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Vocatus Atque Non Vocatus, Deus Aderit!
The pace of events is moving so fast that unless we can find some way to keep our sights on tomorrow, we cannot expect to be in touch with today. The Sanskrit word mandala means “circle” in the ordinary sense of the word. In the sphere of religious practices and in psychology it denotes circular images, which are drawn, painted, modelled, or danced. Plastic structures of this kind are to be found, for instance, in Tibetan Buddhism, and as dance figures these circular pattern occur also in Dervish monasteries. As psychological phenomena they appear spontaneously in dreams, in certain states of conflict, and in cases of schizophrenia. Very frequently they contain a quaternity of multiple of four, in the form of a cross, a star, a square, an octagon, et cetera. In alchemy we encounter this motif in the form of the quadratura circuli. In Tibetan Buddhism the figure has the significance of a ritual instrument (yantra), whose purpose is to assist meditation and concentration. Its meaning in alchemy is somewhat similar, inasmuch as it represents the synthesis of four elements which are forever tending to fall apart. It is at the same tie an image of God and is designated as such. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
The innermost divine essence of humans, is characterized by symbols which can just as well express a God-image, namely the image of Deity unfolding in the World, nature, and in humans. When God is not acknowledged, egomania develops, and out of this mania comes sickness. The fact that images of this kind have under certain circumstances a considerable therapeutic effect on their authors is empirically proved and also readily understandable, in that they often represent very bold attempts to see and put together apparently irreconcilable opposites and bridge over apparently hopeless spirts. Even the mere attempt in this direction usually has a healing effect, but only when it is done spontaneously. Nothing can be expected from an artificial repetition or a deliberate imitation of such images. Vocatus atque non vocatus, deus aderit (invoked or not invoked, the God will be present). It is not a matter of indifference whether one calls something “mania” or a “god.” To serve a mania is detestable and undignified, but to serve a god is full of meaning and promise because it is an act of submission to a higher, invisible, and spiritual being. Religion seizes control of the human subject, who is always rather its victim than its creator. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
The numinosum, that is, a dynamic agency or effect not caused by an arbitrary act of will, whatever its cause may be, is an experience of the subject independent of one’s will. At all events, religious teaching as well as the consensus gentium always and everywhere explain this experience as being due to a cause external to the individual. The numinosum is either a quality belonging to a visible object or the influence of an invisible presence that causes a peculiar alteration of consciousness. This is, at any rate, the general rule. There are, however, certain exceptions when it comes to the question of religious practice or ritual. A great many ritualistic performances are carried out for the sole purpose of producing at will the effect of the numinosum by means of certain devices of a magical nature, such as invocation, incantation, sacrifice, meditation and other yoga practices, self-inflicted tortures of various descriptions, and so forth. However, a religious belief in an external and objective divine cause is always prior to any such performance. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
The Catholic Church, for instance, administers the sacraments for the purpose of bestowing their spiritual blessings upon the believer; but since this act would amount to enforcing the presence of divine grace by an indubitably magical procedure, it is logically argued that nobody can compel divine grace to be present in the sacramental act, but that it is nevertheless inevitably present since the sacrament is a divine institution which God would not have to be if he had not intended to lend it his support. Religion appears to me to be a peculiar attitude of mind which could be formulated in accordance with the original use of the word religio, which means a careful consideration and observation of certain dynamic factors, that are conceived as “powers”: spirits, daemons, gods, laws, ideas, ideals, or whatever name humans have given to such a factors in their World as one has found powerful, dangerous, or help enough to be taken into careful consideration, or grand, beautiful, and meaningful enough to be devoutly worshipped and loved. In colloquial speech one often says of somebody who is enthusiastically interested in a certain pursuit that one is almost “religiously devoted” to one’s cause. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
I want to make it clear that by the term “religion” I do not mean creed. Religion is that which gives reverence and worship to some higher nature [which is called divine]. It is, however, true that every creed is originally based on the one hand upon trust, or loyalty, the experience of the numinosum and on the other hand upon faith and confidence in a certain experience of a numinous nature and in the change of consciousness that ensures. The conversation of Paul is a striking example of this. We might say, than, that the term “religion” designates the attitude peculiar to a consciousness which has been changed by experience of the numinsum. If we allow ourselves to draw conclusions from modern mandalas we should ask people, first, whether they worship stars, suns, flowers, and snakes. They will deny this, and at the same time they will asset that the globes, stars, crosses, and the like are symbols for a center in themselves. And if asked what they mean by this center, they will begin to stammer and to refer to this or that experience which may turn out to be something very similar to the confession of my patient, who found that the vision of one’s World clock had left one with a wonderful feeling of perfect harmony. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
Others will confess that a similar vision came to them in a moment of extreme pain or profound despair. To others again it is the memory of a sublime dream or of a moment when long and fruitless struggles came to an end and a reign of peace began. If you sum up what people tell you about their experiences, you can formulate it this way: They came to themselves, they could accept themselves, they were able to become reconciled to themselves, and thus were reconciled to adverse circumstances and event. This is almost like what used to be expressed by saying: He has made his peace with God, he has sacrificed his own will, he has submitted himself to the will of God. A modern mandala is an involuntary confession of a peculiar mental condition. There is no deity in the mandala, nor is there any submission or reconciliation to a deity. The place of the deity seems to be taken by the wholeness of human beings. When one speaks of humans, everybody means one’s own ego—and when one speaks of others one assumes that they have a very similar personality. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
