‘Beautiful Isle of Somewhere,’ and ‘Nearer My God to Thee.’ While we were singing, the medium slumped into unconsciousness, and before long a strange voice spoke through the medium’s lips; it was the control spirit. ‘Good evening, my children. There are many of the departed here, and all are eager to speak with you. The spirit World welcomes you to another opportunity to contact your departed loved one.’ We listened eagerly to the spirit as the medium sat limply, eyes closed, in her chair. The spirit said that a family was present whose departed loved one wanted very much to speak with them, but since he had been in the spirit World so short a time he was still adjusting to his new spiritual dimension and would have to communicate the following week. That was a terrible disappointment, and the whole family could hardly wait until the next séance when we could contact my beloved husband. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
“At the second meeting we encountered another phase of spiritualism, the gold key séance (sometimes called a séance of vocal revelation). A metal key, made of solid gold, stood upright in a damp saucer on a table in the middle of the room. When the medium entered her trance, the solid gold key rose slowly from the table and dipped into a horizontal position. Eerily, it began spinning with a soft whir and moved around the room, stopping at intervals in midair. I sat rigid in amazement. I saw the floating key, but I could not believe it. The others in the séance seemed to accept the experience as a very common thing. The key went first to my father and then to other members of our family. And we heard a voice, supposedly my departed husband’s, but at first we could not distinguish the words. Then the key came to me. My first reaction was to grab it, and I snatched at the key, but it darted away with amazing swiftness. I tried again, but it moved faster than I did. The key finally settled directly in front of me, just out of my reach. Then the control spirit launched into a lecture about my unbelief, speaking through the unconscious medium. She said if I were to get anything for this meeting, I must conduct be patient. As my emotions subsided, the golden key hovered closer and closer to me until it was near my ear, the key was stroking my hair in the way my husband used to comb it. A voice flowed from the key saying, ‘I love you; I love you.’ It was supposed to be my husband’s voice, but it did not sound like him to me. Everyone else accepted it as William’s voice, but I was disappointed; it was not William. That was the first of many occasions when he supposedly spoke to the family, but I was never convinced. At later séances my niece and I were told we could become gifted spirit mediums. By following the instructions of the spirit voice in the séance of passivity we would in time be able to contact the spirits in our own home. My niece and I began to practice the séance of passivity for thirteen minutes each evening. During these periods we tried to blot out every conscious thought from our minds. Eventually we could sit for an hour and thirteen minutes without being distracted by a single conscious thought. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
“In one of the longer periods, the phenomenon finally took place that we had been waiting for. I witnessed the spirit taking control of my niece as she lost consciousness and a voice completely foreign to her soft contralto boomed out: ‘My child, be not afraid. You have done well. If you only believe, greater things than these you will do. Continue in this way, and the marvels of the spirit World will be revealed to you.’ With that, the spirit departed and my niece regained consciousness. She asked what had happened, and I told her the words of the spirit. She was thrilled! She had arrived at a coveted place of spiritual development, and from that time on we held séances in my mansion in private, with my young niece as the gifted medium. Some people say this is all a hoax, that spirits do not talk with human beings and that floating objects are mere trickery. I would agree that a great many of the eerie demonstrations we hear about are clever illusions, but I believe on the basis of personal experience and the plain words of Scripture that spirits of the invisible World do communicate with humanity and do wield supernatural power in our visible World. And the ominous truth is that these spirits are not from God, but fallen angles controlled by Satan. Their unholy mission is to lead human beings—by refined or gross means—away from dependence on God, their Creator, and they are active in spiritualist churches, séances, psychic phenomena, witchcraft, and idol-worship. However, some of these spirits are good and convey helpful messages. Yet, individuals and nations who reject God, no matter how educated and prosperous they are, fall prey to the other god, Satan.” Believe it or not, the key to the massive front door was made of solid gold and the keys for the other 2,000 doors of this Eight Wonder of the World filled two water buckets. One day, Mrs. Winchester stood at the sitting-room window, after the butler left her, looking at the dull grey of the January sky and the yellowing pastures of the dairy county. There was no rain, but also no gleam of sunshine. I always wanted a private tour of her mansion. My father was on the construction crew and he promised one day when Mrs. Winchester was away, I would get my chance. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
One morning Mrs. Winchester went off in her carriage for a trip to San Francisco, California. My father let me in the mansion and told me I could look around, but warned me not to touch anything and not to get lost. I walked through the beautiful jewel crested front doors, and they closed behind me. I did not think anything of it. However, suddenly, I stumbled, tripped over the carpet, and fell on my hands and knees, managing—and only just managing—to save the lantern which I carried from being extinguished in the fall. The floor of the mansion was very uneven in that part, and I had inadvertently walked into a sort of loose floor board, more or less I was pulverized. I rose and looked about me. evidently, I had strayed from the direct track, thanks to my old habit of indulging in reverie, and had mechanically taken a wrong turning among some of the many passages. The place where I now found myself was by no means similar to the part of the mansion that was in full yield, and from which I had wandered. Instead of being dry, airy, and full of life and bustle, the passage where I stood was damp, and quite silent, not a sound being audible except the drip, drip of blood that oozed through the roof in fifty places, and fell splashing into the little pools of bright red blood that lay among the bricks. The floor was of brick, not wood. It was plain that I was in some neglected corner of the mansion; it was plain, to, that I had lost my way. Now the warning my father gave me came back to me with unwelcome emphasis, and as I breathed with difficulty the clammy and heavy air of the mansion, a shudder ran through my whole frame. In the next instant, I rallied my courage, laughed contemptuously at my own fears, and stepped out manfully along the passage. I knew I must have entered the mansion from the right. But alas! On emerging from the hallway into a sort of square chamber, in which some rude benches, carved out of mahogany, were cut in the gleaming walls, I found that no less than thirteen openings gave access to different parts of the mansion, and I was fairly at fault. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
How I had strayed so far without paying any attention to the bearings of my heedless course, is what, perhaps, none but an absent man can understand; and I, unluckily, was an absent man. It was strange to be lost, or to roam in circles among the great hallways of this estate, and to be lost in what seemed to be an underground tomb, which had dank air and darkness for miles to come. I remarked, too, that the candle in my lantern would not last very long—from one to two hours perhaps, but certainly not longer. It was annoying, very annoying, to be left thus alone. I did not like to own to myself that it was dangerous. How strange it was, I thought, that I did not hear the very faintest sound from the scene of all those busy construction workers working on the Winchester mansion. I listened—listened intently. Not a sound; not so much as the faint hammer; not the welcoming sound of a human voice; not the tramp of one of those shaggy ponies that drew the wood. I had never before realized what the weight of solitude—enforced solitude—could be. I listened; I waited. Not the faintest indication that any other mortal but myself was below ground, reached my ears. Angry with my own fears, vexed with my own carelessness, that had brought me to this pass, I selected at hazard one of the passages opening into the mansion, and entered it, walking fast, but holding the lantern well in front, to avoid any fresh trip falls which might lie in wait for the unwary foot. The hallway was but some thirteen yards long, and then into two narrower corridors, the widest of which led me to a narrow pathway of tiny stairs that seemed to zigzag up the mansion. I entered it stooping, but soon found it was so dizzying that I should be obliged to proceed on hands and knees, if at all, so I retraced my steps: and, tracing them to another stairwell, and found myself atop of the stairs, but unable to proceed any further for the top was cut off by the ceiling. I was wondering aimlessly, as in a labyrinth, unless my candle was spent, and then I should be indeed in sorry case. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Already my feet were cold and wet with the tenacious brine; the cold moist air had brought back my cough, and I shivered in the chill atmosphere of the vault where were I stood. Yet, perhaps there were people near me, within earshot all the time, for I could not believe that the mansion had been suddenly deserted. I shouted, and shouted again, the many hallways and rooms giving back the sound of my voice with strange and sullen dissonance. Presently, though no answering call was returned, I saw a light, far off and dim, but rapidly advancing towards me along the gallery that lay on my left, and which was one of the six I have mentioned. Nearer and nearer it came; no flare of torches, but the steady gleam of a small lamp; and then, to my surprise, I saw that the human figure that soon became visible was not that of a construction worker. The light of the lantern fell faintly on the pale face, colourless as marble, but delicate and pretty enough, of a young and slender girl—a lady, evidently, by her dress, and whom I instantly conjecture to have been one of the staff. However, how she came there, and alone? Was she lost, like me? or—“Did you not call a minute ago? I can show you the way, if you like.” Common-place words these; but they were spoken with a peculiar quiet intonation, that impressed me in spit of myself. The voice was sweet and low, but almost solemn in its calm. There was something strange, too, in the composure and the unsmiling gravity of one so young, while her very presence in the out-of-the-way part the mansion perplexed me. My first idea was, that the young lady, like myself, had lost her way in the intricacies of the mansion; but this supposition her confidence of bearing seemed to contradict. No doubt she knew the mansion well, or she would scarcely have offered to guide me to safety. This was an additional proof the she could not have been one of the merry, rosy-cheeked servants in the mansion. Most likely, some young lady had entered the mansion to see the mysteries inside, and she was some resident in the neighbourhood. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Nonetheless, the beauty in this place was in the infinite variety of fantastic columns, some of pure white marble, others of mahogany, and shimmering gold wallpaper, that composed the walls. As the feeble light of the lanterns flashed on the pellucid surfaces and frail, some more elaborate in the intricacies of their mouldings than the than the Corinthian or Byzantine, I could not restrain my exclamations of surprise and delight. For a moment I forgot the cold, the damp, the discomfort, and said, half to myself: “What a wonderful sight! If a human artist had carved those delicate capitals and rich decorations, what a rush would there be to see his handiwork! But I dare say even the county handbook does not condescend to describe this place, which is worthy to be the palace of the king of gnomes.” “Few know of this place,” said my conductress, in the same measured, passionless voice as before. She had stopped when I stopped, and she stood motionless as a statue, and as pale as if she had been a figure hewn out of alabaster, rather than a creature of flesh and blood. It was the first word of the nature of a remark which had fallen from her, and I tried to draw her into conversation by descanting on the beauty of the singular grotto, and the spaciousness of the mansion. She said very little, but her reticence sis not seem to be caused by any poverty of intellect. There was, however, a peculiar want of warmth or enthusiasm, whether the subject were are or nature, in what little my fair guide could be induced to say. Nor was she by any means communicative as to herself. My attempts to discover whether she really lived in the neighbourhood, were quietly baffled, and when I said that “doubtless her friends would begin to be alarmed at her long absence for which I feared that my own stupid blundering was to blame,” she was merely bowed, and led the way as before. On we went, through a network of hallways, that only seemed to grow more Daedalian every moment, but through which my companion glided along the as unswervingly as if she held in her hand an unfailing clue. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Many of these galleries were evidently the work of man. In all, however, the air was heavy, chill, and moist, and blood dripped from the walls, and fell gurgling down hidden fissures into some unseen depths below. I was confident that I had passed none of these places that day, and began to suspect that my guide was leading me a long round, so as to shew me all the lions of the mansion, instead of taking a short-cut to the workings. At another time, this desire to impress a stranger with a full notion of local marvels would have amused me; but my cough got worse; I shivered, and longed for the excursion to come to a close. Yet there was an awkwardness in suggesting this. I ventured on a safe remark. “It is bitterly cold,” said I, with a shudder, for the damp seemed to be piercing to the very marrow of my bones. “Do you not find it so?” “Very cold!” She said no more; but those two common-place words were spoken in a voice that awed me, somehow, in spite of myself, and seemed to freeze me into silence. On we went, and I trusted that we may be approaching the work-part of the mansion, for the candle in my lantern was reduced to a mere morsel, and must soon be burned out. However, ill as I felt, and hard as it was for my weak lungs to endure the unwholesome air, I almost forgot this in my perplexity as to my conductress. I could not make her out at all. I have met with romantic young ladies, silly young ladies, sensible young ladies, even haughty and vain young ladies, but never with anyone like my guide. Why was she leading me thus, what I felt must be a circuitous course through the mansion? Why—She came to a dead stop, slowly-turned, and confronted me. The hood of her grey cloak, an old-fashion article of attire, such as I had not seen for many years, was drawn over her head, and it threw her pretty face partly into shadow; but her eyes were bright and clear, though there was something in their cold steady look that made me shiver afresh, as if the air of the mansion had grown even more icy and oppressive than before. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
“Tell me about yourself. Tell me what you are going to do. What are your plans, I mean,” she said in the same manner as before, like a sleepwalker unconsciously uttering words that volition does not prompt. I laughed, and blurted out some could-be witty rejoinder on my own good-fortune in having inspired so charming a person with sufficient interest in my fate to suggest the question; but the flippant words died away on my lips half spoken, as she waved her hand, not impatiently, not coquettishly, but with a calm dignity of bearing that matched well her bloodless cheek and the carriage of her proud head. “You are to sail in the Chester—is it not so?” said this singular girl, without a smile or a falter in her low but very distinctive voice. I owned the fact, in so slight surprise. I had not mentioned to no one at the Winchester Mansion the name of the ship in which my passage was taken. The idea of a mystification, of a trick, dawned upon me, but I was at a loss to guess how my beautiful nightmare of a guide could have obtained the information she evidently possessed. Did she know more of men than this? My name, for instance, my profession, and my reason for quitting the Bank of Italy? If so, at any rate she made no parade of her knowledge. She merely raised her hand for a moment—it was ungloved, and there were rings of price sparkling on the thin white fingers—and her eyes seemed to gather a new expression of sadness and warning as she said: “Beware of the Chester! If you love your life—and on, it is bitter to die young—do not sail in that ship.” Slowly the hand she had lifted in warning fell to her side, and holding up the lamp as before, she turned away, and preceded me along the galleries. I followed her, perplexed, half angry, half alarmed. I began to fear that I was the sport of a mad woman. And then a new fancy sized me. Perhaps I myself might be delirious, and the mansion, the endless galleries, and my beautiful nightmare guide, were visions of a disordered brain, a sweet dream or a frightful nightmare, from which I vainly strove to awake. Presently, it occurred to me for the first time that my new-found friend’s feet made no sound as they trod the wooden floor, and twisted stairways. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Certain it was that she moved firmly and swiftly on, without any sign of difficulty or fatigue, while I stumbled and slipped, slipped and stumbled, and at times found it hard to keep up with her. However, as regarded the noiselessness of her tread, I could not solve the doubt. If I stopped, she stopped too, not after a pause, but instantly. And I heard nothing but my own labouring breath and hacking cough, and the sound of my own weary feet. A little while, and even this was forgotten in a new source of apprehension. I had for some time vaguely conceived the idea that, as in labyrinth, we were walking in a circle; and gradually I began to fancy that I had seen this or that sofa and parlour table or that mahogany arch before, and that I had passed through some of the corridors at least once before. However, suspicion was changed to certainty when I suddenly espied, lying on the ground in one of the galleries, one of my own gloves. I had dropped this glove some time before, for I had missed it soon after the arrival of the Unknown. As I picked it up, I glanced keenly around me, and thought I recognized the opening that led into the hall of fires. I was right; in another moment I had followed my mysterious guide into the hall of fires itself. More than an hour’s weary toil, for my candle was all but spent, had brought us back to the point from which we had started. I was angry at last; all my involuntary awe for my strange conductress was lost, and I stamped my foot hard upon the floor as I asked if she had been amusing herself at my expense, or whether she, too, were unaware of the topography of the mansion, and had misled me by accident. I spoke in wrath, and almost in menace; but there was no reply, save one long moan, as from a child in pain, that rang sadly through the mansion. I turned my head, but I could see nothing; and when I again confronted what I now deemed my treacherous guide, a sort of mist seemed to dim my eyes, and I saw, or thought I saw, her form grow faint and indistinct, fading and fading like breath upon a mirror, but with still the same calm face, the same grave look of sorrow and warning, until that too faded, and nothing was left opposite to me—nothing but a masonry wall. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
I sprang forward, incredulous, and touched the wall with my hand. As I did so, a repetition of the moaning cry made me start, and far down the passage where I had seen her first, I saw her again—the pure, pale outline of the young face, the tall slender form in the grey mantel, with the hood drawn over the head, the lamp shining in the outstretched hand. How came she there? “This is too much!” cried I passionately, and convinced that I was the victim of a trick, though how such a trick could have been effected, I did not care to consider. “I will not bear this juggling. I will not—” As I spoke, I darted forward to overtake the receding figure, and my foot tripping among the loose stones of the floor, as I ran, I fell heavily, crushing the lantern beneath me, and being instantly involved in the demonic darkness. Bruised and hurt, I have no heed to the pain of the fall from the door to nowhere, but sprang up, and strained my eyes in the direction where the lamp had been last seen. There was not a spark—not a sound. No light, no rustle of her dress, no faint sound of a distant footfall, nothing but darkness and silence. Eagerly I listened, eagerly I watched, but in vain. I tried to call aloud, but my tongues refused its office; and when I did raise a weak shout, I felt natural repugnance to the darkness deepen as no answer came. “She is doing this to frighten me,” I murmured; “she is hiding behind some bush. Whoever she is, she could be cruel enough to leave me here in the dark alone, to perish.” Silence, still silence. Any sound, even that moan, at which my very heartstrings had quivered, would have been better than that. Darkness, blank, blank darkness. I tried to shout, tried to group my way back in, but I was limp. I had not the strength to rise. Oh, it was very cold, cold and dark. This must be death. “A drop more brandy, Jim; the last did him good, I cannot feel any pulse yet, though. Do not crowd so about him, lads. Give him air! That is enough brandy, do not leave off the chafing the hands. He will come round!” #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
With my dulled ear, I heard these words, but scarcely understood them, and from between the half-closed lids my weak eyes could feebly distinguish a glare of torches, and several rough me in construction garb, and one in black with a kind, shrewd face—the doctor, no doubt. I saw all his, in a stupid sort of indifferent way, as if he had been a pageant, and then I seemed to sink down into a black sea of roaring water, and fainted for the second time. I was in bed at last. I had been in bed some days, very ill, and with a brain too deadened, and a frame too exhausted, to take note of time. When my senses returned, I asked what was the date, and hearing it, knew that the Chester had sailed without me, and that my passage-money was lost. It was not for weeks, and until my slow convalescence had ripened into recovery from the illness brought on by cold and the wetting I had experienced, that the doctor asked me how I came to separate myself from the construction crew, and to get lost in the Winchester Mansion. “It so happened,” he said, “that work was suspended unusually early on that day, as there was a wake at Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco, and the construction workers had a sort of half-holiday by annual custom. The mansion was therefore abandoned, and but for the lucky chance, that when you were missed at home, and inquiries were made, and intelligent boy, the son of another construction worker, declared that you have never left the estate at all, it is probable that no search would have taken place. As it was, long hours passed before a party started in quest for you; and it is fortunate they there were in time. The Winchester has witnessed more than one tragic incident, even in my day.” “To what do you allude, doctor?” asked I eagerly. “Three year ago, a young lady, a Miss Mary Seward, because separated from her friends, as you did, in that mansion,” answered the doctor. “I had not as yet settled in the district, and only know the details from report, and very imperfectly. I believe, however, that the poor girl, who had made one of a large family art, was bound on a visit to an aunt who lived in England; her own parents then residing at the Rengstoff House, near here. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
“The day was a stormy one; the carriages drove off in a heavy fall of rain; and I believe the missing one was understood by her mother to be staying at her aunt’s, and vice versa, for there was no alarm till help was impossible. The poor girl’s body was found—for she perished of cold and hunger in that maze of galleries. Bless me, how pale you look, my dear sir. Take some cordial, and lie down, and no more talking—not a word more, I insist.” I have no explanation of the above facts to offer. I have endeavoured, far from San Jose, to set down every detail of the occurrence as simply and succinctly as possible. If I could disabuse my mind of the ghastly doubt and horror that cling to it, and which haunt me when I recall the events of that day in the Winchester Mansion, I should be very thankful. The good doctor, when he heard my statement, did his best to convince me that what I saw was a mere hallucination, due to my disordered health and excited nerves. I wish I could think so; but further inquiries, made before I left San Jose, served to assure me that I was not the only person who was supposed to have seen the presence that I had beheld in the disused portion of the mansion. One word more. The warning was no idle one, though I doubt whether I should have been ashamed to have heeded it, had not illness chained me to my sick-bed. Before I was able to quit the Winchester Mansion, news came that a dense fog enveloped the iron and wood steamship City of Chester and its 106 passengers as they began the slow journey north from San Francisco Bay to Eureka. It was 1888, and family members bid their loved one’s safe passage from the Broadway dock as the vessel disappeared into the pea soup fog. Moments later, the Chester was split in two by a ship more than twice its size, killing 16 people—13 passengers, including two children and three crew members—and becoming the bay’s second-worst maritime disaster. Some people may believe all spirituals are evil and trying to harms us or that they are demonic, but it seems some are good and really trying to save our lives. Perhaps some of these spirits are our guardian angels. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
Winchester Mystery House
What a lovely weekend for a bit of mystery👻 winchestermysteryhouse.com
I Felt, My God, I Could Not Face this thing!