However, since modern research has acquainted us with the fact that individual consciousness is based on and surrounded by an indefinitely extended unconscious psyche, we must needs revise our somewhat old-fashioned prejudice that humans are nothing but their consciousness. This naïve assumption must be confronted at once with the critical question: Whose consciousness? The fact is, it would be a difficult task to reconcile the picture I have of myself with the one which other people have of me. Who is right? And who is the real individual? If we go further and consider the fact that humans are also what neither one oneself nor other people know of one—and unknown something which can yet be proved to exist—the problem of identity becomes more difficult still. Indeed, it is quite impossible to define the extent and the ultimate character of psychic existence. When we speak of humans we mean the indefinable whole of one, an ineffable totality, which can only be formulated symbolically. I have chosen the term “self” to designate the totality of human, the sum total of their conscious and unconscious contents. I have chosen this term in accordance with Easter philosophy, which for centuries as occupied itself with the problems that arise when even the gods cases to incarnate. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
The World is as it ever has been, but our consciousness undergoes peculiar changes. First, in remote times (which can still be observed among primitives living today), the main body of psychic life was apparently in human and in nonhuman objects: it was projected, as we should say now. Consciousness can hardly exist in a state of complete projection. At most it would be a heap of emotions. Through the withdrawal of projections, conscious knowledge slowly developed. Science, curiously enough, began with the withdrawal, so to speak, of the most distant projections. This was the first stage in the despiritualization of the World. Once stop followed another: already in antiquity the gods were withdrawn from mountains and rivers, from trees and animals. Modern science has subtilized its projections to an almost unrecognizable degree, but our ordinary life still swarms with them. You can find them spread out in the newspapers, in books, on social media, rumours, and ordinary social gossip. All gaps in our actual knowledge are still filled out with projections. We are still so sure we know wat other people think or what their true character is. We are convinced that certain people have all the bad qualities we do not know in ourselves or that they practise all those vices which could, of course, never be our own. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
We must still be exceedingly careful not to project our own shadows too shamelessly; we are still swamped with projected illusions. If you imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw all these projections, then you get an individual who is conscious of a considerable shadow. Such an individual has saddled oneself with new problems and conflict. One has become a serious problem to oneself, as one is now unable to say that they do this or that, they are wrong, and they must be fought against. One lives in the “House of Gathering.” Such a human knows that whatever is wrong in the World is in oneself, and if one only learns to deal with one’s own shadow one has done something real for the World. One has succeeded in shouldering at least an infinitesimal part of the gigantic, unsolved social problems of our day. These problems are mostly so difficult because they are poisoned by mutual projections. When one does not even see oneself and the darkness one unconsciously carries with one into all dealings how can anyone see straight? #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Modern psychological development leads to a much better understanding as to what humans really consist of. The gods at first lived in superhuman power and beauty on top of snow-clad mountains or in the darkness of caves, woods, and seas. Later on they drew together into one god, and then that god became man. However, in our day even the God-man seems to have descended from his throne and to be dissolving himself in the common man. That is probably why his seat is empty. Instead, the common man suffers from a hybris of consciousness that borders on the pathological. This psychic condition in the individual corresponds by and large to the hypertrophy and totalitarian pretensions of the idealized State. In the same way that the Sate has caught the individual, the individual imagines that one has caught the psyche and holds her in the hollow of his hand. He is even making a science of her in the absurd supposition that the intellect, which is but a part and a function of the psyche, is sufficient to comprehend the much greater whole. In reality the psyche is the mother and the maker, the subject and even the possibility of consciousness itself. It reaches so far beyond the boundaries of consciousness that the latter could easily be compared to an island in the ocean. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Whereas the island is small and narrow, the ocean is immensely wide and deep and contains a life infinitely surpassing, in kind and degree, anything known on the island—so that if it is a question of space, it does not matter whether the gods are “inside” or “outside.” It might be objected that there is no proof that consciousness is nothing more than an island in the ocean. Certainly it is impossible to prove this, since the known range of consciousness is confronted with the unknown extension of the unconscious, of which we only know that it exists and by the very fact of its existence exerts a limiting influence on consciousness and is freedom. Wherever unconsciousness reigns, there is bondage and possession. The immensity of the ocean is simply a comparison; it expresses in allegorical form the capacity of the unconscious to limit and threaten consciousness. Empirical psychology loved, until recently, to explain the “unconscious” as mere absence of consciousness—the term itself indicated as much—just as shadow is an absence of light. Today accurate observation of unconscious processes has recognized, with all other ages before us, that the unconscious possesses a creative autonomy such as a mere shadow could never be endowed with. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
When Dr. Carus, Dr. von Hartmann and, in a sense, Dr. Schopenhauer equated the unconscious with the World-creating principle, they were only summing up all those teachings of the past which, grounded in inner experience, saw the mysterious agent personified as the gods. The Universe’s first principle, be it called God with the religionists or energy with the scientists, is beyond the power of human understanding. At its very best it can know only its own reaction to the Principle. The Biblical announcement “I Am That I Am” is easier understood as “I Am As I Am.” It can have no other meaning that the uniqueness and incomprehensibility of God. For every attempt to being God within the range of the intellectual always fails, and every attempt to being God within the range of the imagination merely symbolizes. If, then, the original sentence is to be understood still more easily, let us read it as: “I am THAT which knows all and sees all, but can be known and seen by none.” The atheist says, “God is nowhere!” The mystic says, “God is here!” The philosopher says, “God is!” #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Human’s mental apparatus being so limited, the truths one conceives through it must be limited too. One cannot possibly know what God is like but only that God—some sort of higher power—is. The Bible’s phrase wherein God is self-described to Moses as “I am that I am” is more philosophically correct and more linguistically right, in the original Hebrew sense, if Englished as “I am what I shall be.” It was one’s consciousness of being untied with this timeless pre-existent as well as ever-existence Life that enabled Jesus to announce: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was I am.” “I am that I am,” was the revelation of God to the Hebrew Master, Moses. “That I am,” was the revelation of God to the anonymous Hindu Master of the Upanishads. All verbal definitions of the World-Mind are inevitably limited and inadequate. If the statements here made seem to be of the nature of strict and rigid doctrines it is because of the inadequacy of language to convey more subtle meaning. They who read these lines with intuitive insight allied to clear thinking will see that the concepts are flexible verbal frames for holding thought steady in that borderland of human consciousness where thinking verges on wordless knowing. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
The first great truth is that a Supreme Mind minds the Universe. All scientific evidence indicates that there is a single power which presides over the entire Universe, and all religious mystic experience and philosophic insight confirms it. Not only is this so, but this power also maintains the Universe; its intelligence is unique, matchless, incredible. This power is what I call the World-Mind, the Mind of God. “You were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light (for the fruit of light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth), verifying what is pleasing to the Lord,” Ephesians 5.8-11. The simple program of Christ for winning the whole World is to make each person one touches magnetic enough with love to draw others. The significance of human life upon the Earth must either be very small or very great. Very small from the strictly natural point of view. If we represent Earth’s history on a twenty-four-hour clock, from midnight to midnight, then according to the evolutionary story, our remotest human ancestors appeared at 11.59 P.M., and what we call the “civilization” of the last several thousand years is represented as the pop of a flashbulb at midnight. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
By any account, if the future of the Earth’s surface resembles its astonishing past, and from the merely scientific point of view, the Earth will not support human society for any long period of time (in cosmic terms). God’s purposes for human history, as set forth in the Bible, are of course quite another matter. According to the biblical picture, the function of human history is to bring forth an immense community of people, from “every nation and tribe and tongue and people,” reports Revelation 14.6, who will be a kingdom of persists under God (Revelation 1.6, 5.10; Exodus 19.6), and who for some period of time in the future will actually govern the Earth under him (Revelation 5.10). They will also, beyond that, reign with him in the eternal future of the cosmos, forever and ever (Revelation 22.5). These people will, together as a living community, form a special dwelling place for God. It will be one that allows one’s magnificence to be known and gratefully accepted by all of creation through all of the ages (Ephesians 2.7; 3.10; Philippians 2.9-11). What the human heart now vaguely senses should be, eventually will be, in the cosmic triumph of Christ and his people. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
And those who have fully taken on the character of Christ—those “children of light” in Saint Paul’s language—will in eternity be empowered by God to do what they want, as free creative agents. And it will always harmonize perfectly with God’s own purposes. Spiritual formation in Christlikeness during our life here on Earth is a constant movement toward this eternal appointment God placed upon each of us in our creation—the “kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the World” (Matthew 25.34; see also Luke 19.17). This movement forward is now carried on through our apprenticeship to Jesus Christ. It is a process of character transformation toward complete trustworthiness before God. God loves all things that He has made, and amongst them rational creatures more, and of these especially those who are members of His only—begotten Son Himself. Since to love a thing is to will it good, in a twofold way anything may be loved more, or less. In one way on the part of the act of the will itself, which is more or less intense. In this way God does not love some things more than others, because He loves all things by an act of the will that is one, simple, and always the same. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
In another way on the part of the good itself that a person wills for the beloved. In this way we are said to love that one more than another, for whom we will greater good, though our will is not more intense. In the ways we must needs say that God loves some things more than others. For since God’s love is the cause of goodness in things, as has been said, no one thing would be better than another, if God did not will greater good for one than for another. God is said to have equally care of all, not because by His care He deals out equal good to all, but because He administers all things with a like wisdom and goodness. The good that God wills for his creatures, is not the divine essence. Therefore there is no reason why it may not vary in degree. To understand and to will denote the act alone, and do not include in their meaning objects from the diversity of which God may be said to know or will more or less, as has been said with respect to God’s love. Father of All, please absorb our spirits back into your essence. There, please reshape us in your place of molding, preparing us for the Kingdom of Heaven. “Great and marvelous are your deeds, Lord God Almighty. Just and true are your ways, King of the ages. Who will not fear you, O Lord, and bring glory to your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your righteous acts have been revealed,” reports Revelation 15.3-4. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
We are preparing the kingdom to be delivered to the Saviour when he comes in the clouds of Heaven. When the kingdom has been adequately prepared, Jesus will come again. It has always been my feeling that when the trump of God shall sound and the righteous dead shall sound and the righteous dead shall come forth, it will be the lifters and not the leaners that the Saviour will call forth to help one in preparing his kingdom. Salvation in its true and full meaning is synonymous with exaltation or eternal life and consists in gaining an inheritance in the highest of the three Heavens within the celestial kingdom. With few exceptions this is the salvation of which the scriptures speak. It is the salvation which the saints seek. Hallelujah. It is good to sing praises unto our God; it is pleasant and befitting to praise Him. The Lord restores America, He gathers together the dispersed of America; He heals the broken in heart, binding up their wounds. He calls them all by their names. Great is our Lord, and mighty in power; His understanding is infinite. The Lord upholds the humble; He brings low the wicked to the very ground. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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Freedom is the Condition for the Full Growth of a Person, for One’s Mental Health and Well-Being!