There are risks and costs to a program of action. Make sure that what you aspire to accomplish is worth accomplishing, and then throw your whole vitality into it. Excellence in education is the key to our nation’s future. Celibacy, of course, is a fundamental dimension of moral purity, and it provides disciplines that enhance mental and spiritual qualities. This allows one to sublimate the creative force into a God-directed, selfless love, the chaste joy of longing for the untouched beloved, a pure passion much like the agape ideal of many early Christian nuns. The focus on celibacy and the conservation of the creative force, allows the source of one’s spiritual power and their mystical ability to partake in God’s transcendental nature by transforming one’s energy into spiritual energy. Celibacy, therefore, is a critical instrument for achieving spiritual goals. All people are souls coupled with physical bodies, and they exist withing the chronological context of historical cycles of moral and physical decline. At the beginning, the ages were perfect and pure. Men and women were equal, and neither adversity nor affliction existed. The principal cause of this flawlessness was the absence of pleasures of the flesh. However, pleasures of the flesh entered the scene. Gradually, these Godly folk deteriorated, morally and physically, until corruption and torment prevailed. Heaven became hell, and the fleshly desires of the body came to dominate the World. Hand in hand with the degeneration of human standards came the bondage of humans, enslaved by another’s lust. The goal of the celibates is to end this cycle and purify themselves on Earth so they may be reborn at or soon after the pristine beginning of each successive cycle. They wish to be liberated from sinful births rather than rebirth itself. The only was they can achieve this is by renouncing the evil that is pleasures of the flesh and adopting complete celibacy. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Celibacy promises enormous reward. To begin with, it fulfills the theological condition for assuring perfect future births. It also relives people from the chains of marriage. Cleansed of pleasures of they flesh, some find their true spiritual identities and such off their ties with the ungodly, material World. It religious terms, it promised unheard-of opportunities that allowed individuals to move to positions of power. Inspired with these new ideas, people explained to their significant other that they should live together chastely, loving each other with a pure and spiritual devotion. Pleasures of the flesh, conversely, has overpopulated and made a slum of the planet. Some liken pleasures of the flesh as to foraging about in a sewer. Pleasures of the flesh love has no vindicative features, either. True love is loving someone’s essence—one’s soul. Pleasures of the flesh expends previous energy. Lust renders people powerless and demands for its fulfillment. Celibacy allows people to be pure and liberates individuals from bondage and frees them to achieve the enormous power of absolute chastity. Ethics is treated separately only as a matter of experience. Morality is grounded in our essential being. In this respect, these principals of ethics stand in continuity with traditional Roman Catholic natural law ethics and other forms of moral realism. What is morally right and good is the realization through action of human natural potentialities. These ethics are not judgmental, but verge on intuitionism because of its appeal to the “silent voice” of conscience about essential nature. Ethics on this point deals with how to specify the precise relation between casuistry, that is, reasoning about moral cases, and claims about human nature. If we are going to reason rightly about moral cases, must we assume something about the nature of human beings? #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
If we cannot reach agreement about the nature of human life or its good—a consensus difficult to reach in wildly pluralistic societies—does this invalidate casuistic thinking? Theologians and philosophers currently have attempted to server the connection between casuistry and claims about human nature. Ethics, while itself deficient on matters of casuistry, challenges this move by questioning the point of morality itself. If morality is about the realization of human potentialities, the come conception of human nature seems required in addressing practical moral questions. The demand on the casuist is either to show that this is not the point of morality so that no claim about human nature is needed in ethics or, conversely, to provide a different account of human nature, such as the found in traditional natural law ethics. Morality, then, is grounded in our essential being. What is means, is that morality finds its source in God as the ground and power of being. Ethics is in this respect necessarily theological in character. However, this raises two questions. First, how is the idea of God related to some conception of what is morally good? That is, even if one grants the claim about the religions character or morality, it is another question to ask about the content of claims about God and goodness. How does a conception of the good, whether grounded in claims about human nature or historically specific beliefs, relate to Christian ideas about God and agape? Some moral theorists argue that in ethics we need only a thing theory of the good, because the point of the moral life in a pluralistic society is just relations between persons rather than establishing the human good. At issues then are the substance of claims about the human good, the status of those claims, their place in ethics, and the relation between those claims and discourse about God. This leads to the second question: Given the fact of moral diversity on this planet, can one sustain the claim that morality is theistic? #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Indeed, is that claim actually needed in ethics? Is an appeal to agape morally adequate in our time? Put differently, the concern to combat moralism and relativism must be rethought in terms of the reality of moral pluralism and also of debates about how to understand moral goodness. The final challenge to this thought poses to theological ethics is at the level of basic moral problems. The moral problem is the fragmentation of life; the moral act is a victory of self-integration against forces that lead to human estrangement. This means that the power to act is essential to how one conceives of the human good because only through exercise of power in action is life realized. Now in our time, technology has radically increased human power to the point that we can alter the environment and even the human species. This makes the reality of power and human responsibility basic to contemporary ethical reflection. These concerns have been addressed in matters of terms of the dominance of technical rationality in the modern World and also theologically by understanding the term God as symbolizing the power of being itself. The question that remains open, however, is the extent to which claims about rationality and the symbol God can contribute to current ethical reflection on the reality of human power and the demands of responsibility. Thus one challenges theological ethics in terms of patterns of practical moral reasoning, the relation between claims about God and those of moral goodness, and also the contribution of theological discourse to reflection on human power and responsibility. Any assessment of these ethics in terms of the history of thought or contemporary ethical reflection must engage one’s work on each of these points. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
God as the Ground and Aim of our being has been transformed into a multiplicity of laws, partly doctrinal and partly ethical. The moral “yoke” that Jesus wished to make easy had only been made heavier, and the message of grace has largely been lost, despite the numerous liturgical prayers for the forgiveness of sins. They do not express the vision that appears in Paul’s Letters and John’s Gospel, or is expressed in the seventh petition of the Lord’s Prayer—“save us from the evil one”—namely, the image of a demonic power ruling the universe and driving humans into separation from God and into hostility against Him. The prayers for forgiveness have, for many people, only the function of relieving the uneasy conscience produced by trespasses against traditional and often absurd rules of behaviour, mostly a prohibitive character. However, they do not express the great paradox, that there is a reunion with the eternal “Ground of our being” without “right” action on our part, without being “good people,” or the “people of good will.” Therefore, despite liturgical formulae, hymns, and the reading o lessons from the Pauline Epistles, the message of grace has been lost. Grace as the power of accepting the person who is unacceptable, and of healing the person who is mortally sick, has disappeared behind the preaching of the religious and moral laws. It is understandable that people, in view of this graceless moralism turn to secular ethics. However, when they find nothing more than the logical analysis of ethical theory, they turn easily to a cynical relativism or to a totalitarian absolutism in ethics, each often a consequence of the other. The question that is implicit in this situation is: Can we point to something that transcends both graceless moralism and normless relativism in ethical theory and moral action? #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
The response of Christianity is the message that a new reality has appeared with the coming of the Christ, a power of being in which we can participate, and out of which true thought and right action can follow, however fragmentarily. We find analogous affirmations in other religions and even in secular movements of an implicitly religious character, such as nationalism, socialism, and liberal humanism. Being precedes action in everything that is, including man, although in man as the bearer of freedom, previous action also determines present being. This answer stand in opposition to both moral legalism and amoral lawlessness. It affirms morality and points beyond it to its religious foundation. If morality is intrinsically religious, as religion is intrinsically ethical, neither is dependent on the other, and neither can be substituted for the other. Power is protean. When, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States of American and the Soviet Union squared off against each other, the power of each was a function of bombs, ships, missiles, planes, tanks, armored divisions. These were the factors that each had to reckon with as it braced itself for struggle. However, within each nation the enormous power, respectively, of Kennedy and of Khrushchev was charismatic, depending upon the ability of each to inspire belief that one dividually did possess those magical powers which the peoples of those countries had as children experienced in their fathers and now unconsciously imputed to their leaders. When a profound patriotic passion is aroused, it will make people weep, and evokes and shapes in them a mood of fervent devotion and self-sacrifice. As people listen, more and more will they want to go into the battle field. It is considered a great honor to die for such a powerful leader. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
Most significant power is composite, being both instrumental and charismatic. Instrumental power is that which accrues in consequence of competence at the work of the World—the growing of wheat, the building of houses, the designing of an airplane, the composing of a sonnet. The smaller the extent of power, the more likely it is to be instrumental. The greater the power, the more likely it is to be charismatic. Many of the greatest World leaders have held power primarily by virtue of their ability to embody protection from our deepest fears and gratification of our primitive and grandiose fantasies, and perhaps not at all by virtue of competence at directing the affairs of a nation. Indeed, some such leaders, far from being competent to govern, lead the nations for which they are responsible straight to destruction. Once nature was the danger and the challenge. The cave drawings of Stone Age man bear witness to his preoccupying concerns with animals as a source of food and as a source of danger. The ability to elude these animals, to capture or to kill them, was the locus of power. Now anyone can shoot a rifle, no animal poses a threat, the ability to fell a charging elephant wins us no fame, perhaps even contempt, and we know that we may, if careless, destroy animals utterly. Most significant power now is power over people. The ability to win the respect, the belief, the support, the allegiance, the following, the obedience, of people—this is power. Morality, law, and custom comprise the rules by which the group expect us, as individuals, to live. These rules allow for a modest accumulation of power by way of instrumental competence. If we respect the rules, we cannot hope for more. We shall be conformists, the salt of the Earth but never its giants. A more venturesome order of normality calls for one to be as free in pursuit of power as a prudent, though often but nominal, regard for rules will permit. With less than that prudent regard, one is likely to land in disfavor or in jail—though sometimes, with a little luck, an adventurous thug may become a ruler. With more than a prudent regard one is disabled in the race. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
Neurotics are those who are crippled in the pursuit of power by internal constraints, impediments built into character by childhood experience. All of us start out weak in the hands of the strong, and a parent inclined to exploit that discrepancy can teach a child that any transgression of rules will yield pain and humiliation. Such an early education can bring it about that in later life, long after the tyrant is dead, any tentative reaching for power will be aborted by anxiety. The awareness of vulnerability prompts one to look about carefully, to take the measure of things. It leads to knowledge, is essential to good judgement. Without it one’s vision of one’s self and the World is determined, not by the way things are but by one’s will, one’s desire. When power is absolute, distortion is extreme; the real World is replaced by fantasy. When one possesses greater power than any despot of the past, one will ask for ultimate power: Every individual will henceforth follow this person’s personal order of suffer death. The congressional deputies will enthusiastically and unanimously approve the measure. One will now, legally, be above any law. That is why it is important that we do not have one party with a supermajority. However, people are so unwillingly to talk about politics to the extent that they ignore what is going on, and this can eventually become the result. So empowered, and thereby more and more out of touch with the reality one is imperiously undertaking to shape and to control, and with no compunction to heed the advice of one’s general, who are in touch, one will proceed to make those disastrous mistakes which will led to the destruction of the army and the loss of the war. Nothing within the state impedes the pursuit of power by the state. Empires expand. Any of them, are it able, will encompass the World. They go as far as they can, stop only where the lines of communication and supply are stretched too thin, where the conduits of power can no longer deliver effective force. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
In the individual, however, morality is a brake and may at any point set a limit. A truly Christian position calls for the abnegation of power, requires one to give all one has to the poor, to be meek, to love one’s enemy, to turn the other cheek. A measure of the instinctual force of the drive for power is given by the rarity with which such an ethic has in fact been practiced. The other internal obstacle is fear. One can go quite far in the acquisition of instrumental power without struggling with another human being and hence without encounter fear, power growing as a function of one’s kill in becoming a good pianist, carpenter, bookkeeper, or surgeon. However, the point is reached eventually beyond which any further gain can be achieved only in struggle with another person, in defeating or besting or outmaneuvering someone. In such contest one is vulnerable, there is no sure win. One may show one’s self a fool, may be humiliated. Fear may become so intense that one’s life comes to be structed around it. Whoever arranges for oneself an isolated life (a write, an artist, a forest-fire watcher, a drawbridge keeper) or a vocation with built-in advantages over the people with whom one deal (a psychoanalyst, and anesthesiologist) is likely to be the who feels keenly the danger of pursuing power through interpersonal struggle. The hurdy-gurdy plays, and around and around they go, the charioteer, the legionnaire, the cuirassier, up and down, sailing around, the president, the foreign minister, the chiefs of staff, varnished faces frozen in arrogance and disdain, the bombardier, the cavalryman, the machine gunner, around and around, as the band plays on. When the oppressed take up arms and rebel, they do so in the name of principles that asset basic human rights and so constitute an insurgent morality which justified the overthrow of the existing order. The existing order has a morality of its own, an establishment morality, which holds that the security and welfare of each individual are contingent on the state, that the state therefore is owed allegiance, that its laws must be obeyed, its leaders respect it. It labels the leaders of the rebellion as traitors, criminal, fanatics, and will crush them if it can. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
As rebels confront government troops, so insurgent morality confronts established morality. If government troops prevail, the insurgent morality is discredited, disappears. If the rebels are victorious, the establishment morality is discredited, succeeded by the insurgent morality. In the latter event the insurgent morality comes to be allied with power, becomes the new establishment morality, ancillary to the safeguarding and expansion of power. In this new role it sanctifies power, reassures the now newly oppressed that their oppression is in the nature of things, perhaps ordained by divine will, that no protest is indicated but rather patience and cooperation, that all must make sacrifices, that the leaders act for the welfare of all, that laws must be obeyed. Thus a morality which began as protest against power becomes the servant of power. The insurgent morality in its insurgency declares that power is corrupt and tends to corrupt everyone and everything allied to it; and when the revolution succeeds, it proves the truth of its indictment by corrupting first those exalted principles under whose banners it rode to power, along with the warriors who bore them. The striking way in which the modern World is moving toward its doom is not accidental but predetermined. Yet this terrible inevitability is not imposed from without by arbitrary power. It arises from within, from the World’s own characteristics. During the First World War, a civilization ridden by pleasures of the flesh which had sought intense pleasures found intense pain. Did it learn the implicit lesson? No! It plunged more wildly than ever in the quest for joy involving pleasures of the flesh, only to find still worse agony in the Second World War. The more it has wasted the gift of life, the creative force, the more it has lost the essence of life, blood. The creative force of life is white blood. Nature has punished human’s careless dissipation of the one with a forced loss of the other. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
The time has come to teach the lesson of responsibility about pleasures of the flesh in clear words. If humanity refuses to learn and obey spiritual laws, the horror of a third World War, compared with which the second will be mere child’s play, cannot be escaped. It would be agreeable and pleasant to share such optimism about the non-inevitableness of war, but it would also be self-deceptive. When the terrors and horrors of one war fail to have the effect of arousing people to thinking for themselves instead of in a mass, that is to say, of seeking truth individually, then the war will repeat itself again and again. If the war comes, it will have been brought by the erring nations upon themselves. If the war is not to come, they must change their ideas and their actions now. Some believe that war might come in a few years’ time; it might also come in only one year’s time; but it would be folly to deny that it might not even come at all. If no efforts at all had ben made on both the physical and mystical planes to counteract the threatened conflict, it could have broken out in the Cuban crisis year. The situation is still an anxious one but it is not a hopeless one. Piety alone will not suffice to meet it, just as politics alone has already failed to do so. However, the mystical efforts are being kept up. War is not inevitable. No one knows the outcome of the tremendous struggle going on between the atheistic hate forces and the constructive love forces on the mental level. The intercessory and contributory meditations of a few knowledgeable sages afford whatever real hope exists today. If the peoples and leaders fail to respond to those contributions, they will then have to carry the responsibility for its destruction. It is folly not to see that war is inevitable, folly to blind oneself deliberately to what is coming merely because one dreads it. While our human interest and nature shudder at the though of such war, our human wisdom and insight have no doubt it will take place. The dander is not only that a Third World War will come, but that it will come during an inconvenient time. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
None of the wars which humankind have hitherto suffered was Armageddon, for the last war was fought out fully and extended its devastations only in three continents and partly on the fourth, but the fifth was not affected in the same way. When Armageddon comes, it will devastate five continents. The mass of people does not take to truly spiritual concepts. Extroversion, egoism, and preoccupation with personal or Worldly affairs keep out any interest or attention in such concepts. Only the crushing shock of atomic war will provide an impulsion toward them from without. Even the new polarization of attitudes which is emerging as a consequence of the war, is confused rather than clear-cut. The ghastly tragedy of this confusion would show itself at its very worst in Armageddon. In the Second World War the issues between good and evil were clear-cut and easily discernible. However, in the Third World War they would be confused, chaotic, and mixed. It does not require much perceptiveness to perceived the inevitability of Armageddon. This fear haunts millions today and is one of the impulsions to the search for spiritual comfort, in one group, and the search for forgetfulness in pleasures, with the larger group. We may face the tragic inevitability of a Third World War with fear and gloom or with calm and resignation. Many suicide attempts are preceded by a change in mood. The change may not be severe enough to warrant a diagnosis of mental disorder, but it does represent a significant shift from the person’s past mood. The most common change is an increase in sadness. Also common are increases in feelings of anxiety, tension, frustration, anger, or shame. In fact, the key to suicide may be “psychache,” a feeling of psychological pian that seems intolerable to the person. Suicide attempts may also be preceded by shifts in patterns of thinking. Individuals may become preoccupied with their problems, or mood will not change. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Some clinicians believe that a feeling of hopelessness is the single most likely indicator of suicidal intent, and they take special care to look for signs of hopelessness when they access the risk of suicide. Many people who attempt suicide fall victim to dichotomous thinking, viewing problems and solutions in rigid either/or terms. Indeed, the “four-letter word” in suicide is “only,” as in “suicide was the only thing I could do.” In the following statement a woman who survived her leap from a building describes her dichotomous thinking at the time. She saw death as the only alternative to her pain. “I was so desperate. I felt my God, I could not face this thing. Everything was like a terrible whirlpool of confusion. And I though to myself: There is only one thing to do. I just have to lose consciousness. That is the only way to get away from it. The only way to lose consciousness, I thought, was to jump off something good and high.” Studies indicate that as many as 60 percent of the people who attempt suicide drink alcohol just before the act. Autopsies reveal that about 25 percent of these people are legally intoxicated. In fact, considering that coroners are more likely to classify deaths as accidental when they detect high alcohol levels, the excessive use of alcohol just before death by suicide is probably much higher. Such statistics suggest to many clinical researchers that alcohol often helps trigger suicidal behaviour. A variety of factors may account for this relationship between alcohol use and suicide. Alcohol’s disinhibiting effects may allow people who are considering suicide to overcome the fears that would otherwise restrain them. Alternatively, alcohol may contribute to suicide by lowering an individual’s inhibitions against violence and helping to release underlying aggressive feelings. Yet another possibility is that alcohol further impairs a suicidal person’s judgment and problem-solving abilities. Research suggests that the use of other kinds of drugs may have a similar tie to death by suicide, particularly in teenagers and young adults. A high level of heroine, for example, was found in the blood of a popular musician at the time the individual died by death from suicide. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
Holiday effect—studied in countries throughout Europe indicate the suicide rates tend to drop before Christmas and Easter but then increase after those holidays. Seasonal violence—although findings are sometimes mixed, many studies suggest that suicides committed by violent methods are highest during the spring and lowest in the late fall. Most common killings—more suicides (31,000) than homicides (23,000) are committed in the United State of America each year. Yet, economically and vocationally, a very large population of the young people are in a plight more drastic than anything so far mentioned. In our society as it is, there are not enough worthy jobs. However, if our society, being as it is, were run more efficiently and soberly, for a majority there would soon not be any jobs at all. There is at present nearly full employment and there may be for some years, yet a vast number of young people are rationally unemployable, useless. This paradox is essential to explain their present temper. Our society, which is not geared to the cultivation of its young, is geared to a profitable expanding production, a so-called high standard of living of mediocre value, a so-called high standard of living of mediocre value, and the maintenance of nearly full employment. Politically, the chief of these is full employment. In a crisis, when profitable production is temporarily curtailed, government spending increases and jobs are manufactured. In “normalcy”—a condition of slow boom—the easy credit, installment buying, and artificially induced demand for useless goods create jobs for all and good profits for some. Now, back when the pandemic started, when the stimulus attempted by hook or crook to put people back to work and give them money to revive a shattered economy, there was an outcry of moral indignation from the conservatives that many of the jobs were “boondoggling,” useless made-work. It was insisted, and rightly, that such work was demoralizing to the workers themselves. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
It was insisted, and rightly, that such work was demoralizing to the workers themselves. It is a question of a word, but a candid critic might certainly say that many of the jobs in our present “normal” production are useless made-work. The tail fins and built-in obsolescence might be called boondoggling. The $64,000 Question and the busy hum of Madison Avenue might certainly be called boondoggling. Certain tax-dodge Foundations are boondoggling. What of business lunches and expense accounts? fringe benefits? The comic categories of occupation in the building trades? the extra stage hands and musicians of the theater crafts? These jolly devices to put money back to work no doubt have a demoralizing effect on somebody or other (certainly on me, they make me green with envy), but where is the moral indignation from Top Management? Supposed we would cut out the boondoggling and gear our society to a more sensible abundance, with efficient production of quality goods, distribution in a natural market, counterinflation and sober credit. At once the work week would be cut to, stay, twenty hours instead of forty. (Important People have already mentioned the figure thirty.) Or alternately, half of the labor force would be unemployed. Suppose too—and how can we not suppose it?—that the automatic machines are used generally, rather than just to get rid of badly organized unskilled labor. The unemployment will be still more drastic. (To give the most striking example: in steel, the annual increase in productivity is 4 percent, the plants work at 50 percent of capacity, and the companies can break even stop producing at less than 30 percent of capacity. These are the conditions that forced the steel strike, as desperate self-protection.) Everybody knows this, nobody wants to talk about it much, for we do not know how to cope with it. The effect is that we are living a kind of lie. Long ago, labor leaders used to fight for the shorter work week, but not they do not, because they are pretty sure they do not want it. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Indeed, when hours are reduced, the tendency is to get a second, part-time, job and raise the standard of living, because the job is meaningless and one must have something; but the standard of living is pretty meaningless, too. Nor is this strange atmosphere a new thing. For at least a generation the maximum sensible use of our productivity could have thrown a vast population out of work, or relieved everybody a lot of useless work, depending on how you take it. (Consider with how little cutback of useful civilian production the economy produced the war goods and maintained an Army, economically unemployed.) The plain truth is that at present very many of us are useless, not needed, rationally unemployable. It is this paradoxical atmosphere that young persons’ grow up. It looks busy and expansive, but it is rationally at a stalemate. A new civilization is forming. However, where do we fit into it? Do not today’s technological changes and social upheavals mean the end of friendship, love, commitment, community, and caring? Will not tomorrow’s electronic marvels make human relationships even more vacuous and vicarious then they are today? For example, so many people are impressed by the new BMW IX M60, which can change exterior paint colors by the push of a button, and also has the technology to heal the kidney grill if it is injured. Nonetheless, these are legitimate questions. They arise from reasonable fears, and only a naïve technocrat would brush them lightly aside. For if we look around us, we find widespread evidence of psychological breakdown. It is as though a bomb had gone off in out communal “psycho-sphere.” We are, in fact, experiencing not merely the breakup of the Second Wave techno-sphere, info-sphere, or socio-sphere but the crack-up of its psycho-sphere as well. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
Throughout the affluent nations the litany is all too familiar: rising rates of juvenile suicide, dizzying high levels of alcoholism, widespread psychological depression, vandalism, and crime. In the United States of America, emergency rooms are crowded with “potheads,” “speed freaks,” “Quaalude kids,” “coke sniffers,” “heroin junkies,” “fentanyl fires,” “molly malfunctions,” “ecstasy electrocutes,” “lean limps,” and not to mention people having “nervous breakdowns.” Social work and mental healthy industries are booming everywhere. In Washington a President’s Commission on Mental Health announces that fully one fourth of all citizens in the United States of America suffers from some form of severe emotional stress. And a National Institute of Mental Health psychologist, charging that almost no family is free of some form of mental disorder, declares that “psycological turbulence is rampant in an American society that is confused, divided and concerned about its future.” It is true that spongy definitions and unreliable statistics make such sweeping generations suspect, and it is doubly true that earlier societies were such sweeping generations suspect, and it is doubly true that earlier societies were scarcely models of good mental health. Yet something is terribly wrong today. There is a harassed, knife-edge quality to daily life. Nerves are ragged, and—as the scuffles and shootings in subways or on gas queues suggest—tempers are barely under hair-trigger control. Millions of people are terminally fed up. They are, moreover, increasingly hassled by an apparently swelling army of heavy breathers, kooks, flakes, weirdos, and psycho whose antisocial behavior is frequently glamorized by the media. In the West at least, we see a pernicious romanticization of insanity, a glorification of the “cuckoo nest” inmate. Best-sellers proclaim that madness is a myth, and a literary journal springs up in Berkeley decided to the notion that “Madness, Genius, and Sainthood all lie in the same realm, and should be given the same name and prestige.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Meanwhile, millions of individuals search frantically for their own identities or for some magic therapy to re-integrate their personalities, provide instant intimacy or ecstasy, or lead them to “higher” states of consciousness. By the late 2000’s a human potential movement, spreading eastward from California, had spawned some 8,000 different “therapies” consisting of odds and ends of psychoanalysis, Eastern religion, experimentations with pleasures of the flesh, game playing, and old-time revivalism. In the words of one critical survey, “these techniques were neatly packaged and distributed coast to coast under like Mind Dynamic, Arica, and Silva Mind Control. Transcendental Meditation was already being peddled like speed reading; Scientology’s Dianetics had been mass-marketing its own popular therapy since the fifties. At the same time, America’s religious cults got into the swing, fanning out quietly across the country in massive fund-raising and recruitment drives.” More important than the growing human-potential industry is the Christian evangelical movement. Appealing to poorer and less educated segments of the public, making sophistical use of high-powered radio and television, the “born again” movement is ballooning in size. Religious huckster, riding its crest, send their followers scrambling for salvation in a society they picture as decadent and doomed. This wave of malaise had not struck all parts of the technological World with equal force. For this reason, readers in Europe and elsewhere may be tempted to shrug it off as a largely American phenomenon, while in the United States of America itself some still regard it as just another manifestation of California’s fabled flakiness. Neither view could be further from the truth. If psychic distress and disintegration are most strikingly evident in the Untied States of America, and especially in California, it merely reflects the fact that the Fourth Wave has arrived a bit earlier than elsewhere, causing Third Wave social structures to topple sooner and more spectacularly. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Indeed, a kind of paranoia has settled over many communities, and not just the United States of America. In Rome, Turin, and even in America, terrorists stalk the streets and secretly are employed in many communities. They have become like the old day klan, where many of their members hold jobs in the TV new media, at law firms, in the courthouses, in law enforcement, property management and the supermarket. They are everywhere. In Paris, and even in once peaceful London, muggings and vandalism increase. In Chicago, San Francisco, and Downtown Sacramento, elderly people are afraid to walk the streets after the street lights come on. In New York, schools and subways crackle with violence. And back in California, a magazine offers its readers a supposedly practical guide to “handguns and gun courses, attack-trained dogs, burglar alarm in door and outdoor home surveillance audio and visual, personal-safety devices, self-defense courses and computerized security systems that update homeowners on their mobile devices if fire or other danger is detected.” There is a sick odor in the air. It is the smell of a dying Third Wave civilization. Thank God, I found out Satan is no match for the believer who knows his authority, and position in Jesus Christ! When you are born again, you become the righteousness of God and a joint-heir with Jesus Christ. All that Jesus has is yours. His righteousness is imputed to you. “For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him,” reports 2 Corinthians 5.21. He hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in Heavenly places in Christ Jesus,” reports Ephesians 2.6. When you stand before Satan, he does not see you—he sees the authority of Jesus. The Word says you are the righteousness of God, created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God ordained. We have sung those old unbelieving songs so long that we thought it was true. “Jus a weary pilgrim, struggling through this World, I know not today what tomorrow will bring, shadows, sunshine or rain.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
Do not just show up for work. Do not just go through the motions. No, be passionately fulfilling your destiny. That is the way we should be. Have some enthusiasm. Choose to be happy; live with excellence and integrity, and put a spring in your step. Put a smile on your face, and let the World know that you are enjoying the life God has given you! If you want to see God’s favor, do everything with your whole heart. Do it with passion and some fire. Not only will you feel better, but that energy will spread, and soon other people will want what you have. Do you want your life to make an impact? You can change the atmosphere of your home or your entire office with a little bit of enthusiasm. You may have to live or work around people who are prone to being pessimistic, who tend to drag you down. However, do not let them throw mud on your shine. Do not their lack of enthusiasm squelch your passion. If you live with a deadbeat spouse, make a decision tht you are going to be happy and enthusiastic anyway. If you work around people who are always negative, try to overcome that negativity by being optimistic, encouraging, and uplifting. Polish your shine more than usual to make sure the glow does not go out. When everybody else is down and defeated, when you are all alone with nobody nearby to encourage you, simply encourage yourself. Your attitude should be: It does not matter what anybody else does or does not do, I am going to live my life with enthusiasm! I am going to stay on fire. I am going to be aglow. I am going to be passionate about seeing my dreams come to pass. Stay full of zeal. Stay passionate about seeing your dreams come to pass. Stay on fire and aglow. Whatever you do, do it with enthusiasm! The Holy Bible says, “If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land,” reports Isaiah 1.19. Notice, we have to be more than obedient; we must be willing—willing to do the right thing, willing to live with a good attitude and with enthusiasm. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
God does not want you to drag through life defeated and depressed. No matter what you have been through, no matter whose fault it was, no matter how impossible your situation may look, the good news is that God wants to turn it around and restore everything that has been stolen from you. He wants to restore your marriage, your family, your career. God wants to restore your joy and give you a peace and happiness you have never known before. Most of all, He wants to restore your relationship with Him. God wants you to live a satisfied life. God does not want you simply to feel a little better for a few days. No, God is in the long-term restoration business. He wants you to have a life filled with an abundance of joy, an abundance of happiness. God does not want you simply to survive that marriage. God wants to turn it around and restore you with a strong, healthy, rewarding relationship. God does not want your business to merely make it through the murky economic waters. He wants your business to sail and to excel! When God restores, He always brings you out better, improved, increased, and multiplied. He has a vision of total victory for your life! Hold on to that new, enlarged vision of victory that God has given you. Start expecting things to change in your favor. Dare to boldly declare that you are standing strong against the forces of darkness. You will not settle for a life of mediocrity! Raise your level of expectancy. It is our faith that activates the power of God. Let us quit limiting Him with our small-minded thinking and start believing Him for bigger and better things. You can start to day to live a successful life now. Remember, if you obey God and are willing to trust Him, you will have the best this life has to offer—and more! Animals, referred to by John Muir as our horizontal brothers, have long been recognized as essential to our development and well-being. Throughout history they have played a major role in human thought and culture. They inhabit our myth, fables, proverbs, and stories. There is a profound, inescapable need for animals among all peoples, for while animals have inhabited a World without people, we have never lived without the companionship, example, and practical help of animals. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
Today, because of the wide-spread pollution of air and water, the rapid expansion of cities, and the destruction of wilderness habitat, we are seeing an imminent and irreversible loss of untamed animal life. We can only guess at the future effect on our children of living in a World in which elephants exist only in zoos, the great whales no longer fill the seas with their song, and the remaining forests are silent. The fact that so many of us are increasingly isolated from the presence of animals may contribute to the growing despair we feel. Direct encounter with animals, meeting them eye to eye on their own ground, evokes a sudden wonder and respect. Their vivid life brings us alive to the source that creates and sustains all beings. Without such encounters we risk losing that part of ourselves which most deeply resonates with nature—the heart of compassion. In safety and in Bliss, may all creature be of a blissful heart. If our greatest loss with the animals have been to lose touch with the reality of their existence, our second loss has been to banish them from our minds. We assume they have nothing to teach us about the predicaments of our existence. We no longer know how to listen to the wisdom of the various four-legged, six-legged, finned and winged creatures that share our life on this Earth. We forget they are ancestors as well as kindred. Long before we existed, they worked out the round of life in thousands of variations, as though anticipating the experiments of human cultures. We must remember how to call upon our powers of empathy and compassion. We are asked to awaken to the plight of our animal relatives, to let their beauty and power come alive for us once more. Humanity has long been a pandemic on this Earth, on nature, and on the animals. We are members of a human family and society, but the presence of animal “others” enlarges our perception of the self beyond the city and opens us inward to that ground of being where live the lizard and monkey, the fish and the bear. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
These are our relations. These are, like us, offspring of the great mystery, and necessary parts of a balanced and living whole. Dear Lord in Heaven, thank You, Father, for giving me this amazing, incredible life, and for making it possible to enjoy every part of it, even the tough times. Thank You for being my Future; I know You have good things in store. I will praise You now and forever for all that You have done for me! O Lord, God of our fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, keep this forever in the inward thoughts of the heart of Thy people, and direct their heart unto Thee, for Thou being merciful, full of compassion, forgives iniquity and destroyest not; yea, many a time Thou turnest anger away. For Thou, O Lord, art good, and ready to forgive, and abounding in mercy unto all who call upon Thee. Thy righteousness is everlasting and Thy Law is truth. Thou wilt show faithfulness to Jacob and mercy to Abraham, as Thou hast promised unto our fathers from the days of old. Blessed be the Lord who day by day bears our burden. He is the God of Jacob be a stronghold unto us. O Lord of hosts, happy is the man that trusteth in Thee. Save, O Lord; O King, answer us on the day when we call. Blessed be our God hath created us for His glory, and hath separated us from them that go astray by giving us the Torah of truth, thus planting everlasting life in our midst. May He opened our hearts unto His Law, and with love and reverence may we do His will and serve Him with a perfect heart that we may not labour in vain, nor bring forth confusion. May it be Thy will, O Lord, our God and God of our fathers, that we keep Thy statutes in the World to come. May my soul sing Thy praise and not be silent; O Lord my God, I will give thanks unto Thee, forever. Blessed is the man that trusteth in Thee, O Lord, and whose trust Thou art. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord is an everlasting Rock. And they that know Thy name put their trust in Thee; Thou hast not forsaken them that seek Thee. Thou, O Lord, desirest for the sake of Thy righteousness to make the Torah great and glorious. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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Wise people never fall in love, so how are they to know when I first saw my Cresleigh Home, I felt my life begin. So open up your heart to Cresleigh Homes and feel the love rush in. I found you just in time, and changed my lonely life that day.
Eating at the Table of Demons—He Had Made a Bargain with the Devil!
Every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ must consider spiritism in all of its forms to be a grave danger, and one should strictly avoid it. One must obey without question the Biblical prohibitions of necromancy. A Christian who becomes involved in this kind of activity will bring harm to oneself and/or others. One should also warn unsaved friends and relatives, realizing they will become increasingly difficult to reach for Christ if they become enslaved by the powers of evil that are part and parcel of spiritism. You see, the Lord does not look upon dabbling in occultism as merely being deceived or cheated by a group of charlatans. A real power of Satan is at work in various forms of spiritism. Scriptures which show that God demanded the death penalty for necromancers, and the consulting of a medium was considered the same as seeking help from a false god. The power of Satan in heathenism is indicated by the fact that its leaders sometimes exercised supernatural powers. For example, the Egyptian sorcerers were able to duplicate some of the miracles of judgment wrought by Aaron and Moses. It is well to bear in mind that the heathen idols, though nothing but wood, stone, or metal in themselves, were the props by which men and women actually worshipped demons. This affirmation is clearly set forth in Paul’s letter to the Christians in Corinth. He told them that he recognized an idol in itself to be nothing, and that if they unknowingly ate food which the heathen had dedicated to an imaginary god, they would be doing no harm to themselves or anyone else. He went on to say, however, that they should not participate with pagans in their sacrificial festivals, for behind the whole system of idolatry was the kingdom of darkness. Though the heathen did not realize it, they were actually presenting offerings to the World of evil spirits. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
Therefore, Paul, wrote, “Behold Israel after the flesh. Are not they who eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar? What say I, then? That the idol is anything, or that which is offered in sacrifices to idols is anything? But I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God; and I would not that ye should have fellowship with demons. Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and cup of demons; ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of demons,” reports 1 Corinthians 10.18-21. In a very real sense, the person who tries to communicate with the dead through a medium is eating at “the table of demons.” By doing this one is repudiating “the Lord’s table,” for all the precious truths symbolized in the Lord’s Supper are denied by the spiritualists. Therefore, if a believer becomes involved in spiritism and then partakes of the Lord’s Supper, one is flagrantly disobeying the Scriptures and will be severely chastened. One has participated in the Lord’s Supper unworthily, that is, in an unworthy manner, and the apostle warned, “Wherefore, whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. However, let a human examine oneself, and so let one eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For one that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to oneself, not discerning the Lord’s body. For this cause many are weak, and sickly among you, and many sleep,” reports 1 Corinthians 27-30. In addition to making oneself subject to divine chastening, the Christian who disobeys God’s warning against necromancy may experience a deep depression, the inability to pray, the lost of interest in the Christian Bible, and a compulsive desire to engage in sins which formerly repulsed one. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
Missionaries and Christian workers from all over the World testify that they can often link deep spiritual depression, disturbing delusions, or paralyzing fears with an incident in which the patient or counselee attended a séance or engaged in some form of occultism. Dr. Alfred Lechler, who for thirty-five years served as the medical superintendent of the largest mental hospital in Germany, definitely believes that even today Satan manifests himself in supernatural ways when Christians tamper with the occult. The Swiss author and physician, Dr. Paul Tournier, also believes in the reality of demonic oppression as the result of disobedience to God in these matters. Dr. William S. Reed, a well-known Christian psychiatrist, declared, “Many mental and physical illnesses result, in fact, from demonic attacks. Exorcism must therefore be given a place in present-day psychiatry and medicine.” I am pointing this out to impress upon everyone who reads this essay the Biblical warnings against spiritism must be taken seriously by every Christian. It is interesting to note that true believers in Christ are especially vulnerable to Satanic attack when they attend a séance or engage in some form of occultism. Dr. Unger declares it to be a well-documented fact that some people who practice the occult sense little or no ill effects from their contact with mediums. Apparently Satan is pleased whenever someone adopts spiritism in any of its forms as his religion. Let every true believer take heed! Never, never engage in any practice by which efforts are made to contact the spirits of the dead! From the earliest times the Devil has made his mark, historically and geographically, in Ireland; the nomenclature of many places indicates that they are his exclusive property, while the antiquarian cannot be sufficiently thankful to him for depositing the Rock of Cashel where he did. However, here we must deal with a later period of this activity. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
A quaint tale comes to us from Co. Tipperary of a man bargaining with his Majesty for the price of his soul, in which as usual the Devil is worsted by a simple trick, and gets nothing for his trouble. Near Shronell in that country are still to be seen the ruins of Damerville Court, formerly the residence of the Damer family, and from which locality they took the title of Barons Milton of Schronell. The first of the family to settle in Ireland, Joseph Damer, had been formerly in the service of the Parliament, but not deeming it safe to remain in England after the Restoration, came over to this country, and taking advantage of the cheapness of land at that time, purchased large estates. It was evidently of this member of the family that the following tale is told. He possessed great wealth, and ‘twas darkly hinted that this had come to him from no lawful source, that in fact he had made a bargain with the with the Devil to sell his soul to him for a top-boot full of gold. His Satanic Majesty greedily accepted the offer, and on the day appointed for the ratification of the bargain arrived with a sufficiency of bullion from the Bank of Styx—or whatever may be the name of the establishment below! He was ushered into a room, in the middle of which stood the empty top-boot; into this he poured the gold, but to his surprise it remained as empty as before. He hastened away for more gold, with the same result. Repeated journeys to and fro for fresh supplies still left the boot as empty as when he began, until at length in sheer disgust he took his final departure, leaving Damer in passion of the gold, and as well (for a few brief years, at all events) of that spiritual commodity he had valued at so little. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
In process of time the secret leaked out. The wily Damer had take the sole off the boot, and had then securely fastened the latter over a hole in the floor. In the storey underneath was a series of large, empty cellars, in which he had stationed men armed with shovels, who were under instructions to remove each succeeding shower of gold, and so make room for more. Another story comes from Ballinagarde in Co. Limerick, the residence of the Croker family, though it is probably later in point of time; in it the Devil appears in a different role. Once upon a time Mr. Croker of Ballinagarde was out hunting, but as the country was very difficult few were able to keep up with the hounds. The chase lasted all day, and late in the evening Croker and a handsome dark stranger, mounted on a magnificent black horse, were alone at the death. Croker, delighted at his companion’s prowess, asked him home, and the usual festivities were kept up fast and furious till far into the night. The stranger was shown to a bedroom, and as the servant was pulling off his boots he saw that he had a cloven hoof. In the morning he acquainted his master with the fact, and both went to see the stranger. The latter had disappeared, and so had his horse, but the bedroom carpet was seared by a red-hot hoof, while four hoof-marks were imprinted on the floor of the horse’s stall. What incident gave rise to the story we cannot tell, but there was a saying among the peasantry that such-and-such a thing occurred “as sure as the Devil was in Ballinagarde”; while he is said to have appeared there again recently. Now on to another interesting case. What was Mrs. Winchester’s true motivation for devoting the second half of her life to building what is now known as the Winchester Mystery House? As a youngster, Sarah Winchester fasted normally for a devout little girl. She enjoyed her childhood, laughing and playing, often outside. By the age of five, she would genuflect and say a Hail Mary on each step of the staircase up to her bedroom. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
At six or seven, Sarah Winchester had a vision of Jesus Christ and several saints. For years, she mediated on what this might mean. She and her little friends started a sort of club in which they flagellated themselves with knotted ropes. Sarah’s role in the instigating this was an indication of the depth of her religiosity, but in that pious age, it caused little comment. At fourteen, Sarah envisioned a mystical marriage to Christ, a glorious ceremony attended by the Virgin Mary, John the Evangelist, Saints Paul and Dominic, and even King David, who carried the Psalter. Jesus was his own ring-bearer and tenderly slipped the pear-and-diamond-studded gold ring onto her finger. “Now I betroth you to me in a faith that will survive from this hour forward forever immutable, until the glorious Heavenly marriage, in perfect conjunction with me in the second eternal wedding,” he intoned, “when face-to-face you will be allowed to see me and enjoy me.” Overwhelmed, the new, fourteen-year-old Bride of Christ instantly pledged her virginity to her husband. Many people thought Sarah was too pretty and that she would provoke some kind of sexual scandal. Sarah relied mainly on the Holy Host for sustenance and usually swallowed only cold water and chewed bitter herbs, rarely food. Some people criticized Sarah, slandered as a secret eater and condemned as a witch. At the same time, her confessors and acolytes “understood” and revered her as a holy woman obedient to God’s command, however mysterious. Mrs. Winchester’s view of marriage—pleasures of the flesh could kill much faster than starvation, and with no benefits whatsoever for the victim. Mrs. Winchester was a celibate who joyfully sacrificed pleasures of the flesh for glorious rewards of the infinitely better next World. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
Several times her weakened heart temporarily stopped beating. Once when this happened, Sarah imagined that she saw Christ save her life by exchanging his own sacred heart for hers. She later exulted that He had often scooped her body up from the Earth and she had felt her soul in perfect union with God’s. Mrs. Sarah Winchester was known for being intelligent, resourceful, courageous, outrageous, and driven. She was the quintessence of a successful Bride of Christ. Through superhuman effort and careful strategy, she achieved success, power, and influence unimaginable to most women irredeemably destined for marriage and motherhood. Her celibacy, so arduously preserved, was the essential precondition on which this triumphantly ascetic woman built her stunningly successful career. Mrs. Winchester’s financial resources were virtually unlimited; upon her husband’s death she received several million dollars in cash and 777 shares of stock in the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Upon her mother-in-law’s death in 1897, Mrs. Winchester received 2,000 more shares, which me she owned just under fifty percent of the company’s stock. This provided her with an income of $33,487.71 (2022 inflation adjusted). Mrs. Winchester suffered greatly from arthritis in her later years. She passed away in her sleep from heart failure of September 5, 1922. Back in 1897, many people would walk 30 miles just to go and see the Winchester mansion. It was said to be under construction by a ghostly army. At one time, it stood seven stories tall. It was a glorious morning, the sky flooded with light, and a cool breeze blowing. For some distance the play lay along the mountain side, through pine woods and by cultivated slops where the Indian corn was ripening to gold, and the late hay-harvest was waiting for the mower. Then the path wound gradually downwards—for the valley through a succession of soft green slopes and ruddy apple-orchards, and there was the glorious Winchester mansion. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
One could see a beautiful castle, like something out of a fairytale. Looking up at the grand structure, there were patches of blue sky and golden shafts of sunshine, and small brown squirrels leaping from bough to bough; on the path leading up to the estate there was deep rich grass on either hand, thick ferns, and red and golden mosses, and blue campanulas. It was like the Garden of Eden. One could feel the strings of the primitive Adam; some vague longing for that idyllic life of the woods and fields that dreamers were in their inmost souls, insane enough to sign after as the highest good. It was the love of a country life, turned to immortal poetry. People always talked about how Mr. Winchester would have loved this estate, a lad of great promise whose health had broken down, and who had soon died of rapid consumption. Poor fellow. I sometimes fancy he might have lived, if only he had had his heart’s desire. When visiting the Winchester mansion, one cannot help but have one’s mind running on poor Mr. Winchester. Somehow, the grander the scenery gets, the more one keeps thinking ho he would have exulted in it. Meanwhile the sun blazed in the Heavens, and the light, struck back from white rock and whiter road, it was almost blinding. And still the hot air danced and shimmered before us; and a windless stillness, as of death, lay upon all the scene. Suddenly—quite suddenly, as if he had stated out of the rock—I saw a man coming towards us with a rapid and eager gesticulations. He seemed to be waving us back; but I was so startled for the moment by the unexplained way in which he made his appearance, that I scarcely took in the meaning of his gestures. “How odd!” I exclaimed, coming to a halt. “How did he get there?” He was dressed in a grey suit—his collar open, and his throat bare. He wore a Scotch cap with a silver badge in it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
Then he disappeared. I paused once or twice, and tried to conjure up the figure before my eyes, but in vain. Now inside the mansion, with every step that I took the mouth of the tunnel grew larger, and the depth of the shade within it more blacker and more mysterious. Then next moment, being within half a dozen yards from the next room, I distinctly heard a cool murmur of a distant waterfall; and the next moment after that, I had plunged into a tunnel in this catacomb of a mansion. It was like the transition from an orchid-house to an ice-house—from midday to midnight. The darkness was profound, and so intense the sudden chill, that for the first second it almost took my breath away. Looking down at my feet, I saw that the floor was an inch deep in blood running from wall to wall. In that instant, a great horror feel upon me—the horror of darkness and sudden death. Blindly, breathlessly, wildly, with the horrible grinding sound of the imprisoned waterfall of blood in my ears, and the gathering torrent at my heels! Never while I live shall I forget the agony of these next few second—the icy numbness seizing on my limbs—the sudden, frightful sense of impeded respiration—the blood rising, eddying, clamouring, pursuing me, passing me—the swirl of it, as it flashed passed be down the never-ending hallway—the rush with which it leaped out into the sunlight like a living thing, and dashed down the stairs. At that supreme instant, just as I had darted out through the echoing arch and staggered a few paces up the stairs, a deafening report, crackling, hurried, tremendous, like the explosion of a mine, rent the air and roused a hundred echoes. It was followed by a moment of strange and terrible suspense. Then, with a deep and sullen roar, audible above all the rolling thunders of the mansion round, a mighty wave of blood—smooth, solid, glassy, like an Atlantic wave on an English western coast—came gleaming up the mouth of the hallway, paused as it were, upon the threshold, reared its majestic crest, curved, trembled, burst in a cataract of foam, flooded the floors for yards beyond the spot where I was clinging, and rushed back again, as the wave rushes down the beach, hurled itself out the door-to-nowhere, and vanished in a cloud of mist. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
After this, the imprisoned crimson flood came pouring out tumultuously for several minutes, bring with it fragments of bones and gold, and filling the ground blow with debris; but even this disturbance presently subsided, and almost as soon as the last echoes of the explosion had died away, the liberated blood was rippling pleasantly along the fruit orchards, sparkling out into the sunshine as it emerged from the mansion, and gliding in a smooth continuous stream until it melted away into the soil. For myself, drenched to the skin as I was, I could do nothing. I was left about sunset, shivering and hungry. I narrowly escaped with my life from this “illusion” I experienced in the winding, twisting, emotional tunnels of the Winchester mansion. Some might deny Heaven and Hell as a series of spiritual planes through which the souls of the dead pass in an evolutionary process, but I believe one can experience both in the Winchester mansion. It is a place of great beauty and joy, but also a place of pain and suffering. Those who live most wickedly begin on the very lowest plane, and need a great deal of help from other spirits to advance to the next sphere. The individual who does not smoke, nor drink alcoholic beverages, is kind, honest, and lives a clean moral life, may begin on a higher plan than one who in intemperate or immoral. There are spiritists who attempt to communicate with the dead without any distinct reference to the Christian faith. They are commended for their honesty, for they do not try to give their practices a superficial religious window-dressing. They usually admit that they cannot understand what happens in their seances. They believe that certain psychically gifted people possess the power to exert an invisible and incomprehensible force through which they can contact the spirits of the dead. Though totally naturalistic, some even atheistic, many people believe in continued existence after death. Human beings are subject to special tensions just because they have been endowed with the ability to reflect upon themselves and their future, and many people cannot keep disquieting thoughts from haunting them from time to time. Thousands of words have been and will be written about the Winchester Mystery House and its Lady. However, the great question is yet to be answered—Why? Why? #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
Winchester Mystery House
Ever-changing and evolving, Mrs. Winchester’s Llanada Villa once stood seven-stories tall before the 1906 earthquake forced the top three floors to be removed.
🎟 link: http://ow.ly/lRyo50HjwWR
Between Christ and Satan in the Demon World of Today
It is difficult to say exactly at what point fear begins, when the causes of that fear are not plainly before the eyes. Impression gather on the surface of the mind, film by film, as ice gathers upon the surface of still water, but so often so lightly that they claim no definite recognition from the conscious Then a point is reached where the accumulated impressions become a definite emotion, and the mind realized that something has happened. When a medium is called upon to relay a message which supposedly comes the realm of the dead, one usually goes into a trance. This is a “condition in which a spiritualist medium allegedly loses consciousness and passes under the control of some external force, as for the supposed transmission of communications from the dead.” In a state of unconsciousness, the necromancer may obtain communication in the for of automatic writing, but it usually comes through verbal speech. Sometimes the phenomenon called “materialization” occurs. This is defined as the ability on the part of some mediums “to create from unknown materials outside of their own body, some visible, tangible, more or less highly organized new formations supplied with their own illumination (such as efflorescent substance) for which formations in many cases, the human body in part or in whole forms a pattern, and these materializations appear and disappear suddenly. Many reputable writers report that the materializations actually have been photographed and carefully studied. They are sometimes called phantasms, and seem to speak while the medium appears to be unconscious. When a materialization does not occur, the unconscious sounds exactly like that of the deceased person one has been attempting to reach. Many people have gone to a séance believing the whole idea to be fraudulent, but have become firmly convinced that they truly heard a loved one who had died. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Automatic writing is another baffling spiritisitic marvel. The mediums may, while in a trance, inscribe a paper with the exact handwriting of the deceased. At other times a pencil may write without being touched by the human hand or any apparent mechanical device. Then again, in some instances a phantasm does the transcribing. Of course, before we accept reports of this nature, we must recognize the possibilities of deliberate deceit, overwrought imagination, or inaccurate observation. If, on the other hand, one simply dismisses the testimony of intelligent, honest, God-fearing humans as having no value, one is not being fair. A further word of caution is in order. Christians may be tempted to conclude that these strange and unexplainable phenomena are proof of God’s existence. This is not correct because many of them may have a naturalistic explanation. Writings produced mysteriously in seances have been carefully examined by graphologist, and have even become the objects over which court battles have been fought. Spiritists usually attempt their alleged contact with the spirit World through a medium who enters what appears to be a trance, and receives some kind of communication in either verbal or written form. Undoubtedly some people who claim to have this ability are impostors, but hundreds of educated humans who have been closely involved in this activity or have conducted intensive investigation are convinced that extraordinary, perhaps supernatural, spiritual power is involved. However, those who believe the Holy Bible are certain that all necromancy is sinful and dangerous. As we look at the most considerable Evidence touching Florence Newton’s witchcraft upon Mary Longdon, for which she was committed to Youghall Prision, 24th March 1661, it is interesting to find that the following she bewitched one David Jones to death by kissing his hand through the Grate of the Prison, for which she was indicted at Cork Assizes. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
Elenor Jones, Relict of the said David Jones, being sworn and examined in open Court what she knew concerning any practice of Witchcraft by the said Florence Newton upon the said David Jones her Husband, gave in Evidence, that April last the said David, having been out all night, came home early in the morning, and said to her, Where dost thou think I have been all Night? To which she answered she knew not; whereupon he replied, I and Frank Beseley have been standing Centinel over the Witch all night. To which the said Elenor said, Why, what hurt is that? Hurt? Quoth he. Marry I doubt it is never a jot the better for me; for she hath kiss’d my Hand, and I have a great pain in that arm, and I verily believe she hath bewitch’d me, if ever she bewitch’d any Man. To which she answered, The Lord forbid! That all that Night, and continually from that time, he was restless and ill, complaining exceedingly of a great pain in his rm for seven days together, and at the seven days’ end he complained that the pain was come from his Arm to his Heart, and then kept his bed Night and Day, grievously afflicted, and crying out against Florence Newton, and about fourteen days after he died. Francis Beseley being sworn and examined, saith, That about the time aforementioned meeting with the said David Jones, and discoursing with him of the several reports then stirring concerning the said Florence Newton, that she had several Familiars resorting to her in sundry shapes, the said David Jones told him he had a great mind to watch her one Night to see whether he could observe any Cats or other Creatures resort to her through the Grate, as ‘twas suspected they did, and desired that said Francis to go with him, which he did. And that when they came thither David Jones came to Florence, and told her that he heard she could not say the Lord’s Prayer; to which she answered, She could. He then desir’d her to day it, but she excused herself by the decay of Memory through old Age. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
Then David Jones began to teach her, but she could not or would not say it, though often taught it. Upon which the said Jones and Beseley being withdrawn a little from her, and discoursing of her not being able to learn this Prayer, she called out to David Jones, and said, David, David, come hither, I can say the Lord’s Prayer now. Upon which David went towards her, and the said Deponent would have pluckt him back and persuaded him not to have gone to her, but he would not be persuaded, but went to the Greate to her, and she began to say the Lord’s Prayer, but could not say Forgive us our trespasses, so that David again taught her, which she seem’d to take very thankfully, and told him she had a great mind to have kiss’d him, but that the Grate hindered her, but desired she might kiss his Hand; whereupon he gave her his Hand through the Grate, and she kiss’s it; and towards break of Day they went away and parted, and soon after the Deponent heard that David Jones was il. Whereupon he went to visit him, [and was told by hum that the Hag] had him by the Hand, and was pulling off his Arm. And he said, Do you not see the old hang How she pulls me? Well, I lay my Death on her, she has bewitched me. Fourteen days languish he died. This concludes the account of Florence Newton’s trial, as given by Glanvill. It seems that the witch was indicted upon two separate charges, with bewitching the servant-girl, Mary Longdon, and with causing the death of David Jones. The case must have created considerable commotion in Youghal, and was considered so important that the Attorney-General went down to prosecute, but unfortunately there is no record of the verdict. If found guilty (and we can have little doubt but that she was), she would have been sentenced to death in pursuance of the Elizabethan Statute, section I. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
Many of the actors in the affair were persons of local prominence, and can be identified. The “Mr. Greatrix” was Valentine Greatrakes, the famous healer or “stroker.” He was born in 1629, and died in 1683. He joined the Parliamentary Army, and when it was disbanded in 1656, became a country magistrate. At the Restoration he was deprived of his offices, and then gave himself up to a life of contemplation. In 1662 the idea seized him that he had the power of healing the king’s-evil. He kept the matter quiet for some time, but at last communicated it to his wife, who jokingly bade him try his power on a body in the neighbourhood. Accordingly he laid his hands on the affected parts with prayer, and within a month the body was healed. Gradually his fame spread, until patients came to him from various parts of England as well as Ireland. In 1665 he received an invitation from Lord Conway to come to Ragely to cure his wife of perpetual headaches. He stayed at Ragley about three weeks, and while there he entertained his hosts with the story of Florence Newton and her doings; although he did not succeed in curing Lady Conway, yet many persons in the neighbourhood benefited by his treatment. The form of words he always used was: “God Almighty heal thee for His mercy’s sake”; and if the patient professed to receive any benefit he bade them give God the praise. He took no fees, and rejected causes which were manifestly incurable. In modern times the cured have been reasonably attributed to animal magnetism. He was buried beside his father at Affane, Co. Waterford. Some of his contemporaries had a very poor opinion of him; Increase Mather, writing in 1684, alludes contemptuously to “the late miracle-monger or Mirabilian stroaker in Ireland, Valentine Greatrix,” who he accused of attempting to cure an ague by the use of that “hobgoblin word, Abrodacara.”John Pyne the employer of the bewitched servant-girl, served as Bailiff of Youghal along with Edward Perry in 1664, the latter becoming Mayor in 1674; both struck tradesmen’ tokens of the usual type. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Richard Myres was Bailiff of Youghal in 1642, and Mayor in 1647 and 1660. The Rev. James Wood was appointed “minister of the gospel” at Youghal, by Commonwealth Government, at a salary of L120 per annum;in 1654 his stipend was raised to L140, and in the following year he got a further increase of L40. He was sworn in a freeman at large in 1656, and appears to have been presented by the Grand Jury in 1683 as a religious vagrant. Furthermore, it seems possible to recover the name of the Judge who tried the case at the Cork Assizes. Glanvill says that he took the Relation from “a copy of an Authentick Record, as I conceive, every half-sheet having W. Aston writ in the Margin, and then again W. Aston at the end of all, who in all likelihood must be some publick Notary or Record-Keeper.” This man, who is also mentioned in the narrative, is to be identified with Judge Sir William Aston, who after the establishment of the Commonwealth came to Ireland, and was there practising as a barrister at the time of the Restoration, having previously served in the royalist army. On 3rd November 1660 he was appointed senior puisne Judge of the Chief Place, and died in 1671. The story accordingly is based on the note taken by the Judge before whom the case was brought, and is therefore of considerable value, in that it affords us a picture, drawn by an eye-witness in full possession of all the facts, of a witch-trial in Ireland in the middle of the seventeenth century. In discussing the religious beliefs of people who seek to converse with the dead, we can distinguish between those who claim to be “Christian” and those who make no pretense of accepting historic Christianity. The distinction between these groups is sometimes made by using the term “spiritualist” to denote the ones who profess to believe the Bible, and designating the others as “spiritists.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
Believe it or not, after Mrs. Sarah Winchester lost her six-week-old daughter and husband, the distracted widow turned to spiritualism because she felt that she was haunted by spirits of the damned. Her husband, William Wirt Winchester was a man, a man of God. Celibacy had become Mrs. Winchester’s personal goal. It liberated her and fueled the spiritualist that sustained her in hopes of the eternal life she craved. Mrs. Winchester was always resplendent in luxurious clothes and bejeweled with bracelets, anklets, rings, and ropes of gold necklaces inlaid with pearls and precious stones. The fragrance of her perfume and cosmetics was pleasant. Mrs. Winchester’s beauty mesmerized everyone she came into contact with. God had inspired her to attend Center Church Praise House in New Haven, Connecticut. Mrs. Winchester felt at home in this church. She enjoyed the gospel. The sermon was so eloquent and moving that the floor was wet with the congregation’s tears. The Tiffany stained glass windows, which told the story of the Puritan settlers and how as they gathered under an oak tree, and Jesus led them to build the new Kingdom of God. Also, the Waterford crystal chandelier was a favourite her hers, the warm glow it provided made her feel the presence of God. There was also sumptuous music from the massive pipe organ that filled the air, while members sat in the beautiful ornate wooden pews praising the Lord. The exterior of the church was exquisite. It looked like a Roman palace. It was a traditional gorgeous red brick and white wood, adored with Corinthian pillars, and an amazing tower that reached to the Heavens as its focal point. However, this is when strange things started to happen. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
Mrs. Winchester noticed that the main floor of the church was raised up a few feet higher than the rest of the green. She was curious as to why. She went to the floor below, not without trepidation, and lite a candle, and discovered that underneath was a crypt. The church was built on top of an ancient cemetery with grave stones from the late 17th century to the early 19th century. The gravestones were left in their original position to be protected by the church’s foundation where a crypt, an enclosed chamber, around the burial ground was created. There were 137 grave stone that belonged to New Haven’s founders and earliest citizens. During her tour, Mrs. Winchester felt an intense spiritual energy, the colonial burial ground had been untouched. Mrs. Winchester always e practical views about spooks, but she had a vision of huntsmen—one of whom was untidily cutting the throat of a fallow deer upon the very grave of Reverend James Pierpont’s grave. She felt an awful and soul-freezing situation of horror and went back upstairs. Nothing much happened at the church dinner that night. However other worshippers, moved by Mrs. Winchester’s evident emotion, marveled in whispers about her. They said she must have been haunted by spirits and that is why she stumbled upon the secret crypt and the someone heard her conversing with the devil. A furious gust rattled the windows of the church, and she thought what a pity the congregation’s Christmas would be spent in such a climate. Days later, the Evil One appeared to Mrs. Winchester, pounding at her front door and shouting recriminations at Mrs. Winchester for stealing away his prize. She said a prayer, and the Evil One disappeared. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
Over the next week, Satan often reappeared, offering her jewels and riches to return to his service and moaning that she had jilted him. In response, she inventoried all her belongings and donated them to the church, her mentor, and a spiritual guide. Worldly possession would not longer matter. Mrs. Winchester intended to wed her newly widowed person to Jesus Christ as His bride, and nothing could deter her. However, the Devil would not stop using his infinitely subtle tactics and trickeries in manipulating her. After seeing that man’s dreadful face in the crypt of the church, it positively haunted her. That white skin, with the black hair brushed low over the forehead, was a thing he could never forget, and the dismembered body that lay near the deer. Foretelling her future, one seer warned Mrs. Winchester of all the countless thousands of departed souls slain by her husband’s rifles; she must protect herself and atone for such mass murder. She was told to plan a castle and continue its building indefinitely because as long was it was under construction she would live; cessation would prove immediately fatal. Mrs. Winchester moved to California, to the Santa Clara Valley, bought an unfished farmhouse. She hired an army of carpenters and work began; architect and foreman quit the first day. Jesse Evans had willfully speared the rumour among villagers that the Winchester mansion was haunted. No one would venture near the house except in broad daylight. The haunted Winchester mansion was part of the gospel of the countryside. One of the foremen who stayed on was William Cantelo. He occupied a separate Victorian house on the estate of the Winchester mansion with a few other men employed by Mrs. Winchester. The house was put in thorough repair and expansion, though not a stick of the old furniture and tapestry were removed. Floors and ceilings were relaid: the roof was made watertight again, and the dust of half a century was scoured out. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
The ground floor and first floors set a heavy timber door, strongly barred with iron, in the passages between the earlier farmhouse and the expansion of the mansion, so there had been a great deal of work done. However, workmen refused to remain after sundown. Even after the electric light had been put into the four story mansion, which was now adored with a nine-story tower, nothing would induce them to remain, though, electric light was death on ghosts. The legend of the Winchester’s ghosts had gone far and wide, and the men would take no risks. They went home in batches of five and six, and if anyone happened to be out of sight of one’s companion, even during the daylight hours, there was an inordinate amount of talking between one another. On the whole, though nothing of any sort or kind had been conjured up by their heated imaginations during their years of work upon the Winchester, the belief in ghosts was rather strengthened because men’s confessed nervousness, and local tradition declared itself in favour of the ghost of a man. The mansion was very large, some estimated that it must have been 50,000 square feet prior to the 1906 earthquake. Every inch of the walls, including the doors, were covered with tapestry, and remarkably fine Italian furniture. They key to the massive front door was made of solid gold and the other 2,000 doors of this Eighth Wonder of the World filled two buckets. It once contained 500 rooms. There are five different heating systems, three elevators, thirteen bathrooms. One rambling room has four fireplaces and five hot-air registers. There is a spiral stairway that has 42 steps, each two inches high. Other stairways melt into blank walls. A second story door opens into the great outdoors and a 20-foot step. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
There is a linen closet that has the area of a three-room apartment; a nearby cupboard is less than one-inch deep. A skylight is placed in the middle of a room, in the floor! Another floor is apparently a series of trap-doors. Exterior faucets project unexpectedly from under the second-story windows. The visitors must stoop through one door to enter, the next gives clearance for an eight-foot giant. Many stairway posts are upside down. And legions of ghost are said to lurk around every square foot of the mansion. All the furniture was well made, and of dark expensive rare wood. Even the looking-glass on the dressing-table in Mrs. Winchester’s bedroom is an old pyramidal Venetian glass set in heavy repousse frame of tarnished silver. Yet nothing could well have been less creepy than the glitter of silver and glass, and the subdued lights and cackle of conversation around the empty dinner table in the Venetian dinner room. Mrs. Winchester hoped by introducing such beauty into her estate would introduce a new and cheerful spirit, not only to her mansion, but would also break the curse and send the ignorant superstitions of the past into oblivion. Henry, the butler, after dinner one night, retired to pantry were the $30,000.00 gold dinner service and fine china and crystal were kept to make sure nothing went missing (that is where the name “Butler’s pantry” comes from. The butler would sleep in a large pantry to guard the contents.) He would read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and other fine authors until he felt ready to go off. Henry fumbled for the peart at the end of the cord that hung down inside the bed, and switched on the flight on the bedside lamp. Then sudden dazzled him for the moment. He felt under his pillow for his book with half-shut eyes. Then, growing used to the light, he happened to look down to the foot of his bed. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