Life is an unanswered question, but let us believe in the dignity and importance of the question. At the highest level, the level of ego-identity, the personality is organized by an overall organization of introjections and identifications under the guiding principle of the systematic function of the ego. The ego is a controlling and evaluating system. This controlling and evaluating system is integrated with other psychic structures to a greater or a lesser extent. It is by this that people steer themselves; it constitutes their sense of themselves in relation to the World and other people and things as they have learnt to experience them. Culture influences are important on personality development, and the formation of the ego-identity is a lifelong process. A self or a personality can be imagined, in a continuous development which began with clusters and networks of neural connections. The island is beginning to cohere from smaller clusters, integrating and differentiating into larger landmasses and developing specific flora and funa. Yet, it is easy when we think in terms of each person born already endowed with a soul which was highly individual from the start. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
When we understand that the infant is born into a relationship and develops in the context of that relationship, we realize that its developmental problems have to do with the differentiation of itself from others and with the relationship of self to others; one’s understanding that impulses are normally not isolated processes to which a person is somehow subject, but an expression of one’s personality; one’s understanding of dynamic structures, which are best thought of as structures of experiences, makes it clear that organizations of the memory-traces of the experiences in which a person is involved psychologically, neurologically, and psychologically creates actions and reactions and sensations and feelings, maps and models that motivates people to seek gratification, and this gratification is pleasurable. Pleasure is the signpost to the object: people seek people and take pleasure in them. There are people who live for the satisfaction of their drives; even when analysed in depth they seek others. And naturally, there are people who in some circumstances show more of one kind of interest, and in other circumstances show more of the other. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
Even though the neurophysiology basis for defensive aggression is not identical with that of the animal, it is similar enough to permit the statement that this same neurophysiological equipment leads to an incidence of defensive aggression many times greater in humans than in animals. The reason for this phenomenon lies in specific conditions of human existence. The animal perceives as a threat only clear and present danger. To be sure, its instinctive equipment and its individually acquired and genetically inherited memories induce the awareness of dangers and threats often more accurately than they are perceived by humans. However, humans being endowed with a capacity for foresight and imagination, reacts not only to present dangers and threats or to memories of dangers and threats or to memories of danger and threats but to the dangers and threats one can imagine as possibly happening in the future. One may conclude, for instance, that because one’s tribe is richer than a neighbouring tribe that is well trained in warfare, the other will attack one’s own sometime from now. Or one may reason that a neighbour whom one has harmed will take revenge when the time is favourable. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
In the political field the calculation of future threats is one of the central preoccupations of politicians and generals. If an individual or a group feels threatened, the mechanism of defensive aggression is mobilized even though the threat is not immediate; hence human’s capacity to foresee future threats enhances the frequency of one’s aggressive reactions. Humans are capable not only of foreseeing real dangers in the future; they are also capable of being persuaded and brainwashed by one’s leaders to see dangers when in reality they do not exist. Most modern wars, for instance, have been prepared by systematic propaganda of this type; the population was persuaded by its leaders that it was in danger of being attacked and destroyed, and thus reactions of hate and against the threatening nations have been provoked. Often no threat existed. Especially since the French Revolution, with the appearance of large citizens’ armies rather than relatively small armies consisting of professional soldiers, it is not easy for a nation’s leader to tell the people to kill and be killed because industry wants cheaper raw materials, cheaper labours, or new markets. If it were justified by declaring such aims, only a minority would be willing to participate in the war. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
If, on the other hand, a government can make the population believe that it is being threatened, the normal biological reaction against threat is mobilized. In addition, these predictions of threat from the outside are often self-fulfilling: the aggressor state, by preparing for war, forces the state that is it about to be attacked to prepare also, thereby providing the “proof” of the alleged threat. The arousal of defensive aggression by means of brainwashing can occur only in humans. In order to persuade people that they are threatened, one needs, above all, the medium of language; without this, most suggestion would be impossible. In addition, one needs a social structure that provides a sufficient basis for brainwashing. It is hard to imagine, for example, that this kind of suggestion would work among the Mbutu, the African pygmy hunters living contentedly in the forest and having no permanent authorities. In their society there is no human with sufficient power to make the incredible credible. On the other hand, in a society that has figures carrying great authority—such as sorcerers or political and religious leaders—the basis for such suggestion is present. The distinction between defensive and malignant aggression is not innate, and hence not ineradicable. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
However, malignant aggression is a human potential and more than a learned pattern of behavior that readily disappears when new patterns are introduced. By and large, the power of suggestion exercised by a ruling group is in proportion to the group’s power over the ruled and/or the capacity of the rulers to use an elaborate ideological system to reduce the faculty of critical and independent thinking. Another specifically human condition of existence contributes to a further increase of humans’ defensive aggressiveness compared with animal aggressiveness. Humans, like animals, defend themselves against threat to their vital interests. However, the range of human vital interests is much wider than that of the animal. Humans must survive not only physically but also psychically. One needs to maintain a certain psychic equilibrium lest one lose the capacity to function; for humans everything necessary for the maintenance of one’s psychic equilibrium is of the same vital interest as that which serves one’s physical equilibrium. First of all, human beings have a vital interest in retaining their frame of orientation. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