His heart stopped dead, and throat shut automatically. In one instinctive movement, he crouched back up against the head-boards of the bed, staring at the horror. The movement set his heart going again, and the sweat dripped from every pore. He was not a particularly religious man, but he had always believed that God would never allow any supernatural appearance to present itself to man in such a guise and in such circumstances that harm, either bodily or mental, could result to him. However, in a moment, his life and reasoned rocked unsteadily on their seats. Leaning over the foot of his bed, looking at him, was a figure swathed in a rotten and tattered veiling. This shroud passed over the head, but left both eyes and the right side of the face bare. It then followed the line of the arm down to where the hand grasped the bed-end. The face was not entirely that of a skull, though the eyes and the flesh of the face were totally gone. There was a thin, dry skin drawn tightly over the features, and there was some skin left on the hand. One wisp of hair crossed the forehead. It was perfectly still. He looked at it, and it looked at him, and his brains turned dry and hot in his head. He had still got the pear of the electric lamp in his hand, and he played idly with it; only he dared not turn the light out again. Henry shut his eyes, only to open them in a hideous terror the same second. The thing had not moved. His heart was thumping like it was about to jump out of his chest, and the sweat cooled him as it evaporated. Another cinder tinkled in the grate, and a panel creaked in the wall. He reason failed him. For twenty minutes, or twenty second, he was able to think of nothing else but this awful figure, till there came, hurtling though the empty channels of his sense, the remembrance of the foremen and architect quitting on their first day. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
At last, Henry moved. How he managed to do it, he had no idea, but with one spring toward the foot of the bed he got within arm’s-length and struck out one fearful blow with his fist at the thing. It crumbled under it, and his hand was cut to the bone. With a sickening revulsion after his terror, Henry dropped half-fainting across the end of the bed. After he came to, there was utter quiet, but Henry seemed to hear something. He could not be sure, but at last there was no doubt. There was a quiet sound as one moving along the passage. Little regular steps came towards him over the hard teak flooring. He was speechless. He turned the light out, and fell forward with his own head pressed into the pillow of the bed. He then sank to his knees and put his face in the bed. Only he heard footsteps. Footsteps came to the door, and there they stopped. There was a rustling of moving stuff, and evil spirit was in the room. Mrs. Winchester had been awakened by the noise and he could hear her through the annunciator praying. Henry was cursing his own cowardice. Then steps moved out again on the oak boards of the passage, and he heard the sounds dying away. In a flash of remorse Henry went to the door and looked out At the moment later the passage was empty He stood with his forehead against the jamb of the door almost physically sick. “You can turn on the light,” he said, and there was no answer. By morning light that filtered past the curtains, he could see his way. There was nothing wrong in the room from end to end, except smears of his own blood on the end of the bed, the china hutch, and on the carpet. When he got upstairs to check on Mrs. Winchester, Henry heard sleet volleying against the window panes. And he thought to himself, “I must pack.” Mrs. Winchester was fine, she was brushing he lovely long locks and pretending nothing happened. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
And he did hear someone coming softly up their stairs. Henry stood still a moment on the landing to listen. It could not be Mrs. Winchester’s step, he thought; I am looking right at her. However, then the steps ceased suddenly and he heard no more. They were at least two flights down, and Henry came to the conclusion they were too heavy to be those of Angus the maid. No doubt they belonged to a foreman who had mistaken the floor. He went into his bedroom and packaged his bags as best as he could. Once or twice, however, he caught himself wondering who it could have been wandering down below, the floor was empty and unfurnished. From time to time, moreover, Henry was almost certain he heard a soft tread of someone padding about over the bare boards—cautiously, stealthily, as silently as possible—and, further, that the sounds bad been lately coming distinctly near. For the first time in his life he began to feel a little creepy. In the sitting-room, he was not pleased to hear again that stealthy tread upon the stairs, and to realize that it was much closer than before, as well as unmistakably real. And this time he got up and went out to see who it could be creeping about on the upper staircase at so late an hour. However, the sound ceased; there was no one visible on their stairs. And by this time, everyone was in bed and asleep—everyone except himself and the owner of this soft and stealthy tread. “My absurd imagination, I suppose,” Henry thought. “It must have been the wind after all, although—it seemed so very real and close, he thought.” Henry went back to his packing. It was by this time getting on toward midnight. With something of a start, Henry suddenly recognized the he felt nervous—oddly nervous; also, that for some time past the causes of this feeling had been gathering slowly in his mind, but that he had only just reached the point where he was forced to acknowledge them. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
It was a singular and curious malaise that had come over him, and he hardly knew what to make of it. Henry felt as though he were doing something that was strongly objected to by another person, another person, moreover, who had some right to object. It was a most disturbing and disagrreable feeling, not unlike the persistent promptings of conscience: almost, in fact, as if he were doing something he knew to be wrong. Yet, though he searched vigorously and honestly in his mind, he could nowhere lay his finger upon the secret of this growing uneasiness, and it perplexed him. More, it distressed and frightened him. “Pure nerves, I suppose,” he said aloud with a forced laugh. He was standing by the door of the bedroom during this brief soliloquy, and as he passed quickly towards the sitting-room to fetch them from the cupboard he saw out of the corner of his eye the indistinct outline of a figure standing on the stairs, a few feet from the top. It was someone in a stooping position, and with one hand on the banisters, and the face peering upwards toward the landing. And at that same moment he heard a shuffling footsteps. The person who had been creeping about below all this time had at last come up to his own floor. Who in the World could it be? And what in the name of Heaven did he want? Henry caught his breath sharply and stood stock still. Then, after a few seconds’ hesitation, he found his courage, and turned to investigate. The stairs, he saw to his utter amazement, were empty; there was no one. He felt a series of cold shivers run over him, and something about the muscles of his legs gave a little and grew weak. And so now, Henry saw nothing but the dreadful face of John Bender Jr. of the “The Bloody Benders.” Lowering at him from ever corner of his mental field vision; the white skin, the evil eyes, and the fringe of black hair low over the forehead. Henry utter a scream and, and drew back his hands as if they had been burn. No one ever heard from him again. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
When the Bender family fled town, their inn was investigated, and a secret room was found covered in blood. Upon further investigation, nine bodies were found on their property. Among one of them was Henry Clitz, Mrs. Winchester’s butler. It is believed the entire family performed the killings. Although John Jr. died during the escape, none of the other Benders were ever found. It was an awkward and disagreeable predicament, Henry found himself in. In his effort to find the brass button on the wall in the butler’s pantry, he nearly scraped the nails from his fingers, but even then, in those frenzied moments of alarm—so swift and alert were the impressions of a mind, keyed-up by a vivid emotion—he had time to realize the he dreaded the return of the light, and that it might have been better for him to stay hidden in the merciful screen of darkness. It was but the impulse of a moment, however, and before he had time to act upon it he had yielded automatically to the original desire, and the room was flooded with light. So many people praised the light, but often overlook the security and shelter that the darkness provides. Through the 38 years of residence, Mrs. Winchester’s employees remained fiercely and faithfully loyal, defending every eccentricity. Perhaps Henry’s betrayal attracted a force in the Winchester mansion that desired to consume his soul, and make him an eternal resident. Mrs. Winchester was deeply concerned with the welfare of her employees and their families. They were well paid and often additionally rewarded with gifts, even homes, real estate, transportation machines, and even lifetime pension. In truth, volumes could be written extolling her many virtues and justifying construction of the most beautiful and bizarre of all abodes. Still, the Question remains—Why? Why? The enigma of the Mystery House that tragedy and a rifle built is perhaps unanswerable. The present generation must weigh and draw its own conclusions about the Valley’s most interesting, most controversial, most unappreciated and surely our most mysterious First Lady! #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Winchester Mystery House
On today’s episode of 13 Days of Christmas we look back at other events that took place during the same year that Sarah spent her first Christmas on her San Jose Estate.
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com
One Would Think Happiness is Rare?
The trouble with some people is that when they get into trouble, they start acting like cannibals. With mood disorders so prevalent in all societies, it is no wonder that they have been the focus of so much research. Great quantities of data about these disorders have been gathered. Still, clinicians have yet to understand fully all that they know. Several factors have been closely tied to unipolar depression, including biological abnormalities, a reduction in positive reinforcements, negative ways of thinking, a perception of helplessness, and life stress and other sociocultural influences. Indeed, more contributing factors have been associated with unipolar depression than with most other psychological disorders. Precisely how all of these factors relate to unipolar depression, however, is unclear. Different factors may be capable of initiating unipolar depression in different persons. Some people may, for example, begin with low serotonin activity, which predisposes them to react helplessly and negatively, and enjoy fewer pleasures in life. Others may first suffer a severe loss, which triggers helplessness reactions, low serotonin activity, and reductions in positive rewards. Regardless of the initial cause, these factors may merge into a “final common pathway” of unipolar depression. However, culture influences many people’s health and belief system and has an effect on the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. Some cultures have specific expectations of each age group that differ greatly from those in mainstream American society. Because of this difference, all age groups are exposed to conflict or clashes that may increase the risk for development of mental illness. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Judging from the evening news and the spread of self-help books, one would think that happiness was rare. Ever psychologists seem far more interested in stuffing heartache. However, there is good news. A growing body of research indicates that most people’s lives are more upbeat than we think. In fact, 55 percent of adults in the United States of America say they laugh once an hour. In addition, most people around the World say they are happy—including those who are poor, unemployed, elderly, and disabled. Some say money buys happiness, well maybe not that much more. Wealthy people appear only slightly happier than those of modest means. Overall, only 1 person in 10 reports being “not too happy.” Although people are not happy every day, most seem to bounce back well from disappointments. Happy people also seem to remain happy from decade to decade, regardless of job changes, moves, and family changes. When treating people with unipolar depression, one method that seems helpful is to reintroduce clients to pleasurable events and activities. While reintroducing pleasurable events into a client’s life, the therapist also makes sure that the person’s various behaviours are reinforced correctly. Behaviourists have argued that when people become depressed, their negative behaviours—crying, complaining, or self-depreciation—keep others at a distance, reducing changes for positive reinforcement. To change this pattern, the therapist may use a contingency management approach, systematically ignoring a client’s depressive behaviours while praising or otherwise rewarding constructive statements and behaviour, such as going to work. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Although formal treatment is typically needed for severe depression, personal efforts such as going on vacation or spending time with friends can often make a significant difference for people who are struggling with mild depression. Research shows, for example, that regular exercise help prevent or reduce feelings of depression as well as other psychological symptoms. Life does not always turn out the way people want it to, you may end up living around people you do not care for and feel isolated and have no friends. You may want to get back to a lifestyle that is more conducive to your well-being. However, one thing that I find that helps, besides exercise and music is to some times just shut down and stop talking to people. Take some time to be quiet and work through the negative emotions and pray about them. Also, happy movies help. I had the TV on, while I was using my station bike, and had sworn off Christmas movies this year because you know, sometimes situations are ongoing and every year some expect them to be resolved, and they are not yet. However, I got stuck watching 12 Pups for Christmas (2019) Starring Charlotte Sullivan and Donny Boaz. It was such a great movie and I highly recommend it. It is all about being in the prime of one’s life and then facing one unexpected situation after another, but one can see how God used Erin’s (Charlotte Sullivan’s) pain to put her in a better situation that she could not even imagine. The movie is so charming that I found myself smiling and laughing while watching it. I really enjoyed how the people all liked each other, and worked together and were open and optimistic and honest. The film reminded me of a passage in the Christian Bible, “Now therefore, do not be afraid. I will provide for and support you and your little ones. And he comforted them [imparting cheer, hope, strength] and spoke to their hearts [kindly],” reports Genesis 50.21. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
The film 12 Pups for Christmas shows one how devastating life events can be and how nothing is promised, and things are not perfect, but if you keep the right attitude and keep persevering and being kind, the Lord will make things work in your favour. Although most of the variance in adult dysfunctions involving pleasures of the flesh is explainable by concurrent relational problems, some childhood interpersonal experiences may be viewed as distal contributory causes. Two such issues that are clearly rooted in family socialization are negative attitudes toward sexuality and extreme religious orthodoxy. Both of these are more psychological than interpersonal constructs. However, each can be viewed as a result of socialization in the family of origin, and each is related to the other. Children who are reared with extremely orthodox beliefs and values may view pleasures of the flesh as generally inappropriate and improper behaviour, unless it is explicitly enacted with the goal of procreation. Armed with such attitudes, some individuals might experience adjustment problems when paired with partners of differing beliefs and values. Related to this are negative attitudes toward pleasures of the flesh. Certain child-rearing practices and family environments may leave a child with a tendency to associate pleasures of the flesh with feelings of guilt and shame. Other family experiences may lead the child to link pleasures of the flesh with disgrace, emotional pain, or betrayal. To the extent that these negative attitudes, often learned in childhood, are durable through the adult years, impairment in functioning during pleasures of the flesh is a likely consequence. Another early interpersonal experience that can impair adult pleasures of the flesh functioning is childhood sexual abuse, especially when this abuse is intrafamilial. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
Multiple studies show that people who experienced such abuse as children are more likely than those who have not to experience dysfunctions in pleasures of the flesh as adults. Two important caveats must be noted, however. First, these same studies show that childhood sexual abuse is situation in a matrix of aversive childhood and family-of-origin experiences (such as excessive conflict, low cohesion, poor boundary regulation, physical abuse, and parental neglect), and that it is associated with a similarly diverse matrix of adult psychosocial problems (such as separation, divorce, relational dissatisfaction, substance abuse, depression, somatization, and anxiety, to name just some). Each of these on its own may be sufficient to interfere with functioning in pleasures of the flesh. Disentangling and understanding the effects of sexual abuse in particular continues to be a challenge for mental health research. Second, there is no deterministic relationship between childhood sexual abuse and adult functioning. Some children who experienced sexual abuse go on to develop happy and healthy interpersonal relationships, and are indistinguishable from their nonabused peers. Undoubtedly, this resilience is an amalgamation of personal and socioenvironmental factors that allows them to minimize and overcome the ill effects of this trauma. These caveats notwithstanding, childhood sexual abuse is thought to disrupt attachment to caregivers, trust in others, the development of self-esteem, and a sense of mastery. When a survivour of such abuse is confronted with new developmental tasks, such as management and negotiation of adult pleasures of the flesh, these liabilities may be manifested in a variety of psychosocial problems—including pleasures of the flesh dysfunctions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
Psychogenic sexual dysfunctions tend to coexist with other mental health problems that also have an obvious interpersonal basis. However, unlike problems such as depression or schizophrenia, for example, the comorbidity of sexual dysfunctions has not been as thoroughly researched. This is perhaps due in part to the difficulty of accurately assessing and diagnosing these problems and the fact that such assessment requires ruling out physiological origins. Studies of people identified as having a psychogenic sexual dysfunction reveal a 30 to 35 percent incidence of others psychological problems. One common problem that is concomitant to sexual dysfunction is depression. As an example, the odds ratio for erectile dysfunction has been estimated at 1.82 in the presence versus absence of depressive symptoms. A study of couples seeking therapy for sexual dysfunction indicated that rates of depression, anxiety disorders, and eating disorders were all elevated in contrast to those in the generational population. Lifetimes rates of affective disorders (major depression, dysthymia, and bipolar disorder) among the participants in this study were 21.5 percent and 38.3 percent for men and women, respectively. Associated rates of anxiety disorders were 19.9 percent and 37.3 respectively. Thus, problems like depression and anxiety are evident in the background of about 33 percent of those seeking treatment for sexual dysfunction. Like personality disorders, sexual dysfunctions tend t be comorbid with other sexual dysfunctions. In a large-sample, multisite pharmaceutical study, 40 percent of those with hypoactive sexual desire disorder were also diagnosed with a second sexual dysfunction. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
In view of the ill effect of anxiety on performance and depression on sexual desire, the comorbidity of these problems with sexual dysfunction is easily understood. However, it is equally evident that these problems are interconnected in at least some cases by interpersonal problems and stressors. When close relationships become distressed and/or when people have a history of interpersonal maltreatment, both depression and sexual dysfunction are likely consequences. Similarly, people who experience a great deal of anxiety in interpersonal contexts, perhaps because of poor social skills, may experience sexual dysfunctions that are secondary to that excessive anxiety. Psychogenic sexual dysfunctions appear to be every bit as much problems with couple relationships and a psychological sense of intimacy, as problems with the psychophysiology of human sexuality. People with psychogenic sexual dysfunctions often have intimacy problems that extend far beyond just sexual intimacy and include poor social and recreational intimacy with their partners as well. Psychogenic sexual dysfunctions may serve as regulative devices for addressing unresolved conflict and a lack of intimacy. Like those of other mental health problems, the symptoms of psychogenic sexual dysfunction may draw attention away from more substantial underlying interpersonal problems that a couple is unable or unwilling to address openly. They may also serve as a means of communicating distress indirectly. In either case, sexual dysfunctions may be indices of more pervasive interpersonal/relational problems. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
A number of relations themes are evident in studies of sexually dysfunctional couples. These include open conflict, as well as passivity, discouragement, a lack of agreement and understanding, and hostility that is often not expressed directly and openly. Some of these phenomena are even evident through observations of brief laboratory interactions between partners. Notwithstanding the associations between sexual dysfunctions and current relational problems, some interpersonal childhood experiences may be distal contributory causes of adult sexual dysfunctions. When children are socialized with strict orthodox religious beliefs and values, and/or when they learn negative attitudes toward sexuality, they are predisposed to experience psychogenic sexual dysfunctions as adults. A history of childhood sexual abuse is also more common among those with psychogenic sexual dysfunction, compared to their well-functioning counterparts. Such abuse may set the stage for views of sexuality as coercive, hostile, and motivated by malfeasance. Both somatoform disorders and psychogenic sexual dysfunctions involved the experience and expression of physical symptoms in the absence of any obvious medical or physiological cause. Each of these disorders is a sign of intrapersonal and interpersonal distress, and serves a communicative value. The interpersonal pathogenesis of somatoform disorders can be primarily located in family-of-origin experiences; although such experiences do play a role in psychogenic sexual dysfunctions, these dysfunctions more strongly signal troubles with family-of-orientation relationships. I remember the time when some brothers of the Lord were praying over me for a new release of the Holy Spirit. At a certain point they invited me to choose Jesus as the Lord of my life, freely and consciously. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
At that moment I happened to look up, and my eyes fell on the crucifix which was on the wall opposite above the altar. He seemed to have been there for some time, waiting for me. In an instant, this truth branded itself within me: “Make no mistake, this is the Jesus Christ you are choosing as your Lord, not a different rose-water version!” How often, since then, have I tried to admit the truth of those words! Being espoused to Christ means, here below, being “crucified with Christ,” but also in the hope of being glorified with Him. Joy is never absent, but it is a hope-filled joy (spe gaudentes). In other words, it is hoping to be happy, and happy to be hoping. “All who belong to Christ Jesus,” writes the Apostle—“have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires,” repots Galatians 5.24. It is a beautiful thing to die to the World for the Lord, so as to raise in Him. Earthly longings (eros) have been crucified; in the me there is left no spark of desire for mundane things. It is no joke to crucify one’s flesh with its passions and desires, especially pleasures of the flesh desires, which are among the most imperious of all. The desires of the flesh—self-indulgence—are always in opposition to the Spirit. Some have been brought to the edge of despair by temptations of the flesh. We are now living in a social context where it is no longer possible to rely on external safeguards for the defense of one’s chastity, as it was in the past—things like the separation of the genders, a rigorous filtering of contacts with the World, and all the countless other detailed precautions with which “Rules” usually surround the observance of this vow. Unconstrained communications and travel have created a new situation. The defence of one’s chastity is now for the most part in the hands of the individual, and it cannot rest on anything other than strong personal convictions, acquired precisely through contact with God in prayer and in His Word. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
It is this spirit and with this intention that we continue our reflections. Celibacy, then, is for the sake of the Kingdom. However, why does the Kingdom call for celibacy? Can it not be achieved and manifested completely through marriage? Some Fathers of the Church, such as John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor, thought that is Adam had not sinned, there would have been no marriage, with the sexual procreation that is now its distinguishing feature, because in the way in which it is now exercised, human sexuality is the fruit of original sin. However, from a mere biblical and less Platonic perspective it must be said that rather the reverse is true: that, had there been no sin there would have been no virginity, because the would have been no need to question marriage and sexuality and subject them to judgment. Poverty, chastity and obedience are not a renunciation—or worse, a condemnation—of a created good, but a rejection of the evil that has come to overlay that good. Therefore they are, by definition, a proclamation of the original goodness of created things. They are a way of imitating the Word of God Who, by taking flesh, took on all that belongs to human nature, but did not take on sin. “For we do not have a great High Priest Who is unable to understand and sympathize and have a shared feeling with our weaknesses and infirmities and liability to the assaults of temptation, but One Who has been tempted in every respect as we are, yet without sinning,” reports Hebrews 4.15. The Gospel counsels, and the vows based upon them, proclaim the goodness and beauty of God’s creation precisely by the denouncing the ambiguity of human creation. The inability to understand the value of virginity, and likewise of obedience and voluntary poverty, is always a sign that the sense of sin has disappeared from the horizon of faith. It is typical of periods of acute secularization and naïve optimism concerning humanity and the World. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Seen in this light, poverty, chastity and obedience are the most eloquent proclamation there is of Christ’s redemption and of the Paschal Mystery, which does not cancel out the original creation, as the heretic Marcion thought, but it “recapitulates” it, as St. Irenaeus said, in other words, brings it out into the light from under the covering of sin. In this light it is also possible to understand the positive element, still valid today, in the Fathers’ insight that virginity was a return to the Heavenly state, but on condition that this return is not understood as bypassing marriage and human sexuality itself (male and female He created them), but only the sin with which they have been overlaid by human freedom. A virginal and chaste life if therefore in a very profound sense a paschal life. “I beg you, then, by God’s mercy, my brothers, to offer your bodies as a holy and living sacrifice which will be pleasing to God—this is your spiritual worship. Do not pattern yourselves after the ways of this World but transform yourselves by the renewal of your minds, so you will be able to discern what God’s will is—what is good, pleasing and perfect,” reports Romans 12.1-2. Their celibacy was the most delicious of all: transformative and liberating, and the instrument of its own success. However, the demons’ traps are evil thought. Become saved again, and commit your soul to God. We need to seek how to please God in our bodily members [as well as spiritually]. Everything we observe, and even more important, our way of observing it, is already culture and pattern of culture. If we cannot observe it, what is the sense of mentioning “human nature”? The wild Babes give up their individualistic mores and ideology, exempli gratia, selfishness or magic thinking or omnipotence, and join the tribe of Society; they are soicalised. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
You can teach people anything; if you use the right techniques of socializing or communicating, you can adapt them to anything. The essence of human nature is to be pretty indefinitely malleable. Humans are what suits a particular type of society in a particular historical age. This fateful idea, invented from time to time by philosophers, seems finally to be empirically evident in the most recent decades. For instance, in our highly organized system of machine production and its corresponding social relations, the practice is, by “vocational guidance,” to fit people wherever the products of the system need to be used up, the practice is, by advertising, to get people to consume them. This works. There is a human for every job and not many are left over, and the shelves are almost always cleared. Again, in the highly organized political industrial systems of Germany, Russia, and now China, it has been possible in a short time to condition great masses to perform as desired. Social scientists observer that these are the facts, and they also devise theories and techniques to produce more facts like them, for the social scientists too are part of the highly organized systems. Astonishingly different, however, is the opinion of experts who deal with human facts in a more raw, less highly processed, state. Those who have to cope with people in small groups rather than statistically, attending to them rather than to some systematic goal—parents and teachers, physicians and psychotherapists, police officers and wardens of jails, shop foremen and grievance committees—these experts are likely to hold stubbornly that there is a “human nature.” You cannot teach people some things or change them in some ways, if you persist, you are in for trouble. Contrariwise, if you do not provide them with certain things, they will fill the gaps with eccentric substitute. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
This is immediately evident when something goes wrong; for instance, when a child cannot learn to read because one has not yet developed the muscular accommodation of one’s eyes; if you persist, one withdraws or becomes tricky. Such a clear-cut cause (it is “physical”). However, the more important causes have the following form: the child does take on the culture habit, exempli gratia, early toilet training, and indeed the whole corresponding pattern of culture, but there is a minishing of force, grace, discrimination, intellect, feeling, in specific behaviours or even in one’s total behaviour. One may become too obedient and lacking in initiative, or impractically careful and squeamish; one may develop “psychosomatic” ailments like constipation. Let me give an instance even earlier in life: an infant nurtured in an institution without a particular nurse attending one during the first six months, does not seem to develop abnormally; but if during the end of the first year and for some time thereafter one is not given personal care, one will later be in some ways emotionally cold and unreachable—either some function has failed to develop, or one has already blocked it out as too frustrated and painful. In such examples, the loss of force, grace, and feeling seems to be evidence that somehow the acquired cultural habits do not draw on unimpeded outgoing energy, they are against the grain, they do not fit the child’s needs or appetites; therefore they have been ill adapted and not assimilated. That is, on this view we do not need to be able to say what “human nature” is in order to be able to day tht some training is “against human nature” and you persist in it at peril. Teachers and psychologists who deal practically with growing up and the blocks to growing up may never mention the word “human nature” (indeed, they are better off without too many priori ideas), but they cling stubbornly to the presumption that at every stage there is a developing potentiality not yet cultured, and not blank, and that makes possible the taking on of culture. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
We must draw “it” out, offer “it” opportunities, not violate “it” except for unavoidable reasons. What “it” is, is not definite. It is what, when appealed to in the right circumstances, gives behaviour that has force, grace, discrimination, feeling. This vagueness is of course quite sufficient for education, for education is an art. A good teacher feels one’s way, looking for response. The immediate horror humans perceive is one’s own death, but beyond that one begins to see the entire life process as carnage, as eating and being eaten. A terrible screaming pervades the Universe. Humans are the first to hear it. This is the vision we cannot accept. It drives towards madness or despair. What does Christianity do with this vision. It does not deny it; it makes it acceptable. What Christianity does for the true believer is give one strength to bear it. Redeems it. That is the word! The scheme of things redeems the way things are. However, what is redemption? It must be an interpretation. The scheme of things, therefore, is both a diagram of the something grand and an interpretation of the way things are as an essential step on the way to the something grand. The life process thereupon becomes less horrible and more bearable because it serves, however obscurely, a glorious end. When it is in the service of something grand, one’s individual life is redeemed. The beginning of the redemption of life is the beginning of culture. All culture is redemption. The history of culture is the history of changing forms by which a short and brutish life has been redeemed. The culture of people is the incarnation of its religion. Any religion, while it last, provides the framework for a culture, and protects the mass of humanity from boredom and despair. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Humans search for a scheme of things larger than their own life, with greater authority, to which one may belong. The hunger from which this search issues is profound and inalienable. If one can find such a scheme and makes one’s life “mean” something in it, that is, contribute to it, make a difference, one will have ferried something of one’s mortal self across the gulf of death to become a part of something that will live on. The doomed life must leave a residue of value. The carrier and guarantor of this value is human-made scheme of things perceived as reality and presumed to be eternal. What can one say of the way things are? The constructions of the mind are not coextensive with existence, that there is something “out there,” a universe independent of humans, there before we arrived and to be there after we have disappeared. It affects us and we it. IT and we are in continual contact and interaction, and we know it not. We cannot bear to know. An angel, detached and immortal, could know; we, mired in mortality, are at risk. Interest deflects our knowing. Our lives depend on its being other than it is. In the midst of the way things are we know only the scheme of things in which we live. If someone is not treating you right today, go out of your way to be kinder than usual to that person. If your husband is not serving God, do not go around beating him over the head with your Bible, proselytizing him, nagging him, coercing him to attend church with you. No, just start being extra kind to him. Start living him in a fresh way. The Holy Bibles teaches, “It is the goodness of God that leads people to repentance,” reports Romans 2.4. God’s goodness expressed through you will overcome evil. Friend, love never fails. Now turn not a df ear to that which I have spoken, for My Word shall rise withing you with great revelation. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
For I am doing in this hour things that humans have not understood, just as was prophesied in the days of old. I said it by My prophets that you would not believe the reports of the things that I would do. Some will not believe, but the hour is coming that humans shall proclaim My Word boldly over their own bodies and it will cause sickness and disease to depart. Their words will cause the enemy to flee in terror. If anyone had a right to return evil instead of love, it was Joseph, the young man with the distinctive coat of many colours. His brothers hated him so much, they threw him into a deep pit and were going to kill him, but “out of the kindness of their hearts,” they decided instead to sell him into slavery. Years went by, and Joseph experienced all sorts of troubles and heartaches. However, Joseph kept a good attitude, and God continued to bless him. After thirteen years of being in prison for a crime he did not commit, God supernaturally promoted him to the second-highest position in Egypt. Joseph was in charge of the food supply when a famine struck the land, and his brothers traveled to Egypt, hoping to buy provisions for their families. At first they did not recognize their long-lost brother. Joseph finally said, “Do not you who I am? I am Joseph, your brother. I am the one you threw into the pit. I am the one you tried to kill, the brother you sold into slavery.” Can you imagine what was going through his brothers’ minds? Imagine the fear that must have griped their hearts! This was Joseph’s opportunity to pay back his brothers for the years of pain and suffering they had caused him. Now their lives were in his hands. Joseph could have ordered them killed or imprisoned for life. However, Joseph said, “Do not be afraid. I am not going to harm you. I am going to do good to you. I am going to give you all the food you need.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
The Christian Bible says, “Love does not hold a grudge. Love does not harbour unforgiveness,” report 1 Corinthians 13.5. You may have people in your life who have done you great wrong, and you have a right to be angry and bitter, or foolish and ghoulish, full of doom and gloom. You may feel as though your whole life had been stolen away by someone who has mistreated you or deceived you. However, if you will choose to let go of your grudge and forgive them, you can overcome that evil with good. You can get to the point where you can look at the people who have hurt your and return good for evil. If you do that, God will pour out His favour in your life in a fresh way. He will honour you; He will reward you, and He will make those wrongs right. When you can bless your worst enemies and do good to those who have used and abused you, that is when God will take that evil and turn it around for good. No matter what you have gone through, no matter who hurt you or whose fault it was for causing all the trauma and drama, let it go. Do not try to get even. Do not hold a grudge. Do not try to pay them back. God says show mercy. Aim for kindness. Seek to do good. You may be thinking, but that is just not fair! No, it is not. However, life is not fair. We have to remember that God is the One keeping the score. He is in control. And when you bless your enemies, you will never lose. God will always make it up to you. The power of the Lord shall rise withing humans until there will be a race of people on this Earth when I come that will stand against Satan and see him flee from them. They will stand without sickness or disease in their bodies. They will stand even before whole cities and proclaim, “In the name of Jesus, I break the power of sin over this city.” Then the walls of Satan will crumble and the power of God shall be loosed in that city. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
The wisdom of God shall flow unhindered and my power shall rule in the midst. Even as the darkness grows more morbid, the light shall grow more optimistic. My wisdom shall be released in greater measure and greater revelation as human take My Word at face value, even as I have spoken it. The tongue cannot be controlled by natural ability. It is an unruly evil in the unregenerate state. However, the wisdom of God that has come by the rebirth of the human spirit, imparted by the Holy Spirit to the hearts of humans, will cause the tongue to come into subjection to the spirit of humans, which is ordained of God to rule. It shall cause the body to conform to the Word of the living God. Dear Lord in Heaven, I dare to believer that You can take even the bad things that happen to your children and transform them into something good and useful, not merely in our own lies, but in the lives of other around us. You know, I am against taxes, I think they should be as long as possible and once politicians start taxing things to make improvements in areas that the budget cannot support, it leads to excessive taxes, which then leads to communism. One absurd tax is the bag tax. Sure, the thicker bags are good for people who can afford to buy them and have to walk with the groceries. However, it is a common courtesy to provide people with complimentary bags for purchasing items at your story. The supposed goal was to reduce plastic waste, but most people buy these thicker plastic bags anyway. Most stores do not allow reusable bags to come into their store because they may be contaminated with bacteria or viruses or infested with cock roaches and their eggs and can infest the stores, spread to other customers and make people fatally ill. Also, what about the people who can barely afford what they are buying? For some people, an extra $2.00 for twenty bags, for example, is a lot of money when they can barely afford what they are buying. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
However, I truly wish there was a way we could find some money in the budget to pay our service members and veterans $100,000.00 a year and lifelong medical benefits for their priceless service. And also, if we want law enforcement reform, why not pay officers the same wages and require that they obtain at least an Associates in Arts in psychology, law, or something so we know they have some understanding of what life is like outside of their family-of-origin and family-of-orientation. Some police are education, some have PhDs, and an educated officer may not be better at one’s job than a high school graduate, but I wonder what the studies say? It is possible that requiring an education would reduce conflict in the community and screen out officers who have a vendetta against other races, religions, creeds or genders. Also, regulating leaf blower nose and usage would be great. The government bans the use of fireplaces on certain days, which is sad because some people cannot afford to burn their heaters and knowing how much heat they are using helps them from keeping their electricity from getting shut off. People have trees they can cut down and burn for fuel. The system in America is set up, well, it was once set up to accommodate the rich, but the poor and rich are getting jilted, while the middle class is disappearing before your eyes like a dope fiend. And I have looked at some of these million dollar homes in California, and I am so disappointed. I expect something more and grand for $1 million. Sure, inflation is real, but wage inflation is not happening. Everything is just getting more and more expensive and cutting into people’s wages. In Sacramento, if you did not become established 10-20 years ago, and are not a professional and do not have two or more employed people in the house, the cost of living is almost unaffordable. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
The shrinkage of the nation-state reflects the appearance of a new-style global economy that has emerged since the Third Wave began its surge. Nation-states were the necessary political containers for nation-sized economies. Today the containers have not only sprung leaks, they have been made obsolete by their own success. First, there is the growth within them of regional economies that have attained a scale once associated with national economies. Second, the World economy to which they gave rise had exploded in size and is taking on strange new forms. Thus the global economy is dominated by the great transnational corporations. It is serviced by a ramified banking and financial industry that operates at electronic speeds. It breeds money and credit no nation can regulate. It moves toward transnational currencies—not a single “World money” but a variety of currencies or “meta-currencies,” each based on a “market basket” of national currencies or commodities. The global economy is torn by a World-scale conflict between resource supplies and users. It is riddled with shaky debt on a hitherto unimaginable scale. It is a mixed economy, with private capitalist and state-socialist enterprises forming joint ventures and working side by side. And its ideology is not laissez faire or Marxism, but globalism—the idea that nationalism is obsolete. Just as Second Wave created a slice of the population that had larger than local interests and became the base of nationalist ideologies, so the Third Wave gives rise to groups with larger than national interests. These for the base of the emerging globalist ideology sometimes called “planetary consciousness.” This consciousness is shared by multinational executives, long haired environmental campaigners, financiers, revolutionaries, intellectuals, poets, painters, not to mention members of the Trilateral Commission. I have even had a famous U.S. four-star general assure me that “the nation-state is dead.” #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
Globalism presents itself as more than an ideology serving the interests of a limited group. Precisely as nationalism claimed to speak for the whole nation, globalism claims to speak for the whole World. And its appearance is seen as an evolutionary necessity—a step closer to a “cosmic consciousness” that would embrace the Heavens as well. Therefore, at every level, from economics and politics to organization and ideology, we are witnessing a devastating attack, from within and without, on that pillar of Second Wave civilization: the nation-state. At the exact historical moment when many poor countries are desperately fighting to establish a national identity because nationhood in the past was necessary for successful industrialization, the rich countries, racing beyond industrialism, are diminished, displacing, or derogating the role of the nation. We can expect the next decades to be torn by struggle over the creation of new global institutions capable of faily representing the prenational as well and the postnational peoples of the World. Be praised my Lord with all Your creatures but especially with Brother Sun because You show us light and day through him and he is lovely glowing with a great shine from You my Lord: his definition. Be praised my Lord for Brother Wind and for the air and cloudy days and bright and all days else because through these You give Your creatures sustenance. Be praised my Lord for Sister Water because she shows great use and humbleness in hers and preciousness and depth. Be praised my Lord for Brother Fire through whom You light all nights upon the Earth because he is too lovely full of joy and manly strength. Be praised my Lord because our sister Mother Earth sustains and rules us and because she raises food to feed us; coloured flowers and grass. Be praised my Lord for those who pardon by Your love and suffer illness and grief. Bless those who undergo in silence the poor for whom you hold a crown. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
Be praised my Lord for Sister Death-of-Body whom no human living (as of yet) will escapes and piety those who die in mortal sin and everyone she finds who minds you bless: no second death to bring them hurt. Oh praise my Lord and bless my Lord and thank and serve my Lord with humbleness Triumphant. Just think, immortality is not too far away. Eventually scientists will find a cure of aging and death. For some it will give them more time to get right in the eyes of the Lord and do things they love, for others, it will allow them to evade eternal punishment…for a while. O Lord, open Thou my lips and my mouth shall declare Thy praise. Praised art Thou, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, mighty, revered and exalted God. Thou bestowest lovingkindness and possessest all things. Mindful of the patriarchs’ love for Thee, Thou wilt in Thy love bring a redeemer to their children’s children for the sake of Thy name. Remember us unto life, O King who delightest in life, and inscribe us in the Book of Life so that we may live worthily for Thy sake, O Lord of life. O King, Thou Helper, Redeemer and Shield, be Thou praised, O Lord, Shield of Abraham. Thou, O Lord, art mighty forever. Thou callest the dead to immortal life for Thou art might in deliverance. One may be lifted up by the light of a great experience or the presence of a great soul, but in the end one falls back to the consciousness one ordinarily has, to the self one ordinarily is. This is not to say tht what has happened is without value—on the contrary, such a glimpse is very important—but that under the thrill of its emotional accompaniments one may easily miscomprehend a part of it to the point of self-deception. The error is to believe that one has now been put in possession of all truth, or the highest truth, for all time. However, it is only a transient glimpse! If one were pure enough and prepared enough to receive the light in all its fullness and in all the parts of one’s being, the glimpse would not leave one. However, one is not. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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I Talked with Spirits—But it is Dangerous and Wicked!
Many people are pleased to know, although this is Satan’s World and Universe, it is reassuring that the power of Satan, and his hosts are limited by God’s omnipotence. The Christian Bible and Book of Mormon clearly teaches that the Lord is in ultimate control of the entire social and political realm. For example, in the story of Job, we are informed that Satan could do only what God allowed. The apostle Paul also tells us that the Earthly rulers are in their places of authority by God’s permissive decree. He declared, “Let every soul be subject unto higher powers. For there is no power but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God,” reports Romans 13.1. This does not mean that God approves of men like Nero, Hitler, or Stalin, but that He ordained government to prevent chaos by making laws and enforcing them. Wicked men and women who hate the Lord and His people have obtained their positions of authority only by God’s permission, and their power is limited by His will. Therefore, though He commands His followers to obey even the most evil of these Earthly rulers, He will return as King of kings and Lord of lords to overcome all obstacles and work out His plans and purposes. The power of Satan and his followers is further restricted by the presence of Christians in the World. Believers have been redeemed from the domination of this World system. In addition, obedient followers of the Lord Jesus exert a purifying and preserving influence in the World. Jesus said, “Ye are the salt of the Earth,” reports Matthew 5.13. Salt immediately suggested purity to the people of Christ’s day. In fact, the Romans said that salt was the purest of all things because it cam from the sun and the sea. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
Believers in Christ, by holding to a high standard of speech and conduct, and keeping themselves “unspotted” from the World (James 1.27), exert a strong cleansing effect upon humankind. Then, too, as salt was a common preservative, so Christians are a cleansing antiseptic in society, holding back the process of corruption. Faithful believers in Christ are therefore both a purifying and preserving influence. The apostle Paul also declared that all Christians are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and that as long as they are on Earth the full outbreak of evil is impossible. “And now ye know what restraineth that he might by revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work; only he who now hindereth will continue to hinger until he be take out of the way,” reports 2 Thessalonians 2.6-7. Moreover, Satan works under the disability of knowing that his ultimate defeat has been made certain by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The writer of Hebrews said that Jesus took upon Himself our nature and went to the cross that “through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil,” reports Hebrews 2.14. Though Peter tells us that, “the devil, like a roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom he may devour,” reported in 1 Peter 5.8, Satan knows his doom is sure and therefore operates under definite limitations. In conclusions, if you are a follower of Christ, you must take seriously these Scripture passages which speak of the invisible army that is arrayed against you. If you think that in your own strength you are able to withstand Satan and his host, you will not be victorious in your Christian life. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
Your testimony for Christ will be powerless and your way of life completely ineffective unless you walk in daily fellowship with God. This means you must confess and forsake every known sin, spend time with God in prayer, read the Scriptures, and submit yourself wholly to the Lord. In addition, in society, believers are called upon to pray earnestly for the leaders of nation, both on local, national, and subnational levels. Remember, the Bible teaches that an invisible host of evil spirits often uses political leaders as mere pawns, and these humans will not be able to function effectively and promote the right unless they receive help from the Lord. Since many of them are not true believers, they especially stand in need of the prayers of God’s people. The experience of Daniel demonstrates that when Godly men pray, the Lord sends His holy Angels to do battle with the Satanic forces and frustrates them in their efforts. Christians are therefore reminded by Paul to pray for all who have positions of authority: “I exhort, therefore, the first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all humans, for kings, and for all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all Godliness and honesty,” reports 1 Timothy 2.1-2. Many of God’s people do not realize that tremendous battle being waged in the spiritual realm, and as a result they are somewhat lackadaisical about praying for men and women and children who hold responsible positions in government. Therefore, we who know that evil spirits are putting tremendous pressure upon these people should make doubly sure we do not fail. Our prayers may make the difference between life or death for many people, for when we seek God’s face, He exerts His power to defeat the enemy. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
With the restoration of King Charles II witchcraft did not cease; on the other hand it went on with unimpaired vigour, and several important cases were brought to trial in England. In one instance, at least, it made its appearance in Ireland, this time far south, at Youghal. The extraordinary tale of Florence Newton and her doings, which is related below, forms the seventh Relation in Glanvill’s Sadducismus Triumphatus (London, 1726); it may also be found, together with some English cases of notoriety, in Francis Bragge’s Witchcraft further displayed (London, 1712). It is from the first of these sources that we have taken it, and reproduced it here verbatim, except that some redundant matter has been omitted, id est, where one witness relates facts (!) which have already been brought forward as evidence in the examination of a previous witness, and which therefore do not add to our knowledge, though no doubt they materially contributed to strengthen the case against the unfortunate old woman. Hayman in his Guide to Youghal attributes the whole affair to the credulity of the Puritan settlers, who were firm believers in such things. In this he is correct no doubt, but it should be borne in mind by the reader that such a belief was not confined to the newcomers at Youghal, but was common property throughout England and Ireland. The tale shows that there was a little covey of suspected witches in Youghal at that sate, as well as some skillful amateur witch-finders (Messrs. Perry, Greatrakes, and Blackwall). From the readiness with which the Mayor proposed to try the “water-experiment” one is lead to suspect that such a process as swimming a witch was not altogether unknown in Youghal. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
For the benefit of the uninitiated we may briefly describe the actual process, which, as we shall see, the Mayor contemplated, but did not actually carry out. The suspected witch is taken, her right thumb tied to her left great top, and vice vera. She is then thrown into the water: if she sinks (and drowns, by any chance!) her innocence is conclusively established; if, on the other hand, she floats, her witchcraft is proven, for water, as being the element in Baptism, refuses to receive such a sinner in its bosom. Florence Newton was committed to Youghal prison by the Mayr of the town, 24th March 1661, for bewitching Mary Longdon, who gave evidence against her at the Cork Assizes (11th September), as follows: Mary Longdon being sworn, and bidden to look upon the prisoner, he countenance chang’s pale, and she was very fearful to look towards her, but at last she did, and being asked whether she knew her, she said she did, and wish’d she never had. Being asked how long she had known she, she said for three of four years. And that at Christmas the said Florence came to the Deponent, at the house of John Pyne in Youghal, where the Deponent was a servant, and asked her to give her a piece of Beef out of the Powdering Tub; and the Defendant answering her that she would not give away her Master’s Beef, the said Florence seemed to be very angry, and said Thou had’st as good give it me, and went away grumbling. That about a week after the Defendant going to the water with a Pail of Cloth on her head she met the said Florence Newton, who came full in her Face, and threw the Pail off her head, and violently kiss’d her, and said, Mary, I pray thee let thee and I be Friends; for I bear thee no ill will, and I pray thee do thou bear me none. And that she the Defendant afterwards went home, and that within a few Days after she saw a Woman with a Vail over her face stand by her bedside, and one standing by her like a little old Man in Silk Cloaths, that that this Man who she took to be a Spirit drew the Vail off the Woman’s Face, and then she knew it to be Goody Newton: and that she Spirit spoke to the Defendant and would have her promise him to follow his advice and she would have all things after her own Heart, to which she says she answered that she would have nothing to say to him, for her trust was in the Lord. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
That within a month after the said Florence had kiss’s her, she this Defendant fell very ill of Fits or Trances, which would take her on a sudden, in that violence that three or four men could not hold her; and in her Fits she would be take with Vomiting, and would vomit up Needles, Pins, Horsenails, Stubbs, Wooll, and Straw, and that very often. And being asked whether she perceived at these times what she vomited? She replied, she did; for then she was not n so great distraction as in other parts of her Fits she was. And that before the first beginning of her Fits several (and very many) small stones would fall upon her as she went up and down, and would follow her from place to place, and from one Room to another, and would hit her on the head, shoulders, and arms, and fall to the ground and vanish away. And that she and several others would see them both fall upon her and on the ground, but could never take them, save only some few which she and her Master caught in their hands. Amongst which one that had a hole n it she tied (as she was advised) with a leather thong to her Purse, but it was vanish’d immediately, though the latter continu’d tied in a fast knot. That in her Fits she often saw Florence Newton, and cried out against her for tormenting her of her, for she says, that she would several times Stick Pins into her Arms, and some of them so fast, that a Man must pluck three or four times to get out the Pins, and they were stuck between the skin and the flesh. That sometimes she would be remov’d out of bed into another Room, sometimes she would be carried to the top of the House, and laid on a board between two Sollar Beams, sometimes put into a Chest, sometimes under a parcel of Wooll, sometimes between two Feather-Beds on which she used to lie, and sometimes between the Bed and the Mat in her Master’s Chamber, in the Daytime. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
And being asked how she knew that she was thus carried about and disposed of, seeing in her fits she was in a violent distraction? She answered, she never knew where she was, till they of the Family and the Neighbours with them, would be taking her out of the places whither she was so carried and removed. And being asked the reason and wherefore she cried out so much against the said Florence Newton in her Fits? She answered, because she saw her, and felt her torturing her. And being asked how she could think it was Florence Newton that did her this prejudice? She said, first, because she threatened her, then because after she had kiss’d her she fell into these Fits, and that she saw and felt her tormenting. And lastly, that when the people of the Family, by advice of the Neighbours and consent of the Mayor, had sent for Florence Newton to come to the Defendant, she was always worse when she was brought to her, and her Fits more violent than at another time. And that after the said Florence was committed at Youghal the Defendant was not troubled, but was very will till a little while after the said Florence was removed to Cork, and then the Defendant was as ill as every before. Then then the Mayor of Youghal, one Mr. Mayre, sent to know whether the said Florence was bolted (as the Defendant was told), and finding she was not, the order was given to put her Bolts on her; which being done, the Deponent saith she was well again, and so hath continued ever since, and being asked whether she had such like Fits before the said Florence have her the kiss, she saith she never had any, but believed that with the kiss she bewitch’d her, and rather because she had heard from Nicholas Pyne and others that Florence had confessed so much. This Mary Longdon having closed her evidence, Florence Newton peeped at her as it were betwixt the head of the bystanders that interposed between her and the said Mary, and lifting up both her hands together, as they were manacled, cast them in a violent angry motion (as was observed by W. Aston) toward the said Mary, as if she intended to strike at her if she could have reached her, and said, Now she is down. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
Upon which the Maid fell suddenly down to the ground like a stone, and fell into a most violent Fit, that all the people that could come to lay hands on her could scarce hold her, she biting her own arms and shrieking out in a most hideous manner, to the amazement of all Beholders. And continuing so for about a quarter of an hour (the said Florence Newton sitting by herself all that while pinching her own hands and arms, as was sworn by some that observed her), the Maid was ordered to be carried out of Court, and taken into a House. Whence several Persons after that brough word, that the Maid was in a Vomiting Fit, and they brought in several crook’d Pins, and Straws, and Wooll, in white Foam like Spittle, in great proportion. Whereupon the Court having taken notice that the Maid said she had been very well when the said Florence was in Bolts, and ill again when out of them, till they were again put on her, demanded of the Jaylor if she were in Bolts or no, to which he said she was not, only manacled. Upon which order was given to put on her Bolts, and upon putting them on she cried out that she was skilled, she was undone, she was spoiled, why do you torment me thus? and so continued complaining grievously for half a quarter of an hour. And then came in a messenger from the Maid, and informed the Court the Maid was well. At which Florence immediately and cholerickly uttered these words, She is not well yet! And being demanded, how she knew this, she denied she said so, though many in Court heard her say the words, and she said, if she did, she knew not what she said, being old and disquieted, and distracted with her sufferings. However, the Maid being reasonably well come to herself, was, before the Court knew anything of it, sent out of Town to Youghal, and so was no further examined. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
The Fit of the Maid being urged by the Court with all the circumstances of it upon Florence Newton, to have been a continuance of her devilish practice, she denied it, and likewise the motion of her hands, and the saying, Now she is down, though the Court saw the first, and the words were sworn to by one Roger Moor. And Thomas Harrison swore that he had observed the said Florence peep at her, and use that motion with her hands, and she saw the Maid fall immediately upon that motion, and heard the words, Now she is down, uttered. Nicolas Stout was next produced by Mr. Attorney-General, who being sworn and examined, saith, That he had often tried her, having heard say that Witches could not say the Lord’s Prayer, whether she could or no, and she could not. Whereupon she said she could day it, and had often said it, and the Court being desired by her to hear her say it, gave her leave; and four times together after these words, Give us this our daily bread, she continually said, As we forgive them, leaving out altogether the words, And forgive us our trespasses, upon which the Court appointed one near her to teach her the words she left out. However, she either could not, or would not, say them, using only these or the like words when these were repeated, Ay, ay, trespasses, that’s the word. And being often pressed to utter the words as they were repeated to her, she did not. And being asked the reason, she said she was old and had a bad memory; and being asked how her memory served her so well for other parts of the Prayer, and only failed her for that, she said she knew not, neither could she help it. John Pyne being likewise sworn and examined, saith, That about January last [1661] the said Mary Longdon, being his Servant, was much troubled with small stones that were thrown at her [&c., as in the Deponent’s statement, other items of which he also corroborated]. That sometimes the Maid would be reading in the Bible, and on a sudden he hath seen the Bible struck out of her Hand into the middle of the Room, and she immediately cast into a violent Fit. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
That in the Fits he hath seen two Bible laid on her Breast, and in the twinkling of an eye they would be cast betwixt the two Beds the Maid lay upon, sometimes thrown into the middle of the Room, and that Nicholas Pyne held the Bible in the Maid’s hand so fast, that it being suddenly snatch’d away, two of the leaves were torn out. Nicholas Pyne being sworn, saith, That the second night after that the Witch had been in Prison, being the 24th [26?] of March last, he and Joseph Thompson, Roger Hawkins, and some others went to speak with her concerning the Maid, and told her that it was the general opinion of the Town that she had bewitched her, and desired her to deal freely with them, whether she had bewitched her or no. She said that she had not bewitched her, but it may be she had overlooked her, and that there was a great difference between bewitching and overlooking, and that she could not have done her any harm if she had not touch’d her, and that therefore she had kiss’d her. And she said that what mischief she thought of at that time she kiss’d her, that would fall upon ger, and that she could not but confess she had wronged the Maid, and thereupon fell down upon her knees, and prayed God to forgive her for wronging the poor Wench. They wisd’d that she might not be wholly destroyed by her; to which she said, it must be another that would help her, and not they that did the harm. And then she said, that there were others, as Goody Halfpenny and Goody Dod, in Town, that could do these things as well as she, and that it might be one of these that had done the Maid wrong. He further saith, That towards Evening the Door of the Prison shook, and she arose up hastily and said, What makest thow here this time a night? #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
And there was a very great noise, as if some body with Bolts and Chains had been running up and down the Room, and they asked her what it was she spoke to, and what it was that made the noise; and she said she saw nothing, neither did she speak, and if she did, it was she knew not what. However, the next day she confess’d it was a Spirit, and her Familiar, in the shape of a Greyhound. He further saith, That he and Mr. Edward Perry and others for Trial of her took a Tile off the Prison, went to the place where the Witch lay, and carried it to the House where the Maid lived, and put it in the fire until it was red-hot, and then dripped some of the Maid’s water upon it, and the Witch was then grievously tormented, and when the water consumed she was well again. Spiritism is the belief that people survive death as spirits, and that they can communicate with the living through a medium, a person having a special psychic gift. The fact has been established that nearly 150 million people in the World today have participated with some regularity in efforts to receive messages from the dead. Many have had experiences so convincing that they now possess unwavering assurance of a future existence in another World after death. One such man was the late Bishop Pike, liberal theologian who at one time did not believe any form of life was possible on the other side of the grave. However, then a series of strange circumstances impelled him to go to a medium, who claimed to be able to put him in touch with his dead son Jim. The young man had recently committed suicide, and the bishop left the séance satisfied that Jim had really spoken to him through the medium. In fact, he was persuaded that he had also conversed with the late Dr. Paul Tillich, a celebrated theologian and philosopher whom the bishop had greatly admired and to whom he had dedicated one of his books. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
Dr. Pike, with Diane Kennedy who later became his wife, published a book entitled The Other Side, in which they told the whole story of his spirit encounters, beginning with the haunted apartment in Cambridge, England, and including his seances with Ena Twigg, George Daisley, and Arthur Ford. A number of events recounted are so extraordinary that they baffle the mind. One cannot read this book without concluding that Bishop Pike was either the victim of a plot so carefully contrived that no one to this date has been able to decipher it, or that he actually participated in some kind of supernatural activity. In any case, we do not agree with the bishop’s assumption that he had spoke with his son or with Dr. Tillich. Many people have written recently of their experiences in spiritism, and some of them come to conclusions far different from those of Bishop Pike and his associates. Raphael Gasson, a former medium who was converted to Christ, recently published a work entitled The Challenging Counterfeit. He convincingly sets for the idea that demons, by impersonating the dead, are able to deceive those who attend seances in hope of contacting the spirits of their loved ones. In another publication I Talked With Spirits, Victor Ernest tells the story of his early life as a member of a spiritualistic family. He is now a highly respected minister of the Gospel, and declared unequivocally that the religion of his childhood contained supernatural element, but that it is dangerous and wicked. In this study we careful examine spiritism, seeking to answer four basic questions: What does the Christian Bible teach regarding spiritism? How do spirits work? What do spirits believe? Why is spiritism so dangerous? #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
Many also want to know why did Mrs. Sarah Winchester, heiress to the Winchester rifle fortune, spent the last half of her life and $155,991,224.49 (2021 inflation adjusted) building a house that now contains 160 rooms and stands four stories? The mystery remains unsolved to this very day. In 1884, Mrs. Winchester left New Haven, Connecticut, and the graves of her husband and only child, and moved to San Jose, California, and began the obsession that was to last for the rest of her life. The death of William Wirt Winchester, of the Winchester House, in the country of America, would in the ordinary way have received no more attention than the death of any other simple country gentleman. The circumstances of his death, however, though now long since forgotten, were sensational, and attracted some notice at the time. It was one of those cases which is easily forgotten within a year, except just in the locality where it occurred. The most sensational circumstances of the case never came before the public at all. I give them here simply and plainly. The physical people may make what they like of them. On the death of his new born daughter, after a prolonged illness, Mr. Winchester wrote to Leonard Pardee and asked him to come down to New Haven for the funeral, and to remain with at least a few days. There were many visitors in the hose for the funeral, which took place in the village churchyard, but they left immediately afterwards. The air of heavy gloom which had hung over the Winchester mansion in New Haven seemed to lift a little. The servants (servants are always emotion) continued to break down at intervals. Mr. Winchester spoke of his wife with great affection and regret, but still he could speak of her and not unsteadily. At dinner, Mr. Winchester spoke of one or two subjects, of politics and of his duties as magistrate and President of a company, and of course he made the requisite fuss about his gratitude to Leonard for coming down to the Winchester mansion at the time. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
After dinner they sat in the library, a room well and expensively furnished. There were a few oil paintings on the walls, a presentation portrait of himself, and a landscape or two and the praised Ulysses in the Land of the Lestrygonians Fresco. Mr. Winchester had eaten next to nothing at dinner. When he said, “I want you to tell my daughter that I will be with her tomorrow.” He went to bed early that night. Leonard has been with him the following day. They rode together, and he expected an accident every minute, but none happened. All that evening, Leonard expected him to turn suddenly faint and ill, but that also did not happen. When at about ten o’clock he excused himself and said goodnight, Leonard felt distinctly relieved. Mr. Winchester went up to his room and rang for the servant Robert Law. The rest is, of course well known. The servant’s reasons had broken down, possibly the immediate cause being the death of the Winchester infant. On entering his master’s bedroom, without the least hesitation, he raised a loaded revolver which he carried in his hand, and shot Mr. Winchester through the heart. I believe the case is mentioned in some of the textbooks on homicidal mania. Mrs. Winchester said she had kind of felt for so long, and she had a queer feeling coming over her as if there was somebody or something round the house, more than appeared. She had felt it in the air; but it seemed to her silly, and she tried to get over it. But two or three times, she said, when it got to be dusk, she felt somebody go by her up the stairs. The front entry was not very light in the daytime and in the storm, come ten o’clock, it was so dark that all you could see was just a gleam of something, and two or three times when she started to go upstairs, she saw a soft white something that seemed going up before her, and she stopped with her heart beating like a trip-hammer, and she sort of saw it go up and along the entry to the Mr. Winchester’s chambers, and then it seemed to go right through, because the door did not open. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
There are times and tones and moods of nature that make all the vulgar, daily real seem shadowy, vague, and supernatural, as if the outlines of reality present were fading into the invisible and unknown. When Mrs. Winchester went to bed the next evening, she slept in a different room. She went right off to sleep as sound as a new born baby, on until somewhere about morning, when something awakened her broad in a minute. Her eyes flew open, and the storm had gone down and the moon had came out; and there, standing right in the moonlight by her bed, was a woman just as white as snow, with long raven black hair hanging down to her waist, and the brightest, mournfullest black eyes you could have ever seen. She stood there looking right at Mrs. Winchester; and Mrs. Winchester thought this is what woke her up because if someone stares at you like that, it is felt in your very soul. Mrs. Winchester felt just as if she was turning to stone. She could not move nor speak. She lay a minute and then shut her eyes, and begin to say her prayers; and a minute after she opened them, and the specter was gone. Mrs. Winchester was a sensible woman; and she just got up, put on a shawl around her shoulders, and went first and looked at the doors, and they were both locked just as she left them when she went to bed. Then she looked under the bed and in the closet, and felt all around the room: where she could not see she felt her way, and there was nothing there. The story got around that there was a woman lurking in the Winchester mansion. Someone said that moonlight nights they would see her walking out in the back garden kind of in and out of the trees and vineyards. The maid Agnus said she had seen the woman in plain daylight just sitting and looking out and doing nothing. She was very white and pale and had black eyes. #RandolpHarris 15 of 17