The human capacity to act depends on them remaining stable, and their sense of identity. If others threaten one with ideas that question one’s own frame of orientation, one will react to these ideas as to a vital threat. One may rationalize this reaction in many ways. One will say that the new ideas are inherently “immoral,” “uncivilized,” “crazy,” or whatever else one can think of to express one’s repugnance, but this antagonism is in fact aroused because “one” feels threatened. Humans need not only a frame of orientation but also objects of devotion, which become a vital necessity for one’s emotional equilibrium. Whatever they are—values, ideals, ancestors, father, mother, the soil, country, class, religion, and hundreds of other phenomena—they are perceived as sacred. Even customs can become sacred because they symbolize the existing values. It is characteristic for this phenomenon that the Greek word ethos—meaning literally behaviour—has assumed the meaning of the “ethical,” just as “norm” (originally the word for a carpenter’s tool) was used in the double sense of what is “normal” and what is “normative.” The individual—or the group—reacts to an attack against the “sacred” with the same rage and aggressiveness as to an attack against life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
What has been said about reactions to threat to vital interests can be expressed also in a different and more generalized way by stating that fright tends to mobilize either aggression or the tendency to flight. The latter is often the case when a person still has a way out that saves a modicum of “face,” but if one is driven into a corner and no possibility of evasion is left, the aggressive reaction is more likely to occur. Fright, like pain, is a most uncomfortable feeling, and humans will do almost anything to get rid of it. There are many ways to get rid of fright and anxiety, such as substance abuse, pleasures of the flesh, sleep, and the company of other. One of the most effective ways of getting rid of anxiety is to become aggressive. When a person can get out of the passive state of fright and begin to attack, the painful nature of fright disappears. Among all threat to human’s vital interest, the threat to their freedom is of extraordinary importance, individually and socially. In contrast to the widely held opinion that this desire for freedom is a product of culture and more specifically of learning-condition, there is able evidence to suggest that the desire for freedom is a biological reaction of the human organism. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
One phenomenon that supports this view is that throughout history nations and classes have fought their oppressors if there was any possibility of victory, and often even if there was none. The history of humankind is, indeed, a history of the fight for freedom, a history or revolutions, from the war of liberation of the Hebrews against the Egyptians, the national uprising against the Roman Empire, the German peasant rebellions in the sixteenth center, to the American, French, Herman, Russian, Chinese, Algerian, and Vietnamese revolutions. And the start of a revolution that is breaking out on American soil today. The revolutions that have occurred in history must not obscure the fact that infants and children also make revolutions, but since they are powerless, they have to use their own methods, those of guerrilla warfare, as it were. They fight against suppression of their freedom by various individual methods, such as stubborn negativism, refusal to eat, refusal to be toilet trained, bet-wetting, up and on the more drastic methods of autistic withdrawal and pseudomental debility. The adults behave like any elite whose power is challenged. As a result, most children surrender and prefer submission to constant torment. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
No mercy is shown in this war until victory is achieved, and our hospitals are filled with its casualties. Nevertheless, it is a remarkable fact that all human beings—the children of the powerful as well as those of the powerless—share the common experience of once having been powerless and having fought for their freedom. That is why one may assume that every human being—aside from one’s biological equipment—has acquired in one’s childhood a revolutionary potential that, though dormant for a long time, might be mobilized under special circumstances. Leaders have all to frequently used the slogan that they are leading their people in a battle of freedom, when in reality their aim has been to enslave them. That no promise appeals more powerfully to the great of humans are evidenced by the phenomenon that even those leaders who want to suppress freedom find it necessary to promise it. Much like in the lockdowns that many Americans are subjected today, unable to work, leave their homes, visit their families, or attend church and school. Another reason for assuming there is an inherent impulse in humans to fight for freedom lies in the fact that freedom is the condition for the full growth of a person, for one’s mental health and well-being; its absence cripples a person and is unhealthy. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
Freedom does not imply lack of constraint, since any growth occurs only within a structure, and any structure requires constraint. What matter is whether the constraint functions primarily for the sake of another person or institution, or whether it is autonomous—id est, that it results from the necessities of growth inherent in the structure of the person. As a condition for the unstunted development of the human organism, freedom is a vital biological interest of humans, but not only on humans. The deteriorating effect on the animal life in the zoo has been mentioned before and seems to outweigh the contrary views of even as great an authority as Dr. Hediger. And threats to humans freedom arouse defensive aggression as do all other threats to vital interests. Is it surprising then that aggression and violence continue to be generated in a World in which the majority are deprived from freedom, especially the people in the so-called underdeveloped countries? Those in power—id est, the dominant political party, culture, and race—would perhaps be less surprised and indignant if they were not accustomed to considering the underrepresented groups as nonpersons and, hence, not expected to react humanly. Only if combined with powerlessness, skin colour has this effect. The possession of advanced technology has become the criterion of being human. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