Mrs. Winchester went to bed again that evening, she again, locked her chamber-doors, both of them, and woke up in the middle of the night and there was a colourless, tall, and harshly thin woman. Her face was pale, paler than it had been before. She was just standing there, and then she was gone. Mrs. Winchester gets up and looks, and both doors were locked, just as she left them. That woman was not flesh and blood as we know; but then they say that Mrs. Winchester must had dreamed her. The distracted widow turned to spiritualism and was advised to take a trip around the World. This she did, visiting mediums, spiritualists and yogis in Europe and India. Fortelling her future, one seer warned her of all the countless thousands of departed souls slain by her husband’s rifles; she must protect herself and tone for such mass murder. She was told to plan a castle and continue its building indefinitely because as long as it was under construction she would live; cessation would prove immediately fatal. Retuning from her global trip, she arrived in San Francisco and find this area seldom subject to thunderstorms, she purchased eight-room house four miles west of San Jose. She hired an architect, a foreman and an army of carpenters and work began; architect and foreman quit the first day. There souls seemed to me on one common ground of a terrified understanding through their eyes. Mrs. Winchester also felt a creep as some live horror over her very soul. Her flesh prickled with cold. She was tottering on weak knees. That afternoon, Mrs. Winchester was in the study, the large front room on the ground floor across the hall from the south parlour, when dusk deepened. Mrs. Winchester was writing some letters when she noticed a strange shadow on the wall. She rose and began walking around the room, moving various articles of furniture, with her eyes on the shadow. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
Then suddenly she shrieked out: “Look at this awful shadow! What is it? What is it?” Mrs. Winchester’s face was livid with horror. She stood stiffly pointing at the shadow. It has been there every night since William died,” cried Mrs. Winchester. Agnus the maid assured her that it was just a fold in the curtain that make its. However, the door opened suddenly and the butler George Pollock entered. He began to speak, then his eyes followed the direction of others’. He stood stock still staring at the shadow on the wall. It was life size and stretched across the white parallelogram of a door, half across the wall space on which the picture hung. “What is that?” he demanded in a strange voice. “It must be something in the room.” “He looked like a demon!” said Mrs. Winchester. “I can’t sit in this room again!” She ordered it to be boarded up. Later that evening, they went to the library. Then George took out the lamp and sat it on the center table, and the shadow sprang out of the wall. Again, he studied the furniture and moved it about, but deliberately. Nothing affected the shadow. Then he returned to the south room with the lam and again wait. Again he returned to the study and placed the lamp on the table, and the shadow sprang out upon the wall. It was midnight before he went upstairs. Mrs. Winchester could not speak nor sleep, she heard him. She looked all over the room and saw two shadows. She lied in bed staring at the wall. The Word of God clearly and emphatically condemned all efforts to communicate with the dead. The Lord declared that the observances of people who engaged in such activity were equivalent to the worship of other gods. Mrs. Winchester had no interest in communicate with the spirits before they started trying to communicate with her. Her sacred Blue Séance room, her secret rendezvous with the spirits, was said to be locked to all but herself. So we leave you to decide for yourself the mystery of the Winchester mansion. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
Winchester Mystery House
The 1906 earthquake must have been frightening for Sarah and her employees, but can you imagine being trapped in a room for hours? Take a look at the Daisy Bedroom, the very room Sarah was rumored to be stuck in during the 1906 earthquake 😳 Tour Tickets | http://ow.ly/Uyjl50H8voA
You Can Never Force Anyone to Love You!
Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. Virginity and celibacy are for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. However, virginity or celibacy, is also, though differently, a precept for everyone. In fact, besides being a freely-chosen, lifelong state, it is also a duty—or rather, an ideal and an evangelical proposal—for everyone during at least one particular phase of life, namely the one preceding the definitive choice of one’s vocation. In this sense these words are not addressed exclusively to religious or to those preparing to become priests, but to all the baptized. We shall find that the same reasons which justify virginity for the sake of the Kingdom can also sustain and motivate the efforts of young Christian men or women to preserve their physical and spiritual chastity and integrity until their wedding day. “Rend your hearts and not your garments and return to the Lord, your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness; and He revokes His sentence of evil [when His conditions are met],” reports Joel 2.12. In any case, one cannot speak about virginity and celibacy without continually comparing it with marriage. Therefore to speak about them is also to speak about marriage; in fact in some aspects, comparing the two is the best way to discover the nature and goodness of the charism proper to each. Today we are witnessing a real attack by the dominant culture against this value of virginity. According to the well-known tendency to despise what one has lost or is unable to attain (as the fox in the fable said of the grapes: “They are not yet ripe”), secular culture casts suspicion and even ridicule on this traditional value which nature itself defends by surroundings—often even by the school environment which ought to help them mature—to be ashamed of their chastity, to do everything to hide it, even to boast about experiences they have not had, simply so as not to appear different from other people. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Someone has said that hypocrisy used to be the tribute paid by vice to virtue. Today it is the tribute paid by virtue to vice. The effect of this mindless assault has been indirectly felt within the Church as well. Nor could it be otherwise, since we live in the World and breathe air. Whether we go out or stay home, we are besieged and “de-evangelized” on every side and by every means. Celibacy and virginity, it is sometimes said, prevent healthy, complete personal development. They keep a man from being fully a man, and a woman from being fully a woman. One consequence of this is apparent in the way we present our vocational material. Sometimes at vocation meetings I have had the impression that the invitation to follow a call to special consecration is made with this tacit but clear implication: “Embrace our way of life despite the fact it involves celibacy or virginity; actually, you will be able to contribute to the coming of the Kingdom, help the poor, raise people’s awareness, live without being enslaved to things, and promote social justice.” I believe that we must acknowledge our lack of faith and have the courage to invite young people to embrace our consecrated life not despite the virginity and celibacy it entails, but because of them, or at least also because of them. This ideal may very well be the one that will cause young people to fall in love with the religious and priestly life and draw them to it, rather than distance them from it. It has happened before; it happened in the first ages of the Church. The fact is that virginity for the Kingdom is a splendid value which changing times and fashions cannot alter. All the forces and wisdom of this World, all the so-called human sciences may join together in protest against this form of life, calling it “an outdated abomination” and raising all kinds of suspicion against it; all the sins and infidelities of the very people who have chosen to embrace it may be added to this, and still it would remain, because it was instituted by Jesus Christ. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
No one will ever be able to uproot that which the Son of God planted with His own hand when He came into the World. The World itself, without realizing it, pays its own tribute to this value when it uses the words “virgin” and “pure” in a very beneficial way. An unspoiled landscape is often described as “virgin,” the best wool is labelled “pure,” and so on. We need to reclaim these words and symbols which our secularized culture has borrowed from the Bible and Christian tradition and emptied completely of their religious meaning. In an age like our own, when excesses of pleasures of the flesh threaten the very sources of life and the basis of society itself, when nature protests with dire warning signals, it is a duty and a joy for believers to rediscover the radical alternative of the Gospel. This alternative does not rule out pleasures of the flesh, but brings out its human, free, rational character, preventing it from degenerating into sheer instinct and banality. The poet Tagore, expressing an evangelical insight, writes: “Chastity is a wealth that comes from abundance of love” (not from the lack of it). There are some who choose not to marry for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. There is an unteachable use of celibacy, virginity and voluntary continence, because they are all terms designating the same actual reality, or at least the same state of life. Personally I prefer to use the word “virginity” and “virgins” as the most comprehensive term. In fact the New Testament does not reserve this title only for unmarried women, but also uses it for unmarried men. The Book of Revelations gives the name “virgins” to those who have not been with women and who therefore follow the Lamb wherever He goes (Revelation 14.4). #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
The institution of the state is described in chapter 19 of Matthew’s Gospel: “His disciples said to Him: ‘If that is who things are between husband and wife, it is better not to marry.’ However, He replied: “Not everyone can accept what I have said, but only those to whom it is granted. For there are some who are eunuchs from their mother’s womb, and some who were made so by other men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves so for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. Let anyone accept this who can,” reports Matthew 19.10-12. The word “eunuch” sounds rather harsh to our modern ears and it was harsh also for people n Jesus’ day. According to some, the choice of this unusual term was due to the fact that the adversaries of Jesus had accused Him of being a eunuch, since He was unmarried, just as they accused Him on other occasions of being a glutton and a drunkard (Matthew 11.19). It was a highly offensive word, because for the Jewish mentality of the time it was a moral duty to get married. The opinion of a certain Rabbi Eleazar, according to which “a man with no wife is not even a man,” is well known. So here, Jesus was taking up His adversaries’ accusations and making it in some way His own, but explaining it by this revelation of an unmarried state that was new and absolutely special. There are some—says Jesus—“who do not marry” (this is the non-polemical equivalent of the term “eunuch”) because they are prevented from birth on account of some natural defect. Others do not marry because they are prevented by the wickedness of people or the circumstances of life. Finally, there are others again who do not marry for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. In the last case the word “eunuch” takes on a different significance, not physical but moral. Christian tradition has always interpreted it in this way except for the well-known case of Origen who, contrary to his custom of explaining everything spiritually, took this word of the Gospel literally. He castrated himself and subsequently paid a high price for his mistake. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
The mention of the Kingdom of Heaven abruptly introduces an element of mystery into Jesus’ words, which is heightened by the final laconic phrase: “Let anyone accept this who can.” In other words, those who have received the gift of understanding will understand. In this way a second state of life is born into the World, and this is its “Magna Charta.” In fact, before Jesus, no state of life existed comparable to this one instituted by Him, at least in its motivation if not in fact. The Essences of Qumran also knew and practiced a form of celibacy but for them it had undertones of asceticism and ritual purity rather than eschatological connotations. If anything, it was motivated by an expectation of the Kingdom, not by its coming. In any case it could not have been otherwise. Only the presence of the Kingdom on Earth could institute this second possibility: a life of celibacy “for the sake of the Kingdom.” This possibility does not cancel out the other one, namely marriage, but makes it relative. The same sort of thing happens with the idea of the state in the political sphere: the revelation of the simultaneous presence in history of the Kingdom of God does not abolish the state, but radically relativizes it. Perfect continence stands in the face of marriage rather as the Kingdom of God stands in the face of the kingdom of Caesar: it does not eliminate it, but highlights the different positions it now has from the one it had before. It is no longer the only instance in its field. Since God’s Kingdom is in a different order of greatness from that of Caesar, the one does not need to deny the other in order to exist. In the same way, voluntary continence does not need the denial of marriage for its own validity to be recognized. In fact, it is only by simultaneously affirming marriage—especially since Jesus raised it to the dignity of a sacrament—that chastity acquires meaning. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Two groups of psychosocial problems—somatoform disorders and psychogeic sexual dysfunction—are distinct types of disorders that, in the abstract, have similar manifestations. Each somatoform disorder or sexual dysfunction represents a constellation of “physical” symptoms in the absence of any identifiable physiological or medical condition to which the symptoms could be attributed. Both classes of problems are associated with patterns of friction in interpersonal relationships: Somatoform disorders are prominently linked with troublesome interactions in the family of origin, and psycho genic sexual dysfunctions are strongly tied to disturbances in family-or-orientation (id est, marital) relationships. Somatoform disorders entail the expression of some symptom or symptoms that suggest a medical problem, but are not fully explainable by a medical condition. These symptoms, such as severe back pain or chronic digestive problems, tend to cause significant distress or impairment for the individual expressing them. The experience of these physical symptoms is very real for the afflicted individual, and they are not intentional, as in the case of malingering or factitious disorder. Three of the more common types of somatoform disorders are pain disorder (the experience of pain that is severe enough to warrant clinical attention and interfere with social functioning, in the absence of any obvious medial cause), hypochondriasis (a preoccupation with fears of having a serious disease based on misinterpretation of one or more bodily signs or symptoms), and somatization disorder (a chronic pattern of pain, sexual gastrointestinal, and pseudoneurological symptoms). Somatization disorder includes what has in the past been referred to as hysteria and Briquet’s syndrome. Somatization disorder is somewhat rare, with an annual prevalence of only 0.2 percent. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
However, a more recent study of over 3,000 adolescents and young adults indicated that the risk of any specific somatoform disorder was 2.7 percent in that population, the most prevalent being pain disorder and conversion disorder. However, the use of a new and thorough diagnostic technique yielded an overall lifetime prevalence rate of 12.6 percent for any somatoform disorder. These disorders are more common in women than in men, and typically have their origin in adolescence; they are also highly comorbid, with 50-75 percent of patients also afflicted with such problems as depression, eating disorders, and substance dependence. Somatoform disorders may serve a variety of functions in the family of origin, the family of orientation, and even general personal relationships. For many people, a somatoform disorder brings a “solution” to a systemic problem within the family or marriage by shifting attention away from conflicts. It may also serve as a means of securing various types of support and attention. In research on somatoform disorders, antecedent family-of-origin experiences has received much attention. These often include low parental care (coupled with parental overinvolvement), family conflict, physical and sexual abuse, and other adverse experiences; disrupted attachment; and parental modeling of somatization. Somatoform disorders may also be understood as distorted forms of interpersonal communication: Many people express their physical symptoms as a means of indirectly communicating their distress to others. Somatoform disorders tend to be highly comorbid with personality disorders, further complicating the clinical and interpersonal picture of these disorders. Why would an individual experience and express “physical” symptoms in the absence of any precipitating medical or biological cause? Many have argued that there are social functions and perhaps even social causes underlying this phenomenon. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
In a comprehensive review of the relationship between social-psychological factors and somatic symptoms, perceptions and reports of physical health may function as non-verbal indices of social health. Numerous possible etiological explanations for somatization have been suggested. Many if not most of these explanations entail some significant issue(s) in the area of interpersonal relationships, such as primary or secondary gains; a solution to a systems problem in a family; or a means of communicating when other, more direct forms of expression are blocked (signal function). Many people with somatization disorder turn to health care professionals for social support that is otherwise lacking in their lives. The concept of secondary gain had figure prominently in the literature on somatization. When one is “sick,” he or she is freed from normal and typical obligations and is generally absolved from any responsibility for being in the sick condition. The expression of physical symptoms also brings attention, sympathy, and support from others, not to mention more instrumental types of assistance, such as disability payments. For the individual who is unable or unwilling to solicit or secure social support from others through more standard means of social interaction, assuming the sick role may be a covert mechanism for effectively achieving this interpersonal goal. In the traditional phylodynamic approach, somatization is thought to have primarily intrapsychic functions, with secondary interpersonal consequences. However, the interpersonal perspective would interpret the “secondary” interpersonal effects as primary. That is, the person exhibits, and indeed experiences, the physical symptoms primarily as a mechanism for attaining particular interpersonal outcomes. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Somatoform disorders may also bring a temporary solution to a system-wide problem. For example, a child’s physical symptoms may temporarily divert attention from an otherwise contentious family conflict. As parents shift their attention toward the welfare of the child, they may actually behave in a more cooperative fashion and reduce their conflict. Just as intoxication can bring temporary stability to a household affected by alcoholism, somatoform disorders may temporarily stabilize a family setting and subdue conflict. According to the signal function hypothesis, somatic symptoms may be the nonverbal expression of an emotion and/or interpersonal problem. Somatization is communication, consciously or unconsciously coded in the language of the body. For a variety of reasons, some people may not be comfortable expressing their interpersonal or emotional distress to others; for them, the expression of physical symptoms may be a more socially acceptable means of expressing their feelings to other people and soliciting social support from them. From this perspective, a somatoform disorder can be interpreted as a sign of psychic distress in the afflicted individual. “In the World you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the World,” reports John 16.33. Adversities and hardships are opportunities for us to go higher. Consequently, God does not prevent every negative thing from coming into your life. In fact, Jesus said, “In this life you will have trouble.” “Unfair things will happen to you,” He said, but here is the key: “Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the World.” Throughout the Scripture, God days if we will keep the right attitude, if we will stay full of joy and full of hope, even though He may not stop all the trouble, when we come out, we will not be the same as we were before. We will be more blessed, healthy, and prosperous, better off then we were previously. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
I think about Joseph. His brothers were so jealous of him, they sold him into slavery. Other young men his age, no doubt, were out having a good time, enjoying their lives. However, Joseph was confined, living in a foreign land, having to work all the time. It was unfair; worse yet, Joseph’s heartache and pain were caused by somebody else’s poor choices and somebody else’s bad attitude. However, God saw that injustice. God said in the book of Joel, “I will restore the years that have been stolen from you,” reports Joel 2.25. Somehow, some way, God can make up all those years. That is what He did for Joseph. Even though Joseph spent thirteen years in slavery and in prison, God made it all up to him. When he came out, he did not have to go back home and start all over. No, he came out promoted and increased. He now had a position of honour as the prime minister of all Egypt, second in command only to Pharaoh. God took the adversity and injustice, and because Joseph kept the right attitude, God brought him out much better than he was before. In other words, God made the enemy pay for brining the injustice into Joseph’s life. Friend, God is keeping the records in your life, as well. If somebody had mistreated you and done you wrong, do not sit around feeling sorry for yourself. Let hope fill your heart. Know that God will bring you out with twice what you had before. God will never waste anything that you go through. None of us enjoy tough times. However, we can stay filled with hope, knowing that God will never waste the pain. He will always use it to our advantage. Had Joseph not experienced that adversity, he would not have received the promotion that led to his powerful position. In your times of disappointment and trouble, instead of getting down and discouraged, start believing to come out better off than you were before. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Put your faith out there, and remind yourself that God wants to restore good things back to you. You simply need to stay filled with hope, and start expecting things to change. The Bible tells us in Zechariah that we should be “prisoners of hope.” So many people go around discouraged and defeated. They live with anger, resentment, and bitterness, rather than hope. They think no one knows what they have been through. No one knows how bad their marriage has been, or how deeply they are in dept. No, quit dwelling on all of that. Do not magnify your problems. Magnify your God. The bigger you make God, the smaller your problems become, and the more faith will rise in your heart. The Scripture teaches that we should not look at the things that are seen, but at the things that are not seen; for the things that are seen are only temporary, but the things that are seen through our eyes of faith are eternal (see 2 Corinthians 4.18). One translation says, “The things that are seen are subject to change.” That means your health may not look too good today, but that is subject to change. Your finances may look pretty dismal, but they are subject to change. Nothing may be going right in your life, but it is all subject to change. When you look at your child who is not living right, instead of getting discouraged and losing your hope, look at him or her and say, “You are subject to change.” You may need to look at your checkbook and say, “This is subject to change.” Maybe your boss is not treating you right. He is being rude and disrespectful. Just smile and say, “You are subject to change.” (You probably should not say that to his face, or your job may be subject to change!) If you want God to restore what has been stolen from you, stay filled with hope. You have to get up each morning expecting things to change, expecting good things to happen. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
You need to know that in a moment of time, God could turn it all around. Suddenly you could get your miracle. Suddenly God could bring someone new into your life. Suddenly you could get that promotion. All it takes is one “suddenly.” In a split second, with one touch of God’s favour, everything can change. Our attitude should be, I am going to take back what belongs to me. I am not going to sit around mourning over what I have lost. I may have been knocked down, but I am not going to stay down. I am going to get back up again, knowing that Almighty God is on my side, and if God be for me, who dares be against me? And if you stay filled with hope, God will restore you, and like Joseph, you will come out twice as strong, twice as healthy, twice as prosperous. God will make the enemy pay double for brining that adversity into your life. Dear Lord in Heaven, please help me to believe, Father, that my circumstances are “subject to change,” not simply because of me, but because You are helping me to overcome that adversity, and You will bring me out even better than before. I will open my whole heart to You and enjoy Your company as my soul desires, and no one will despise me for it. Nor will anyone move me and give me a second look. However, we will have a good conversation, just You and me, and speak as one good friend to another, and then to a good meal! This I pray. This I desire, that I be totally at Your disposal, and that I withdraw my heart from its many Worldly commitments. What is more, through Holy Communion and frequent celebration of the Mass, I will develop a taste for the Celestials and Eternals. Ah! Lord God, when will I be totally united and absorbed with You and totally oblivious of myself? You in me, and I in You, as the Evangelist John once put it (17.21). Fast friends forever! #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
You truly are my Beloved Friend, chosen out of thousands and thousands, but how did I ever find You? That was the central question of Solomon’s song (5.10). You are the friend in whose friendship it pleases my soul to spend the rest of the days of my life. You bring peace to my life, which is not all that odd; You are the Great Peace and the True Rest, outside of whom there is nothing but grudge and grief. You truly are my hidden God, tucked away, secret; that is who the Prophet Isaiah saw it (45.15). And Your words of wisdom are not with the Impious, and Your small talk is with the Humble and Simple. “O Lord, how sweet is Your spirit,” as the Book of Wisdom has it (12.1). You are the One who, to demonstrate Your sweetness toward Your children, throughout them worth feeding with sweetest bread descending from Heaven; that is how the Deuteronomist describe the feeding of Moses and his friends for so many years (4.7). “Truly there is no other nation so grand as the one whose gods approach as closely as You, our God, have approached us.” You are present with all Your faithful, and You give them their daily bread, raising their hearts to Heaven, to eat, to enjoy. What other tribe has been so honoured as the Christians? What other creature under the Heavens has been so loved, so chosen, as the soul of a Devout in whom God has made an entrance that He may nourish him with his own glorious substance. O Ineffable Grace! O Admirable Dignation! O Immense Love bestowed on Humankind alone! However, what return do I make to the Lord for that grace, for such extravagant charity? A question frequently asked by the Psalmist (116.12). There is no better return than to present my heart on a platter to the Lord, with the hope that He would accept it as I intended. Then all my intestines will jounce for joy when my soul has been perfectly untied to God. Then He will say to me, “If you want to stay with me, I ill stay with you.” And I will respond to him. “Do please sit with me, and I willingly sit with You. This is my desire, whole and entire, that my heart be united with Yours.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
It must be remembered that the glimpse is not the goal of life. It is a happening, something which begins and ends, but something which of which is of immense value in contributing to the philosophic life, its day-to-day consciousness, its ordinary stabilized nature. Philosophic life is established continuously and permanently in the divine presence; the glimpse comes and goes within that presence. The glimpse is exceptional and exciting; but sahaja, the established state, is ordinary, normal, every day. The glimpse tends to withdraw us from activity, even if only for a few moments, whereas sahaja does not have to stop its outward activity. To the human who has come along the path of loving devotion to God and finally gained the reward of frequent, joyous, ardent, inward communion with God, equally as to the humans who has practised the way of mystical self-recollection and attained frequent awareness of the Overself’s presence, an unexpected and unpalatable change may happen little by little or suddenly. God will seem to withdraw from the devotee, the Overself from the mystic. The blisses will fade and end. Although this experience will have none of the terror or isolation and misery of the “dark night” it will be comparable to that unforgettable time. And although it will seem like a withdrawal of Grace, the hidden truth is that it is actually a farther and deeper bestowal of Grace. For the human is being led to the next stage—which is to round out, balance, and complete one’s development. This one will be taught to do by first, acquiring cosmological knowledge, and later, attaining ontological wisdom. That is, one will learn something about the World-Idea and then, this gained, pass upward to learning the nature of that Reality in whose light even the Universe is illusion. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Thus from study of the operations of the Power behind the World-Idea one passes on to pondering on the Power itself. This last involves the highest degree of concentration and is indeed the mysterious actualized Christian. When successfully followed it brings about the attainment of Insight, the final discovery that there is no other being than THAT, no second entity. The challenge of living from one’s core involves “effortless effort.” The paradox is that the harder one tries, the more one fails. It is like learning to swim: the more one struggles to stay on the surface, the faster one goes under. On the other hand, the more one relaxes, the easier it becomes to float. Living has to do with surrendering versus forcing. The key, then, is learning to live spontaneously rather than by coercion and willpower. It involves learning to live without striving. And this is contrary to what we in Western culture have been taught: that we win by trying harder. Another example is trying to make someone love you. The more you try, the less you succeed. You can never force anyone to love you. Yu can only be yourself openly, and hope that one will choose to respond to you. However, many people take the other course of trying to force or trick others into loving them through their achievements, seductions, or bag of manipulative tricks. All who perpetually strive t merit love end up exhausted and alone. Love cannot be bought or earned. It is the free gift of all who developed a relaxed and caring presence to others, and arises spontaneously out of heartfelt human encounter. In an age of technology such as ours, it may be difficult to accept that some things—such as wisdom, the capacity to love, the courage to be oneself, and the sensitivity to actualize one’s spiritual destiny—cannot be reduced to a prefabricated “instant” package. One of the paradoxical aspects of person growth is that it can never be forced. An invitation can be given, but the person must grow at one’s own pace. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
It is important to realize that one cannot force one’s own growth! Rather, one must have time, patience, and willingness for growth to occur at its own rate. The paradox of growth within the human personality is that we grow and change by accepting the way we are. We grow most when we relax. The reason for this is that relaxed awareness, coupled with desire, allows our whole being time to digest and assimilate new experiences and subsequently alter our thoughts, feelings, values, and behaviour. A wise philosopher once said that human beings are like sheep. If they truly assimilate their experiences, the gradually the grass of daily life will be transformed into the wool of wisdom. When it comes to daily surrender to God, Queen Akasha, in The Queen of the Damned, captured a key concept that corresponds with “effortless effort” in her phrase “Join me of die.” The quiet, penetrating encounter with God in the depths of our being us possible only when we let one go. When we quit boxing one in, or calling one this or that, or trying to make one do things for us—then we are filled with one’s presence. It is by beholding one’s being, and asking nothing other than to be still in one’s presence, that we surrender to God. We leave the encounter moved in our core, because we have asked nothing and received everything. This is the mystery of the holiness and the love of God. We can make one gentle step—practically effortless—and in so surrendering to God we are bountifully blessed. The quiet, daily surrender of one’s innermost being to God brings peace and a progressive work of wholeness to one’s life. For the actualizing Christian, life is a balance and synthesis between inner contemplation and outer social action, between being and doing. The times of quiet, relaxed surrender and openness in the presence of God harmonize with times of interaction with family, friends, and the World at large. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Busyness, planning, and doing also give way rhythmically to gentle meditation and prayer. This process assures that one’s day-to-day involvements are inspired and brought to fruition by the gentle flow of God’s Spirit in one’s life. The Greek word translated physical body means “slave.” The physical body should be a slave to the human spirit. Sin caused the human spirit to lose control over the body because Adam became a spiritually dead man the day he sinned. He became a body-ruled, not spirit-ruled; and he gained a sensual knowledge that caused his body to rebel against his spirit. The spirit man was dethroned that very hour; the human spirit lost its authority and ability to rule the body. Sin took control of the flesh. The body rose up and began to rule over their spirit. We can now understand what Paul said in Romans 8.6, “For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” To be carnally minded is to be body-ruled, and it produces spiritual death. To be spiritually minded is to be spirit-ruled, and it will produce life and peace for God designed you that way. “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath mad me free from the law of sin and death,” reports Romans 8.2. God’s law that produces spirit life in Christ made your spirit free from the spiritual death caused by sin. “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit,” reports Romans 8.3-4. The Law was given for people who were body-ruled. Body-ruled people cannot obey the laws of God because God wants one thing and their bodies want another. The flesh is weak; it is not subject to God’s laws. All men from Adam to Jesus were body-ruled; their spirits were slaves to their bodies. It was as a satanic chain that enslaved all humankind. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Then Jesus came in the likeness of sinful flesh. He looked like other men, but God was His Father and He was spirit-ruled. He broke the satanic chain of spirit slavery and condemned sin that had enthroned itself in the human body. He destroyed that satanic stronghold and made it possible for humans to walk in the spirit. “And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin but the Spirit is life because of righteousness,” reports Romans 8.10. When Christ comes into your spirit, the bodies dies; it is dethroned. You certainly do not want something that is dead ruling over you. The body is dead, but the spirit is life because you became righteous. The spirit man received the ability to rule the body once again. The spirit human grows on the Word of God. God’s Word is filled with faith and that feeds the spirit human. As satan taught the body to rule over the spirit with words, so must the spirit. “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life,” reports John 6.63. It takes time to train the spirit, but God’s Words are spirit life. It is a process of training the human spirit to believe what you say will come to pass. Say only the things that you believe will come to pass. Quit talking foolishness, sickness and disease. Quit saying, “That tickles me to death.” Satan has programed death into the human vocabulary. It ought not to be so, for it will sap your faith. Begin now to stop the enemy from using your vocabulary to hold you in bondage. Study the life of Christ, and you will find that He refused to confess or admit death. You remember when He went to raise Lazarus from the dead, He would not confess he was dead. He said, “He sleepeth.” Finally, He said to His disciples, “He is dead,” reports John 11.14. However, the Greek says, “died.” There is a great difference between a man that died and one that is dead. If you do not believe that, look at Jesus. He died; but thank God, He is not dead! #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Learn to control your vocabulary and never speak anything that you do not want to come to pass. Someone says, “I could never do that.” If the Word says you can (and it does), then you can; but it will takes some time to get all that old unbelief out so you can speak faith-filled words. All you big things, bless the Lord Mount Kilimanjaro and Lake Victorian. The Rift Valley and the Serengeti Plain, fat baobabs and shady mango trees, all eucalyptus and tamarind trees, bless the Lord. Praise and extol Him for ever and ever. All you tiny things, bless the Lord. Busy black ants and hopping fleas, wriggling tadpoles and mosquito larvae, flying locusts and water drops, pollen dust and tsetse files, millet seeds and dried dagaa, blessed the Lord. Praise and extol Him for ever and ever. It shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto My commandments which I command you this day, to love the Lord your God, and to serve Him with all your heart, and with all your soul, that I will give the rain of your land in its season, the former rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil. And I will give grass in thy fields for thy cattle, and thou shalt eat and be satisfied. Take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them; and the displeasure of the Lord will be aroused against you, and He shut up the Heaven, so that there shall be no rain, and the ground shall not yield her fruit; and ye perish quickly from off the good land which the Lord giveth you. Therefore shall ye lay up these My words in your heart and in your soul; and ye shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes. And ye shall teach them to your children, talking of them, when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt write them upon the doorposts of thy house, and upon thy gates; that your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, upon the land which the Lord promised unto your fathers to give them, as the days of the Heavens above the Earth. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
CRESLEIGH HAVENWOOD
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Palo Verde Park, is just down the street and there’s plenty of recreation to take part in all around town. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/
A little Agitation Gives Strength to Souls–Are You Going through a Dark Time in Your Life?