However, there is an additional reason for blindness. Even the dominant culture, powerful as they are, have surrendered their freedom because their own system had forced them to do so, although in a less drastic and overt way. Perhaps they hate those who fight for it today all the more because they are reminded of their own surrender. The fact that genuine revolutionary aggression, like all aggression generated by the impulse to defend one’s life, freedom, or dignity, is biologically rational and part of normal human functioning must not deceive one into forgetting that destruction of life always remains destruction, even when it is biologically justified; it is a matter of one’s religious, moral, or political principles whether one believes that it is humanly justified or not. However, whatever one’s principles in this respect are, it is important to be aware how easily purely defensive aggression is blended with (nondefensive) destructiveness and with the sadistic wish to reverse the situation by controlling other instead of being controlled. If and when this happens, revolutionary aggression is vitiated and tends to renew the conditions it was seeking to abolish. The conception of formal justice, the regular and impartial administration of public rules, becomes the rule of law when applied to the legal system. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
One kind of unjust action is the failure of judges and others in authority to apply the appropriate rule or to interpret it correctly. It is more illuminating in this connection to think not of gross violations exemplified by bribery and corruption, or the abuse of the legal system to punish political enemies, but rather of the subtle distortions of prejudice and bias as these effectively discriminate against certain groups in the judicial process. The regular and impartial, and in this sense fair, administration of law we may call “justice as regularity.” This is a more suggestive phrase than “formal justice.” Now the rule of law is obviously closely related to liberty. We can see this by considering the notion of a legal system and its intimate connection with the precepts definitive of justice as regularity. A legal system is a coercive order of public rules addressed to rational persons for the purpose of regulating their conduct and providing the framework for social cooperation. When these rules are just they establish a basis for legitimate expectations. They constitute grounds upon which persons can rely on one another and rightly object when their expectations are not fulfilled. If the bases of these claims are unsure, so are the boundaries of human’s liberties. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
Of course, other rules share many of these features. Rules of games and of private associations are likewise addressed to rational persons in order to give shape to their activities. Given that these rules are fair or just, then once humans have entered into these arrangements and accepted the benefits that result, the obligations which thereby arise constitute a basis for legitimate expectations. What distinguishes a legal system is its comprehensive scope and its regulative powers with respect to other associations. The constitutional agencies that it defines generally have the exclusive legal right to at least the more extreme forms of coercion. The kinds of duress that private associations can employ are strictly limited. Moreover, the legal order exercises a final authority over a certain well-defined territory. It is also marked by the wide range of the activities it regulates and the fundamental nature of the interests it is designed to secure. These features simply reflect the fact that the law defines the basic structure within which the pursuit of all other activities takes place. The actions which rules of law require and forbid should be of a kind which humans can reasonably be expected to do and to avoid. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
A system of rules addresses to rational persons to organize their conduct concerns itself with what they can and cannot do. It should not impose a duty to do what cannot be done. Also, the notion that ought implies can conveys the idea that those who enact laws and give orders do so in good faith. Legislators and judges, and other officials of the system, must believe that the laws can be obeyed; and they are to assume that any orders given can be carried out. Moreover, not only must the authorities act in good faith, but their good faith must be recognized by those subject to their enactments. Only if it is generally believed that they can be obeyed and executed, are laws and commands are accepted as laws and commands. If this is in question, the actions of authorities presumably have some other purpose than to organize conduct. Furthermore, this percent expresses the requirement that a legal system should recognize impossibility of performance as a defense, or at least as a mitigating circumstance. In enforcing rules a legal system cannot regard the inability to perform as irrelevant. If the liability to penalties was not normally limited to actions within our power to do or not to do, it would be an intolerable burden on liberty. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
The precept that like decisions be given in likes cases significantly limits the discretion of judges and other in authority. The precept forces them to justify the distinctions that they make between persons by reference to the relevant rules and principles. In any particular case, if the rules are at all complicated and call for interpretation, it may be easy to justify an arbitrary decision. However, as the number of cases increases, plausible justifications for biased judgments become more difficult to construct. The requirement for consistency holds of course for the interpretation of all rules and for justifications at all levels. Eventually reasoned arguments for discriminatory judgments become harder to formulate and the attempt to do so less persuasive. This precept holds also in cases of equity, that is, when an exception is to be made when the established rule works an unexpected hardship. However, this proviso: since there is no clear line separating these exceptional cases, there comes a point, as in matters of interpretation, at which nearly any difference will make a difference. In these instances, the principle of authoritative decision applies, and the weight of precedent or of the announced verdict suffices. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
The Lord has said that “there is a law, irrevocably decreed in Heaven before the foundations of this World, upon which all blessings are predicated—and when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 130.20-21. It would seem from this declaration that there is no permanent progress made in any field or in any place except it be through obedience to the governing law. “And again, verily I say unto you, that which is governed by law is also preserved by law and perfected and sanctified by the same law. That which breaketh a law, and abideth not by law, but seeketh to become a law unto itself, and willeth to abide in sin, and altogether abideth in sin, cannot be sanctified by law, neither by mercy, justice, nor judgment. Therefore, they must remain filthy still. For intelligence cleaveth unto intelligence; wisdom recieveth wisdom truth embraceth truth; virtue loveth virtue; light cleaveth unto light; mercy hath compassion on mercy and claimeth her own; justice continueth its course and claimeth its own; judgment goeth before the face of one who sitteth upon the throne and governeth and executeth all things. And again, verily I say unto you, one hath given a law unto all things, by which they move in their times and their seasons. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
“And their courses are fixed, even the courses of the Heaven and the Earth, which comprehend the Earth and all the planets,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 88.34-35, 40, 42-43. The written law that God gave to the Israelites is one of the greatest gifts of grace that God has ever conveyed to the human race. It is a part of the blessings that God promised would come to all the families or nations of the Earth through Abraham and his seed. Of course there is much more to the law than just rules or commandments. It provides a picture of reality: of how things are with God and his creation. The Prophets and the Gospels share with “the Law” this vital function of enabling humans beings to know God, what God is doing, and what we are to do—wherein our true well-being lies. Thus Moses challenges his people: “For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as is the LORD our God whenever we call on Him? Or what great nation is there that has statues and judgments as righteous as this whole law which I am setting before you today?” reports Deuteronomy. The law of the Lord gratefully received, studied, and internalized to the point of obedience as “perfect,” as Psalm 19.7 says. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
There is nothing lacking in it for its intended purpose. It therefore converts or restores the soul of those who seek it and receive it. It is a spiritual power in its own right, as is the Word of God generally. It is a living and powerful being capable of distinguishing soul from spirit in humans and dealing with them appropriately and redemptively. “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any doubled-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of hi to whom we must give account,” reports Hebrews 4.12-13. There is nothing in all of the glory of the law according to the Old Testament that suggests for a moment that what the law does in the human heart is a human accomplishment. Rather, all benefit is ascribed to the law would be, simply, a loss. For in attempting to use it, we would have thrown ourselves back into the position of self-idolatry, utilizing the written law as our tool for managing ourselves and God. This mistake is what led to the horrible degradation of “the Law” at the time of Jesus and Paul, turning it from a pathway of grace to an instrument of cultural self-righteousness and human oppression. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
What is the use, ask many questioners, of first, an evolution of the human soul which merely brings it back to the same point where is started and second, of developing a selfhood through the long cycles of evolution only to have it merged or dissolved in the end into the unselfed Absolute? Is not the whole scheme absurdly useless? “Woe to you lawyers!” Jesus said, “For you have taken away the key of knowledge; you did not enter in yourselves, and those who were entering in you hindered,” reports Luke 11.52. The unit of life emanated from God and begins with the merest glimmer of consciousness, appearing on our plane as a protozoic cell. It evolves eventually into the fullest human consciousness, including the intellectual and spiritual. It does not finish as it began; on the contrary, there is a grand purpose behind all its travail. There is thus a wide gulf between its original state and its final one. Human’s individuality survives even in the divinest state accessible to them. There it becomes the same in quality but not identical in essence. The most intimate mental and physical experiences of human love cast a little light for our comprehension of this mystery. The misunderstanding which leads to these questions arises chiefly because of the error which believes that it is the divine soul which goes through all this pilgrimage by reincarnating in a series of Earthly forms. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
The true teaching about reincarnating is not that the divine soul enters into the captivity and ignorance of the flesh again and again but that something emanated from the soul, that is, a unit of life that eventually develops into the personal ego, does do. God contains this reincarnating ego within itself but does not itself reincarnate. It is the parent; the ego is only its offspring. The long and tremendous evolution through which the unit of life passes from its primate cellular existence to its matured human one is a genuine evolution of its consciousness. Whoever believes that the process first plunges a soul down from the heights into a body or forces Spirit to lose itself in Matter, and then leaves it no alternative but to climb all the way back to the lost summit again, believes wrongly. God never descends or climbs, never loses His own sublime consciousness. What really does this is something that emanates from it and that consequently holds its capacity and power in latency, something which is finited out of God’s infinitude and becomes first, the simple unit of life and later, the complex human ego. It is not God that suffers and struggles during this long unfoldment but His child, the ego. It is not God that slowly expands His intelligence and consciousness, but the ego. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
It is not God that gets deluded by ignorance and passion, by selfishness and extroversion, but the ego. “Then I saw another beast, coming out of the Earth. He had two horns like a lamb, but be spoke like a dragon. He exercised all the authority of the first beast on his behalf, and made the Earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. And her performed great and miraculous signs, even causing fire to come down from Heaven to Earth in full view of humans. Because of the signs he was given power to do on behalf of the first beast, he deceived the inhabitants of the Earth. He ordered them to set up an image in honour of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. He was given the power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that it could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive the mark on their right hand or on one’s forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless one had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name. This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let one calculate the number of the beast, for it is man’s number. His number is 666,” reports Revelation 12.11-18. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