Your success and happiness are within you. As we have observed, psychodynamic theorists believe that an anxiety disorder develops when children come to fear their own id impulses and use ego defense mechanism to lessen the resulting anxiety. What distinguishes obsessive-compulsive disorder from other anxiety disorders, in their view, is that here the battles between anxiety-provoking id impulses and anxiety-reducing defense mechanisms is not buried in the unconscious but is played out in explicit and dramatic thoughts and actions. The id impulses usually take the form of obsessive thoughts, and the ego defenses appear as counterthoughts or compulsive actions. A woman who keeps imagining her mother suffering from a disaster, for example, may counter those thoughts with repeated safety checks throughout the house. According to psychodynamic theorists, three ego defense mechanisms are particularly common in obsessive-compulsive disorder: isolation, undoing, and reaction formation. People who resort to isolation simply disown their undesirable and unwanted thoughts and experience them as foreign intrusions. People who engage in undoing perform acts that are mean to cancel out their undesirable impulses. Those who wash their hands repeatedly, for example, may be symbolically undoing their unacceptable id impulses. People who develop a reaction formation take on a lifestyle that directly opposes their unacceptable impulses. A person may live a life of compulsive kindness and devotion to others in order to counter unacceptably aggressive impulses. Another may lead a life of chastity to counteract obsessive impulses involving pleasures of the flesh. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
If people keep performing compulsive behaviours in order to prevent bad outcomes and ensure beneficial outcomes, can they not be taught that such behaviours are not really serving purpose? In a behavioural treatment called exposure and response prevention, clients are repeatedly exposed to objects or situations that produce anxiety, obsessive fears, and compulsive behaviours, but they are told to resist performing the behaviours they feel bound to perform. Because people find it very difficult to stop such behaviours, therapists often set an example. As the clients are repeatedly exposed to objects or situations that produce anxiety, obsessive fears, and compulsive behaviours, but they are told to resist performing the behaviours they feel bound to perform. Because people find it very difficult to stop such behaviours, therapists put themselves in the anxiety-producing situation without performing any compulsive actions, and then they encourage the clients to do the same. Some behavioural therapists further have people carry out self-help procedures at home. That is, they assign homework in exposure and response prevention, such as these assignments given to a person with a cleaning compulsion: Do not mop the floor of your bathroom for a week. After this, clean it within three minutes, using an ordinary mop. Use this mop for other chores as well without cleaning it. Buy a fluffy mohair sweater and wear it for a week. When taking it off at night do not remove the bits of fluff. Do not clean your house for a week. You, your husband, and children all have to keep shoes on. Do not clean the house for a week. Drop a cookie on the contaminated floor, pick the cookie up and eat it. Leave the sheets and blankets on the floor and then put them on the beds. Do not change them for a week. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Eventually this person was able to set up a reasonable routine for cleaning oneself and home. Exposure and response prevention has been offered in both individual and group therapy. Between 55 and 85 percent of clients with obsessive-compulsive disorder have been found to improve considerably with this approach. They also function better at home, socially, and at work. These changes continue to be observed for years. The effectiveness of this approach suggests that people with obsessive-compulsive disorder are like the superstitious man in the old joke who keeps snapping his fingers to keep elephants away. When someone points out, “But there are not any elephants around here,” the man replies, “See? It works!” One review concludes, “With hindsight, it is possible to see that the obsessional individual has been snapping one’s fingers, and unless one stops (response prevention) and takes a look around at the same time (exposure), one is not going to learn much of value about elephants.” The same studies and statistics indicate the limitations of exposure and response prevention. Few clients who receive the treatment overcome all their symptoms, and as many as one-quarter fail to improve at all. Also, the approach is of limited help to those who have obsessions but no compulsions. After all, the treatment makes its impact on obsessions by blocking closely linked compulsive acts. Finally, the favourable findings come mainly from studies of cleaning and checking compulsions. The effectiveness of this approach with other kinds of compulsions or with multiple compulsions is unclear. Painful thoughts—like the man in George Cruikshank’s painting The Blue Devils, some people may find unwanted thoughts particularly threatening and debilitating. According to cognitive theorists, their reactions to intrusive thoughts may set the stage for obsessive-compulsive disorder. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Some individuals become more and more convinced that one’s unpleasant intrusive thoughts are dangerous. As the person’s fear of such thoughts increase, the thoughts begin to occur more frequently and they, too, become obsessions. People with obsessive-compulsive disorder experience intrusive thoughts more frequently than other people, especially in times of stress, a difference that may be due to biological predisposition; they resort to more elaborate neutralizing strategies than other people when they try to stop unwanted thoughts; and they experience reductions in anxiety after using neutralizing techniques. Although everyone sometimes had undesired thoughts, only some people develop obsessive-compulsive disorder. Why do these individuals find such normal thoughts so disturbing to begin with? Researchers have found that this population tends to be more depressed than other people; to have exceptionally high standards of conduct and morality; to believe that their intrusive negative thoughts are equivalent to actions and capable of causing harm to themselves or others and to feel responsible for eliminating the imagined danger; and generally to believe that they can and should have perfect control over all their thoughts and behaviours. There is a signal hypothesis that holds that excessive alcohol or substance use is a sign of distress. The comorbidity of other psychological problems with drug and alcohol misuse is testimony to the validity of this hypothesis. Before these are discussed, it should be noted that drug use problems are highly comorbid with alcohol use problems: About half of all those who misuse hard drugs also suffer from alcohol dependence. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Rates of alcoholism and other substance use disorders are very high among those with mood disorders. A study showed that rates of mood disorders are equal for men and women in the American Amish community, where the use of alcohol is prohibited. This suggests that alcoholism may mask depression in men in the general population, since men are thought to have about half the rate of depression than women do. In fact, there are very few people who have just drinking problems. Such individuals often have a number of related problems, such as depression and anxiety. In some cases, the drinking may be a misguided attempted to “cope” with these disorders, and in other cases, these other psychosocial problems may be consequences of problem drinking. Many patients with bipolar disorder also have substance use problems. About a quarter to half of all such patients have some substance use disorder. Substance use disorders are also highly comorbid with personality disorders. Almost 60 percent of all people with substance use disorders have comorbid personality disorder. The pattern of comorbidity with alcoholism and other substance use disorders reveals close associations with other disorders that have strong links to interpersonal relationship problems. One plausible account of this comorbidity may be that the substance use is secondary to the primary psychological problem, initiated in an effort to regulate and cope with a deteriorating interpersonal environment. Problems such as depression, anxiety, and personality disorders can rapidly decay interpersonal relationships. The feelings of loneliness, damaged self-esteem, and lack of direction that often accompany and follow the deterioration of interpersonal relationships may prompt some people to turn to substance use. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
In such instances, the substance use may be an attempt to regulate interpersonal interaction (exempli gratia, taking cocaine in effort to go out in public and have a good time) or to cope with feelings of emptiness and rejection (exempli gratia, drinking alcohol to “escape” dysphoric feelings). In other cases, substance use disorders may precede other psychological problems that stem from destroyed interpersonal relationships. Once substance use is initiated, some people continue and escalate it because of chemical addiction. However, it is virtually a foregone conclusion that as the substance use becomes more pervasive, interpersonal relationships are damaged and ultimately destroyed. This effect happens partly because excessive drug and alcohol use interferes with competent interpersonal behaviour; it focuses individuals almost exclusively on substance ingestion, at the expense of maintaining mutually rewarding relationships with other people. When this focus is taken to extremes, a person may steal from others to get money to buy drugs, lie, and become excessively abrasive. These behaviours reliably damage interpersonal relationships, and problems such as depression and anxiety may follow—not necessarily because of the substance use disorder per se, but because of the interpersonal consequences of the substance use. Consequently, much of the comorbidity between substance use disorders and other psychosocial problems may be explained by aversive interpersonal experiences. These are the experiences with the power and impact to link problems. At least a quarter of the population will experience significant problems with substance abuse or dependence in their lifetimes. This class of problems generally has its origins in adolescence, and substance use is currently on the rise in this cohort. Within the substance use disorders, alcoholism has received a great deal of interpersonally oriented research attention. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
People who are dependent on alcohol exhibit problems with some social skills, such as negative assertion and refusal of alcohol from others. However, these interpersonal skills deficits are not broad-based, and may be due to low motivation to use the skills than to not possessing them. Alcoholism has complex associations with family interactions. In some cases, alcoholism can bring positivity and stability to family troubles. Scientists are learning that alcoholism is a heterogeneous phenomenon, and that persons with certain subtypes of it are more inclined than others to have more severe family problems. In particular, those with episodic (vs. steady), high-antisociality (vs. low-antisociality), and stable-wet (vs. stable-dry or transitional alcoholism tend to have the most disrupted family environments and interactions. As in the family more generally, the marital relationship can influence and is influenced by spousal alcoholism. Alcoholics may harbour feelings of hostility and competitiveness toward their spouse. At the same time, drinking can in some cases activate positivity and problem solving in marital interaction. The marriages of those who drink at home tend to see more positive consequences of drinking than the marriages of those who drink outside the home. A great deal of attention has been paid to COAs (children of alcoholics) in both the scientific and lay press. Problems for COAs are thought to represent the interpersonally destructive consequences of parental alcoholism. Although they are clearly at risk for developing problem drinking themselves, COAs are not easily distinguished from non-COAs. When they are, a more general negative family environment mechanism may explain their troubles better than the specific effects of parental alcoholism do. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
The architecture for adult substance abuse or dependence is often intact by the end of adolescence, and is largely established through interpersonal interaction. Young people learn to use drugs and alcohol by observing their friends and family members perform the behaviours; this process is known as modeling. High levels of family-of-origin discord and interpersonal maltreatment may predispose young people to get involved with and continue to use drugs and alcohol. Undoubtedly, many such youths are self-medicating and seeking an escape from interpersonally inflicted trauma and drama. Although adolescents who are involved in substance use and misuse have some interpersonal problems of their own, these problems are in some cases the consequences of substance use. Some evidence also suggests that codependent interpersonal relationships can even maintain substance misuse. All those with habitual substance use, abuse, or dependence seek to alter their consciousness, and often to escape a negative mood state. No one is born with the knowledge or behavioural ability to use drugs and alcohol for these or other purposes. Rather, this knowledge and behaviour comes from interpersonal interaction. Drug and alcohol use is socially learned. The path from substance use to substance abuse and/or dependence is often strewn with the wreckage of destructive interpersonal interactions and relationships, such as conflict and hostility in families or origin and orientation, rejection by peers, sexual abuse, and marital discord. Alcohol and other substance abuse and dependence are both causes and consequences of interpersonal distress. However, to live your best life now, one must act on one’s will, not simply one’s emotions. Sometimes that means one has to take steps of faith even when one is hurting, grieving, or still reeling from some attack of the enemy. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Some people are sitting around waiting for God to change their circumstances. Then they are going to be happy; then they are going to have a good attitude; than they are going to give God praise. However, God is waiting on one to get up on the inside. To be an actualizing Christian. When one does one’s part, God will begin to change the things and work supernaturally in one’s life. Are you going through a dark time in your life? Perhaps someone deceived you, took advantage of you, or mistreated you, and now you are tempted to sit around acting foolish and ghoulish, mouring over what you have lost, thinking about how unfair it was, and how your life will never be the same. You need to change your attitude. You have to feel the success and happiness on the inside. Develop the mentality of a successful person and watch what God will begin to do. When you face adversity, do not be a crybaby. Do not be a complainer. Do not wallow in self-pity. Instead, have the attitude of a successful Christian. Jesus Christ is a lover of purity and the Giver of All Sanctity. A pure heart is the sort of thing He seeks. And in a place like that He likes to take His rest; a Chatsworth, as it were; that was Luke’s sentiment in Acts (7.49). Prepare of Jesus a dining room with some suitable furniture—that is how the Evangelist Mark recorded it (14.15), and He will make Passover with His Disciples and invite you to come. Jesus will be glad and come to you and remain for the celebration of the feast, but first you will have to scour the leaven from the room—Paul reminded the Corinthians to do just that in his First Letter (5.7)—and sweep out the inner room of one’s heart. Get rid of everything secular. Banish the sounds of the noisy vices outside. Then sit as solitary sparrow on a roof tile, as the Psalmist once put it (102.7), and stew about your regrets in—as the Prophet Isaiah described it so well (38.15)—the vinaigrettes of your soul. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Every loving Devout has already done this, prepared a Chatsworth; that is to say, the best, most beautiful spot for one’s own beloved Friend. Why? To show what great affections would greet the arrival of one’s Best Friend. Mark you, no preparation is ever perfect. Try though you do, there are still foreign particles about, and even if you were to spend a year doing it, there would still be dust in the air. taking into consideration Jesus Christ’s piety and grace, one would be permitted to approach His table. One would have to do it, though, as an indigent to a rich man, with nothing in one’s pockets and no way to repay the kindness other than to eat humble pie and give humble thanks. Just do what one can do and do it diligently, not out of habit or necessity, but with fear and reverence. With affection receive the Body of you Beloved Lord and God, who thought you were a worthy enough chap to receive a visit. Jesus is the One who called you, the One who ordered it to happen, who cleaned you up so nicely. Come and receive Jesus. If perchance Jesus should shed some grace of devotion on you, give thank to Him, your God. Not because you are worthy of it, but because He looks down with mercy on one’s pathetic state. If one does not have grace, but feels increasingly arid, insist on prayer, groan and beat your best, saying “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa”; the Evangelist Matthew said something similar (7.7). And do not stop until you receive a morsel of medicinal grace. Without Jesus you are poor—not the other way around. One does not come to bless Christ, and make Christ feel good—it is the other way around. One comes to be sanctified by Christ and to be joined to Jesus Christ in friendship, and to be encouraged once again to do better; First Timothy yet again (4.14). Do not overlook this grace. Rather, prepare one’s heart with all diligence. Then bid one’s Beloved Friend to enter. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
It is important to note here that one should not only prepare oneself for devotion before Communion, but also save oneself solicitously after Communion. The recollection after should not be less than the preparation before, for the post-Communion glow is the best preparation for attaining major grace. Whoever flees from Communion back to the World for fear of missing some Worldly consolations loses what spiritual consolations have already been detailed to one. Beware of lengthy conversations. Remain by yourself in the church or chapel, and enjoy your special time with God, for you have Him whom the whole World cannot wrest from you. Jesus Christ is the One to whom you ought to give your complete self. That so that you may live not in yourself, but in Him—do that, and you can kiss care good-bye. You may be weary, and tired, worn down, and ready to give up. You may be saying, “I am never going to break this addiction. I have had it for so long. I would not even know how to function without it.” Or, “My income is so low, and my debts are so high; I do not see how my financial situation will ever get better.” Or, “I have been praying for years, but it does not look as though my children want to serve God.” “I have had about as much as I can take.” Do not allow yourself to wave the white flag of surrender. You must get out of that defeated mentality and start thinking and believing positively. Your attitude should be: I am coming out this situation successfully! I may have been sick for a long time, but I know this sickness did not come to stay. It came to pass. I may have struggled with this addiction for years, but I know my day of deliverance is coming. My children may not be doing right, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
You must show the enemy that you are more determined than he is. Make it known, “Even if I have to stand my whole lifetime, I am going to stand in faith! I am going to keep standing up on the inside, no matter how long it takes.” God wants you to be a winner, not a whiner. There is no reason for you to be perpetually living “under the circumstances,” always down, always discouraged. No matter how many times you get knocked down, keep getting back up. God sees your resolve. He seems your determination. And when you do everything you can do, that is when God will step in and do what you cannot do. Dear Lord in Heaven, I choose to rule my emotions, rather than allowing them to dominate me. Please help me to act on what I know is right and true according to Your Word, rather than on outward appearances, feelings, or discouraging information. With Your help, I will be successful! Many pray for good health and strength, but if they sneeze once, they say, “I believe I am taking the flu,” or “I must be taking a cold.” They have set a scriptural law in motion and it cancelled their prayer. Let me share a little secret with you that will stop 50 percent of your cold is you will do it consistently. Every time you sneeze say, “Thank God, I am taking healing. I have a choice; so I am taking healing.” “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life,” reports Deuteronomy 30.19. No one will snicker or laugh when you say, “I am taking the flu.” They will just reply, “Oh, poor thing.” However, when you say, “I am taking healing,” they will often say, “What has gotten into you?” Just reply, “The Word of God!” James says if you can control the tongue, that the body can be controlled. Your body is like a child—it will do anything you let it do. If you let it, it will be sick. The spirit of man on the inside is the one that should dominate the body. Christ redeemed you from the curse of poverty, sickness, and sin. (Galatians 3.13.) #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Some would reason that if we were redeemed from the curse of the Law, then everyone would be healed and no one would be sick; but that is not true. We are redeemed from sin; but not everyone is saved. They could be, but they have not acted on God’s Word to be delivered from sin. If you want to, you can still sin. According to the Word of Galatians 3.13, we have no more right to allow sickness and disease in our bodies than we do sin. It all comes from Satan! When the question arises which one is absolutely the best government, an insoluble question is being raised because it is indeterminate. Or, if you wish, it has as many good answers as there are possible combinations in the absolute and relative positions of the people. However, if asked by what sign it is possible to know that a given people is well or poorly governed, this is another matter, and the question of fact could be resolved. However, nothing is answered, since each wants to answer it in one’s own way. The subjects praised public tranquillity; the citizens praise the liberty of private individuals. The former prefers the security of possessions; the latter that of persons. The former has it that the best government is the one that is most severe; the latter maintains that the best government is the one that is mildest. This one wants crimes to be punished, and that one wants them prevented. The former think it a good thing to be feared by their neighbours; the latter prefer to be ignored by them. The one is content so long as money circulates; the other demands that the people have bread. Even if agreement were had on these similar points, would we be any closer to an answer? Since moral quantities do not allow of precise measurements, even if there were agreement regarding the sign, how could there by agreement regarding the evaluation. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
For my part, I am always astonished that such a simple sign is overlooked or that people are of such bad faith as not to agree on it. What is the goal of the political association? It is the preservation and prosperity of its members. And what is the surest sign that they are preserved and prospering? It is their number and their population. Therefore do not go looking elsewhere for this much disputed sigh. All other things being equal, the government under which, without external means, without naturalizations, without colonies, the citizens become populous and multiply the most, is infallibly the best government. That government under which a populace diminishes and dies out is the worst. Calculators, it is not up to you. Count, measure, compare. We should judge on this same principle the centuries that merit preference with respect to the prosperity of the human race. Those in which letters and arts are known to have flourished have been admired too much, without penetrating the secret object of their cultivation, and without considering its devastating effect, and this was called by the inexperienced, when it was a part of servitude. Will we never see int eh maxims of books the crude interest that causes the authors to speak? No. Whatever they may say, when a country is depopulated, it is not true, despite its brilliance, that all goes well; and the fact that a poet has an income of hundred thousand livres is not sufficient to make his century the best of all. The apparent calm and tranquillity of the leader ought to be less of an object of consideration than the well-being of whole nations and especially of the most populous states. A hailstorm may devastate a few cantons, but it rarely causes famine. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Riots and civil ways may greatly disturb the leaders, but they are not the true misfortunes of the people, who may even have a reprieve while people argue over who will tyrannize them. It is their permanent condition that causes real periods of prosperity or calamity. It is when everything remains crushed under the yoke that everything decays. It is then that the leaders destroy them at will, where they bring about solitude they call it peace. When the quarrels of the great disturbed the kingdom of France, and the Coadjutor of Paris brought with one to the Parliament a knife in his pocket, this did not keep the French people from living happily and in great numbers in a free and decent ease. Long ago, Greece flourished in the midst of the cruelest wars. Blood flowed in waves, and the whole country was covered with men. It seemed, says Machiavelli, that in the midst of murders, proscriptions, and civil wars, our republic became more powerful; the virtue of its citizens, their mores, and their independence did more to reinforce it than all its dissension did to weaken it. A little agitation gives strength to souls, and what truly brings about prosperity for the species is not so much peace as liberty. At the same time, we see equally powerful fingers clawing at the nation-state from above. The Third Wave has brought new problems, a new structure of communications, and new actors on the World stage—all of which drastically shrink the power of the individual nation-state. Just as many problems are too small or localized for national governments to handle effectively, new owns are fast arising that are too large for any nation to cope with alone. “The nation state, which regards itself as absolutely sovereign, is obviously too small to play a real role at the global level,” writes the French political thinker, Denis de Rougement. “No one of our 28 European states can any longer by itself assure its military defense and its prosperity, its technological resources, the prevention of nuclear wars and of ecological catastrophes.” Now can the United States of American, Russia or Japan. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Tightened economic linkages between nations make it virtually impossible for any individual national government today to manage its own economy independently or to quarantine inflation. The ever-swelling bubble of Euromoney, for example, as suggested earlier, is beyond the power of any individual nation to regulate. National politicians who claim their domestic policies can “halt inflation” or “wipe out unemployment” are either naïve or lying, since most economic infections are now communicable across national boundaries. The economic shell of the nation-state is now increasingly permeable. Furthermore, national borders that can no longer contain economic flows are even less defensible against environmental forces. If Swiss chemical plants dump wastes into the Rhine, the pollution flows through Germany, though Holland, and ultimately into the North Sea. Neither Holland nor Germany can, by itself, guarantee the quality of its own waterways. Oil tanker spills, air pollution, inadvertent weather modification, the destruction of forests, and other activities often involve side effects that sweep across national borders. Frontiers are now porous. The new global communications system further opens each nation to penetration from the outside. Canadians have long resented the fact that some 90 United States of American television stations along the border telecast programs to Canadian audiences. However, this Second Wave form of cultural penetration is minor compared with that made possible by Third Wave communications systems based on satellites, computers, teleprinters, interactive cable systems, and dirt-cheap ground stations. “One way to ‘attack’ a nation,” writes United States Senator George S. McGovern, “is to restrain the flow of information—cutting off contact between the headquarters and overseas branches of a multinational firm…building information walls around a nation…A new phase is entering the international lexicon—‘information sovereignty.’” #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Yet it is questionable how effectively nation borders can be sealed off—or for how long. For the shift of the Third Wave’s industrial base has required the development of a highly ramified, sensitive, wide open “neural network” or information system, and attempts by individual nations to dam up data flows may interfere with rather, than accelerate, their own economic development. Moreover, each technological breakthrough provides yet another way to penetrate the nation’s outer shell. All such developments—the new economic problems, the new environmental problems, and the new communications technologies—are converging to undermine the position of the nation-state in the global scheme of things. What is more, they come together at precisely the moment when potent new actors appear on the World scene to challenge national power. Those who feel that economic reform is the most urgent duty facing humanity have usually opposed the mystical movement. They have done so on the grounds that it diverts attention from the real (that is, the economic) issues, that it enfeebles the urge towards social improvement and individual ambition, and that it leads to sleepy, dreamy complacency. Karl Marx’s criticism of religion, that it had become a mere appendix of bourgeois thought, had some truth in it for his own times. However, today, many religious leaders have been aroused to the danger and are sincerely striving to bring the social order into line with religious ethics. They are no longer falsifying religious ethics by striving to bring them into line with the social order. Yet the solution Communists offer is philosophically unsatisfactory for it is born out of crude materialism, based on venomous class hatred, and stiffened by bureaucratic tyranny. Their ultimate aim, however, is a good one only insofar as it is the elimination of capitalism’s defects, such as avoidable unemployment, extreme poverty, and social injustices, but their means and methods are very bad. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
There is only one real capitalist—Nature—one real proprietor of the Earth and all that therein is, and consequently all the children of the Earth are its rightful heirs. We usually forget that we have no ethical right to possess what we have not toiled for. This is overlooked by society as a whole and we, as individuals, take shelter beneath the common sin. For sin it is, albeit only one of omission. Those, however, who have cast aside the conventional view can see it for what it is. That which this Earth produces is for all. Every human has one’s birthright in what it stores or gives forth, although not an equal birthright to every other human. This, surely, is Nature’s view, although humans in their ignorance have developed other ideas upon the matter and so brought great misery upon their fellows and great nemesis upon themselves. The World is for our temporary use and does not constitute our eternal property. Whoever thinks outside—whether it be a single individual or a community of individuals called a “nation”—and excludes all others from consideration, whoever thinks one has a full right to eat whilst others have a full right to starve, whoever cannot identify oneself with the suffering people of one’s own or another country, will be tutored by pain and instructed by loss. We are all stewards, not proprietors, and own nothing in reality. This was pithily expressed by a highly advanced Jesus Christ. Many people, who are rich landlords, complain of being robed of some jewels, money, and other property, and perhaps Nature regards them also as thieves. If the true Master made His claim, how would they think on, with what shame, all that fierce talk of thine and mine, the World He fashioned so divine. What could they answer did He says, “When did I give my World away?” However, there is great distance from such abstract reflections to the concrete realities of contemporary social and economic life. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
The whole structure of laws and rights is based on these realities. And this is as it should be, for humanity, as its present stage of evolution, can best express itself and serve itself in that way. The anarchist would ignore them because he is one-sided and the Communist would violate them because he is unscrupulous. Philosophy does not object to anu effort to remold society for the common welfare, but welcomes it. No amount of academic sophistry can justify a system which permits the few to have more food than they can eat and forces the many to have less food than they need to eat. No amount of legal enactment can justify the ownership of a hundred thousand acres of land merely because five hundred year earlier some ancestor seized it. These ancient wrongs must be redressed. Both altruistic sentiment and political strategy—no less Universal Law adjustment—demand such a revision, although the attempt to do so by violent means would introduce far worse wrongs. In this momentous task, we have to prepare a blueprint—not of the ideal State which we would like to see arise, but of the actual State which can arise under the given circumstances. This means that we must follow a middle path. Any other way will be either too realistic or too idealistic and will lead to failure. For we must find not only what is theoretically right but also what is practically possible. We cannot and we ought not do away wildly, abruptly, and violently with our social environment. Without it we would be savages. Those vanished humans of the past had to learn arduously how to live on earth, how to adapt themselves to it. Think of what it would mean to be born into a World where no houses existed, no land was cultivated, no roads had been made, no machines invented, no knowledge known! All these and infinitely more exist today and constitute our surroundings, our civilization; but they did not spring up in a single night. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Civilization, advancement and technology are the inheritance which we own to long trailing of African, Egyptian, Asiatic, and European ancestors living and working and dying for countless centuries. They are our own racial past. We cannot dismiss this legacy without descending anew to the most barbarous existence. There are grave defects in this environment, it is true, but the young rebel who wishes to tear everything down in order to remove these defects, will also remove treasures bought at a price which will take the toil of millions through centuries to pay again. The past efforts of humans appear in our present environment. Let us use it, but use it wisely. It is here to serve us. We need not be afraid to improve and alter it. Unbalanced hot-heads who say that such improvement and such alteration is only possible through compete destruction of what is the present order so that what may be shall rise on its ruins, have misread history. However, there is a right as well as a wrong way of doing this. The only proper way is by persuasion, by the persuasion and education of social conscience and by the uplift of social morality to loftier standards. Such reforms can be brought about only in an atmosphere of goodwill and calmness, not in an atmosphere of hatred and brutality. Humans must choose which God one will serve, the God of hatred or the God of love, for one cannot serve both. One must effect these changes not by brutality or by blood, but by the gentler persuasions of reason and goodwill, slower though they necessarily are. Wisdom prefers to see needed reforms and overdue changes brought by peaceful and not violent means, by the acknowledgement of their ethical need rather than by submission to materialistic values. During the Glimpse of God, one feels that one has travelled close to one’s journey’s end, to the fulfilment of one’s highest purpose. The quest has suddenly become easy and pleasant. However, alas! after the rainbow fades and vanishes, one is forced to recognize that one had far yet to go, that what one experienced was only a passing glimpse and not the final goal. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
If one cannot keep this higher consciousness, it is because one’s lower and Earthly nature is strong enough to raise again and block the way. When the purification lessons are learned it will then be possible for one, by self-effort and self-development, to regain this experience—at first temporarily and occasionally, but if one works correctly and Grace sanctions, permanently. In each of these glimpses, one’s quest attains a minor climax, for each is a step toward full illumination. It is a kind of pre-vision in which one sees, as Moses saw the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land toward which one journeys. It is a mistake to regard it as final illumination when it is in fact only one of many stages toward final illumination, and that should remind us that this society can better than it is, but we have to want to be better. We have to want to reform. We have to want to be kind. We have to want to help, not exploit others. It calls for a renovation of the human mind and soul, not the human home. Your home can be laced with gold and diamonds, but what does it matter if your soul is condemned to rot in Hell for all eternity? Glory be to God for dappled things—for skies of couple-colour as brinded cow; for rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; fresh-firecoal chestnuts falls; finches’ wings; landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough; and all trades, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange; whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) with swift, slow; sweat; sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise Him. Hear, O America: the Lord our God, the Lord is One. Blessed be His glorious kingdom for ever and ever. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thy heart. Thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thy house, when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be for frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thy house and upon thy gates. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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Evil Spirits are Able to Exert a Great Deal of Influence Upon Humans!
The Christian Bible teaches us that acceptance of this World system which is dominated by erroneous principles, selfish desires, improper motives, and unworthy standards of value that draws humans away from God and makes them “measure of all things,” is influenced so strongly by Satan and his army of evil spirits, which caused humans to adopt attitudes and to perform deeds which hinder God’s work and harm His people is done with every trace of wickedness (depravity, malignity) and all deceit and insincerity (pretense, hypocrisy) and grudges (envy, jealousy), and slander of every kind and evil speaking of every kind. This should make us crave like newborn babies the pure spiritual milk that by it one may be nurtured and grow unto salvation. Society in every age is characterized by such iniquities as selfishness, pride, immorality, and dishonesty, in spite of the efforts of sincere people to make it a better World. Twenty-first century humans, with more technical skills and knowledge than any previous generation, is unable to solve the problems of poverty, crime, racial hatred, and war. An increasing number of people go to bed hungry every night, crime is on the rise, racial hatred has never been more intense, and wars continue to be fought all over the World. Why? Because humankind has accepted a self-centered philosophy of life, and Earth’s citizens in general are motivated by the three evils of which John speaks in his first epistle—“the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,” reports 1 John 2.16. The “lust of the flesh” is the desire for possession. It is the gratification of self by participation. Careful study of the word “flesh” indicates that this evil propensity of humankind involves more than just sins of impurity. The term, as used by John in this passage, does not have reference to the body but to the sinful Adamic nature. The individual sinner is born with a nature that is selfish, and one is part of a social structure which operates on grasping, egocentric, and selfish principles. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
A vast majority of men and women are materialistic, live to gratify the senses, and are self-centered even in the good things they do. Nations, too, seek only what is best for themselves. Leaders in industry, education, and even religion are primarily concerned about their own welfare, often neglecting the needs of those they serve. The “lust of the flesh” drives humans to desire and obtain material possessions, and to satisfy their physical appetites and passions at the expense of spiritual values. This basic selfishness and craving for the Earthly tangible pleasures of life leads people to misuse the physical and material blessings God has given all humans to enjoy. On a Worldwide scope, it has brought about a situation in which thousands live in unparalleled luxury while millions starve. When we stop to think about it, much of the World’s unrest and unhappiness today can be traced to the “lust of the flesh.” The “lust of the eyes,” the second characteristic of this World system, is sometimes defined as “gratification by contemplation.” The use of our eyes has vast potential for either great blessing of for degradation. For example, we are able to look upon the endless beauty of creation and sing praises to the Lord. Reading God’s Word, we can meditate upon the riches of glory in joyous expectation. However, Satan and his evil partners have perverted the use of the eye, inducing wicked humans to display scenes by which lustful thoughts are incited. They capitalize upon humans’ sinfulness and natural tendency to immorality. Down through the ages, immodest dress, impure books and pictures, and unholy theatrical productions have been used to degrade and degenerate both young and old. In addition, the eye affords an opportunity to enjoy by contemplation certain evils which one cannot or dare not actually perform. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
Therefore, people from all classes of society and every age bracket are influenced by the allurement that comes through the gift of sight. Discerning people who glance at the newsstands, read the advertisements in the theater page of the newspaper, or watch the programs and commercials presented on television, know full well that “lust of the eyes” has been exploited by the powers of evil. The evidence certainly indicates that Satan and his followers are truly the “leaders of the darkness of this World.” The “pride of life,” the third characteristic of this World system, refers to vanity and ostentation. Men and women put great stock in “being somebody.” To make a name for themselves they throw impressive parties, purchase expensive automobiles, and live in luxurious homes. Their only measure of success is by these standards. Others may acquire academic degrees to display their intellectual prowess, while athletes may exert maximum effort, not principally out of team spirit, but for money and applause. The struggle for power, prestige, and even glory is at the heart of almost every human endeavour. However, through all of this, humankind has been unable to discover true happiness and satisfaction. Most people confess they are not finding pleasures they expected, but nonetheless continue on their way, ever pursuing new baubles. The invisible forces of Satan so blind humans that they do not see true values, nor recognize the folly of their vain quest for this elusive will-o’-the wisp, “the pride of life.” According to the Bible the whole social structure of this World is controlled by a pervading principle of life that is foreign to God and leads humans away from Him. True every human is a sinner by nature and alienated from God, but this inherent human selfishness, under the direction of intelligent and powerful wicked spirits, compounds this basic sinfulness by brining out the very worst in humans. Evil spirits cruelly blind and deceive fallen humanity through the lust of the flesh the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
These fallen creatures actively try to manipulate the political rulers of the World. Satan’s organized army operates quietly and invisibly in the minds and the wills of Earthly sovereigns to achieve their evil purposes. The Bible indicates the nature and course of their activity in several references. Daniel 10 teaches that specific evil spirits are assigned the task of influencing human rulers. The chapter opens with a picture of Daniel in earnest prayer. He entreats the Lord for a period of three weeks, seeking God’s favour upon the Jewish people who have returned to Jerusalem from captivity. He learned that they were experiencing difficulty in rebuilding the temple. Ezra 4, which gives the history of these former exiles, indicates that the work of restoration was interrupted by adversaries almost immediately after the foundation of the temple had been laid. Finally, three weeks after Daniel began to pray, God sent him a most amazing experience. An angel came to Daniel and said, “Fear not, Daniel; for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words. However, the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days; but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia,” reports Daniel 10.12-13. The angel declared that he had left Heaven immediately after Daniel’s first prayer, but that on his way to Earth he had encountered opposition from “the prince of the kingdom of Persia.” The Heavenly messenger went on to say that it was not until Michael came to help him that he was able to overcome this opposing “prince.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
The struggle was obviously between angelic beings, for the one speaking to Daniel was an angel, and Michael is well known as the angelic protector of Israel. (See Daniel 10.21; 12.1; Jude 9; Revelation 12.7). This “prince of the kingdom of Persia” was obviously a wicked spirit of high rank. He had been delegated by the arch-enemy of God, the devil himself, for the task of influencing the Persian government to obstruct the Israelites in their rebuilding program. Thus success of this evil spirit’s attempt was apparent upon Earth. Even while the battle between the angelic beings was taking place in the air, the rulers of Persia were hindering the Jews in the task of rebuilding their temple. The people in Jerusalem could see only the treachery of their human enemies, not knowing that invisible spirits had been exerting pressure against them behind the scenes. The leaders of Persia were not aware that their decision to oppose Israel was the result of the working of evil spirits in their minds. These human rulers were actually mere puppets, carrying out the wishes of the invisible powers who were manipulating them. Even today humans who hold high political office may be the unwitting tools of evil spirits. Many humans lust for power. National groups vie for supremacy in the economic World. In this prevailing atmosphere of selfishness, evil spirits are able to exert a great deal of influence upon humans. Opportunistic politicians become ideal underlines of these evil spirits. In addition, the followers of Satan, in dominating the godless World rulers, are able to incite beastly behaviour in them. Many living today have witnessed the indescribable brutality of Nazism and theistic Communism. Highly civilized people find great pleasure in the development of more effective weapons with which to kills members of other nations. Humans tell lies, oppress others, and commit mass murders with no hint of shame or remorse. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
In fact, it is amazing that this modern age of civilization and refinement has been characterized by an inhumanity far worse than that of the ancient barbaric times. We believe this pathological condition can be traced to the fact that many highly educated humans of influence and power have rejected God. In so doing, they have opened themselves to the activity of evil spirits. Therefore, we have a confirmation of Paul’s declaration that the real World rulers of this darkness (Ephesians 6.12) are not the humans who have positions of leadership, but the evil spirits who rule their hearts and influence their thoughts and decisions. From the commencement of the seventeenth century to the Restoration of Charles II, be barren of witchcraft proper, it must at least be admitted that it is prodigal in regard to the marvellous under various shapes and forms, from which the hysterical state of the public mind can be fairly accurately gauged. During 1642, O’Daly in his History of the Geraldines relates that during the siege of Limerick three portents appeared. The first was a luminous globe, brighter than the moon and little inferior to the sun, which for two leagues and a half shed a vertical light on the city, and then faded into darkness over the enemy’s camp; the second was the apparition of the Virgin, accompanied by several of the Saints; and the third was a lusus nature of the Saimese-twins type: all three of which O’Daly interprets to his own satisfaction. The first of these was some from of the northern lights, and is also recorded in the diary of certain Puritan officers. That learned, but somewhat too credulous English antiquary, John Aubrey, relates in his Miscellanies that before the last battle between the contending parties “a woman of uncommon Statue all in white appearing to the Bishop [Heber McMahon, who Aubrey terms Veneras] admonished him not to cross the River first to assault the Enemy, but suffer them to do it, whereby he should obtain the Victory. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
“That if the Irish took the water first to move towards the English they should be put to a total Rout, which came to pass. Ocahan and Sir Henry O’Neal, who were both killed there, saw severally the same apparition, and dissuaded the Bishop from giving him the first onset, but could not prevail upon him.” N instance of an Irishman suffering from the effects of witchcraft outside Ireland is afforded us in a pathetic petition sent up to the English Parliament between the years 1649 and 1653. The petitioner, John Campbell, stated that twelve years since he lost his sight in Co. Antrim, where he was born, by which he was reduced to such extremity that he was forced to come over to England to seek some means of livelihood for himself in craving the charity of well-disposed people, but contrary to his expectation he has been often troubled there with dreams and fearful visions in his sleep, and has been twice bewitched, insomuch that he can find no quietness or rest here, and so prays for a pass to return to Ireland. The saintly James Usher, Archbishop of Armagh, was a Prelate who, if he had happed to live at an earlier period would certainly have been numbered amongst those whose wide and profound learning won for themselves the title of magician—as it was, he was popularly credited with prophetical powers. Most of the prophecies attributed to him may be found in a little pamphlet of eight pages, entitled “Strange and Remarkable Prophecies and Predictions of the Holy, Learned, and Excellent James Usher, &c…Written by the person who heard it from this Excellent person’s own Mouth,” and apparently published in 1656. According to it, he foretold the rebellion of 1641 in a sermon on Ezekiel iv. 6, preached in Dublin in 1601. “And of this Sermon the Bishop reserved the Notes, and put a note thereof in the Margent of his Bible, and for twenty years before he still lived in the expectation of the fulfilling thereof, and the nearer the time was the more confident he was that it was nearer accomplishment, though there was no visible appearance of any such thing.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
He also foretold the death of Charles I, and his own coming poverty and loss of property, which last he actually experienced for many years before his death. The Rev. William Turner in his Compleat History of Remarkable Providences (London, 1697) gives a premonition of approaching death that the Archbishop received. A lady who was dead appeared to him in his sleep, and invited him to sup (eat supper) with her the next night. He accepted the invitation, and died the following afternoon, 21st March 1656. There is another story from Glanvill’s Relations. One Mr. John Browne of Durley in Ireland was made by this neighbour, John Mallett of Enmore, trustee for his children in minority. In 1654 Mr. Browne lay a-dying: at the foot of his bed stood a great iron chest fitted with three locks, in which were the trustees’ papers. Some of his people and friends were sitting by him, when to their horror they suddenly saw the locked chest begin to open, lock by lock, without the assistance of any visible hand, until at length the lid stood upright. The dying man, who had not spoken for twenty-four hours, sat up in the bed, looked at the chest, and said: “You say true, you say true, you are in the right (a favourite expression of his), I’ll be with you by and by,” and then lay down again, and never spoke after. The chest slowly locked itself in exactly the same manner as it had opened, and shortly after this Mr. Browne died. In the mid-1880s, during a Connecticut thunder storm, Mrs. Winchester’s husband and baby lost their lives in a tragic fire. The distracted widow turned to spiritualism and was advised to take a trip around the World. This she did, visiting mediums, spiritualists and yogis in Europe and India. Fortelling her future, one seer warned her of all the countless thousands of departed souls slain by her husband’s rifles; she must protect herself and atone for such mass murder. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
Mrs. Winchester was told to plan a castle and continue its building indefinitely because as long as it was under construction, she would live; cessation would prove immediately fatal. The head of a celebrated firm of Victorian restorers and decorators took a keen interest in Mrs. Winchester’s mansion. She constructed it for 38 years until she passed away in 1922. It is currently, approximately 24,000 square feet, and four stories tall, but at one time reached a height of 9 stories and may have been more than 50,000 square feet, but the 9-story tower and much of the 4th floor was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake. Back then, two thirds of Mrs. Winchester’s estate was dark, unbroke forests, through whose tangled paths the mysterious winter wind groaned and shrieked and howled with weird noises and unaccountable clamors. The aged told their stories to the young—tales of early life; tales of war and adventure, of forest days, of Indian captives and escapes, of bears and wildcats and panthers, of rattlesnakes, of witches and wizards, and strange and wonderful dreams and appearances and providences at the Winchester mansion. Along the iron bound gates, the stormful skies of Llanada Villa raved and thundered, and wind dashed its moaning turrets, as if to deaden and deafen any voice that might tell of the settled life of the old civilized World, and shut the estate into wilderness. In 1923, there was work being done on the Winchester mansion. It was one of special interest to many antiquarians, and they wanted to restore it. However, in the basement, a large tomb was unearthed, and needed to be moved. The workers were very loth to disturb the tomb, but it was necessary to ensure the safety of the mansion. The tomb belonged to Sarah Winchester. She mostly lived alone in the castle. Her reputation was one of mystery, the supernatural and untold wealth. It was popularly supposed that she could never be killed. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
The restorer made an especial study of old legends or family histories that came under his observation He was necessarily very well read and thoroughly well posted in all questions of folklore and medieval legend. Mrs. Winchester kept a careful record of every case she investigated involving a haunting. The manuscripts she left at her death were a special interest. From amongst them, were some particularly bizarre and extraordinary experiences. Now, the fact was, that ghost stories had been told so often about the Winchester mansion, that they were all arranged and ticketed into the minds of the movers. Still, they shivered, and clung to their knees at the mysterious tomb, and felt gentle, cold chills run down their spines. If the tomb be moved, it would have to be done in two pieces, the covering slab first and then the tomb proper. The movers decided to remove the covering slab first. Everything was ready for lifting off the covering stone, and after the men’s dinner, they started the jacks and pulleys. The slab lifted easily enough, though if fitted closely into its seat and was further secured by some sort of mortar or putty, which must have kept the interior perfectly air-tight. And it was one of those thundering stormy nights, when the winds appeared to be holding a perfect mad carnival over the mansion. They yelled and squealed round the corners; they collected in troops, and came tumbling and roaring down the chimney; and they shook and rattled the buttery door and the sink room door and the cellar door and the chamber door, with a constant undertone of squeak and clatter, as if at every door were a cold, discontented spirit, tried to warn them not to touch the tomb. People used to say Mrs. Winchester was set apart, when she was a child, to the service o’ the Devil, but many say she could never be made nothin’ but a Christian. Perhaps that was the appeal. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
She used to come to meeting with her husband, praying for the Indians. None of them were prepare for what they discovered under the cover lid of the tomb. There lay the fully dressed body of a woman, who had not aged nor decayed, but was ghastly pale, as if from starvation. The body was extraordinary fresh. Except for the appearance of starvation, life might have been only just extinct. The flesh was soft and white, the eyes were wide open and seemed to stare at them with a fearful understanding in them. The body itself was a young woman. For several moments, the movers gazed with horrible curiosity, and then it became too much for the workmen, who implored their boss to replace the covering slab. That, of course, they could not do; but he set the carpenters to work at once to make a temporary cover while they moved the tomb to its new position. This was a long job, and would take two of tree days. At sunset the next evening, they were startled by the howling of, seemingly, every dog in the village. It lasted for thirteen minutes, and then ceased as suddenly as it began This, and a curious mist that had risen round the mansion, make them feel rather anxious about Mrs. Winchester. According to the best-established traditions of the Vampire-haunted countries the disturbance of dogs or wolves at sunset is supposed to indicate the presence of one of these creatures, and local fog was always considered to be a certain sign. The Vampire has the power of producing it for the purpose of concealing its movements near its hiding-place at any time. Just before midnight, there was another outburst of hideous howling. It was commenced most distinctly by a particularly horrible and blood-curdling wail from the vicinity of the churchyard. The chorus lasted only a few minutes, however, and at the end of it, they crew say a large dark shape, like a huge dog, emerge from the fog and lope away at a rapid canter toward the open country. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
At 1.13 a.m., they saw another beast returning. It stopped at the spot where the fog seemed to commence, and lifting up its head, gave tongue to that particularly horrible long-drawn wail that the movers had noticed as preceding the outburst earlier in the evening. The boss got so frightened, you could faintly hear his teeth chatter. The next day it was discovered that some neighbouring sheepfold had been raided by a nocturnal marauder. The workmen that morning were much disturbed in mind about the howling of dogs. “We don’t like it, sir,” one of them said to the boss—“we don’t like it; there was somethin’ abroad last night that was unholy.” They were still more uncomfortable when the news came round that a large dog had made a rapid upon a flock of sheep, scattering them far and wide, and leaving thee of them dead with torn throats in the field. The boss and the crew were determined to catch the wild dog. During the afternoon, the men were lifting the temporary cover that was on the tomb, giving as an excuse the reason that they wished to obtain a portion of the curious mortar with which it had been sealed. After a slight demur, the raised the lid. If the sight that met their eyes gave them a shock. The woman was alive. And so it seemed for a moment. The corpse had lost much of its straved appearance and looked generously fresh and alive. They all believed that Mrs. Winchester was a Vampire and that is why she was so well preserved in her tomb. However, she had not yet come to full strength. It was just after midnight that the crew of movers noticed the fog creeping in again in the still of the night. Their first move was to try to penetrate the sense fog round the mansion, but there was something so chilly about it that their nerves nor stomachs were proof against it. Instead, they stationed themselves in the dark shadow of a cypress tree that commanded a good view of the jeweled front doors to the estate. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
The howling of the dogs began again, and in a few minutes, there was a large grey shape, with green eyes shining like lamps, shambling swiftly down the path towards them. The both stood very still and watched as the great beast cantered swiftly by. It was real enough, for they could hear the clicking of its nails on the stone flags. It passed within a few yards of the movers, and seemed to be nothing more nor less than a great grey wolf, thin and gaunt, with bristling hair and dripping jaws. It stopped where the mist commenced, and turned round. It was truly a horrible sight, and made their blood run cold. The eyes burnt like fires, the upper lip was snarling and raised, showing a great canine teeth, while round mouth clung and dripped a dark-coloured froth. It raised its head and gave tongue to its long wailing howl, which was answered from afar by the village dogs. After standing for a few moments it turned and disappeared into the thickest part of the fog. The boss said, “When the Devil drives: and in the face of what I have seen I must believe that some unholy forces are at work Yet, how can they work in this beautiful estate?” They set their teeth, however, and hardened their hearts. Then they went inside and replaced the cover on the tomb, took what they had collected from the estate and left. Never to return. Some believe that the movers were too afraid to return to the estate and that is why it was not completely looted and some valuables were left behind. It also why much of the damage was not repaired. I guess the estate has a way of protecting itself from those with bad intentions. Mrs. Winchester’s tomb was eventually moved to her home town New Haven, Connecticut to rest with her husband and daughter. Legend has it that it took movers six weeks, six trucks a day, to remove most of the furniture because they kept getting lost in the catacomb. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
“Wide Unclasp the Tables of Their Thoughts.” (From Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare.) What do you think this quote meant to Sarah Winchester? 🧐 winchestermysteryhouse.com
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
Randolph Harris II International Institute 