Notice everywhere you go there are a lot of 6s on the floor, telling you to stay six feet away from others? It is just kind of fascinating. We would not know the end of days if we were living in them, but it is possible that is what is going on. May the blessings of all the World descend on this mansion: the blessings of Earth, the blessings of sky, the blessings of the moving ocean and of the never still wind. From the people of stone, blessings: the blessings of plants and the blessings of animals; of two-legged and four, of six and of eight; and the blessings of the spirits. From all those who dwell on the Earth and in it and above it, may blessings flow. I pray to you, God of happiness, who for so long presided over this mansion We call to you again; awake, come to us, and once more shower blessings on this mansion and those who come before you. May the foundation and the structure be as strong as you, lasting through all ages. This mansion was formed in love. And with newly opened eyes, clear with sight the architectures knew its fate was to reveal a story. And with her heart’s own true wisdom, she has passed expectations. Mrs. Winchester loved it, she loves it, they love it. Blessings on love and on all who love. Blessings from the God of love. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
God does raise us to high honour. Our eyes have seen the defeat of our foes, our ears have heard the doom of evil doers that rise up against us. The righteous shall flourish like a redwood tree and grow might like cypress tree. Planted in the house of the Lord, they shall flourish in the courts of our God. Even in old age they shall bring forth fruit, they shall be full of vigour and strength, declaring that the Lord is just, my Rock in whom there is no unrighteousness. The Lord reigneth; He is robed in majesty; the Lord is robbed, He hath girded Himself with strength Now is the Earth firmly established; it shall not be moved. Thy throne established of old; Thou art from everlasting. The waters life up their voices, O Lord, the waters lift up their roaring; yet above the voices of many waters, above the breakers of the sea, Thou, O Lord, art mighty. The law is true and unfailing; holiness is becoming Thy house, O Lord, forevermore. May the glory of the Lord endure forever; let the Lord rejoice in His works. Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forever. From the rising of the sun unto its setting, the Lord’s name be praised. The Lord is high above all nations. His glory is above the Heavens; O Lord, Thy name endures forever; Thou art Lord for all generations. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
Winchester Mystery House
WINCHESTER HOUSE BUILT BY SARAH WINCHESTER. WIDOW OF RIFLE MANUFACTURER WILLIAM WINCHESTER. THIS UNIQUE STRUTUE MANY OUTSTANDING ELEMENTS OF VICTORIAN ARCHITECTURE AND FINE CRAFTSMANSHIP. CONSTRUCTION BEGAN 1884 AND CONTINUED WITHOUT INTERRUPTION UNTIL MRS WINCHESTER’S DEATH 1922. THE CONTINUAL BUILDING AND REMODELING CREATED A 160 ROOM HOUSE COVERING AN AREA OF SIX ACRES CALIFORNIA REGISTERED HISTORICAL LANDMARK NO 868 PLAQUE PLACED BY THE STATE DEPARTMENT OF PARKS AND RECREATION INCOOPERATION WITH THE WINCHESTER MYSTERY HOUSE MAY 3.1974.
What do you think inspired Sarah Winchester to continuously build such a beautiful and bizarre home composed of 160 rooms, once standing seven stories tall? winchestermysteryhouse.com
In a World where the Pulse of Time Beats Infinitely Slowly, Birth and Death Count for Little!
Hardships do not build character. They reveal it. Anyone who will tear down Victorian craftsmanship will tear down America. Victorian architecture and religion have made America what it is today. A World without Victorian architecture is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval prison. Just like the unconscious mind, Victorians have a lot of secrets that can take several lifetimes to reveal. Faith and the word of God fills our inner soul and is sufficient to sustain us—and allows us to access His power. The notion that God created this World spectacle for the benefit of the human alone is an absurd and unwarranted anthropolatry, but the notion that life first attains individual self-consciousness in humans is justified in philosophy and by experience. What is it of which one alone is conscious? It is of being oneself, one’s ego. In all earlier stages of evolution, consciousness is entirely veiled in its forms and never becomes self-aware. Only in the human state does individual consciousness of being first dawn. There may exist on other planets creatures infinitely more intelligent and more amiable than human beings. We may not be the only pebbles on the beach of life. Nevertheless the piece of arrogance which places humans highest in the scale of existence contains the dim reverberation of a great truth, for humans bear the divine within their hearts. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Human beings have made too much fuss about themselves, their own importance in the cosmic scale. Why should there not be other forms of life superior t them, conscious intelligent beings higher in mentality, character, and spiritual knowledge, better equipped with powers and techniques? Even a partial awareness of what it means to be a human—as above an animal—capable of thinking abstractly, conscious of the vastness of the Universe and the littleness of the ego, asking the ago-old questions about meaning and purpose in life, sometimes getting a glimpse of a few words of the answer through religion, art, Nature, mysticism, joy, suffering, or intelligence, even this is enough to make one wonder what follows in development after one, higher than oneself, if not here then perhaps on other planets or in a fourth dimension. Such beings must already exist somewhere. Are they the gods of ancient fable and myth, disfigured or miscomprehended in human narratives by passing of time? Were they visitors who helped infant humanity reach its tends and then left it, withdrew, except for rare appearances as avatars, angels, or lawgivers? There are existences for beings on levels and in times and space different from ours. The Level we know and the humans we see only partially manifest the World-Idea. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
The multibirthed nature of human experience fits in with the shimmering galaxies of the multiverse itself. “We are not alone,” could be echoed back by this planet Earth itself. There are beings not subject to the same laws as those governing humankind’s physical existence. They are normally not visible to humans. They are gods. The Gods are both symbols of particular forces and beings dwelling on higher planes. All these figures irrupt autonomously into consciousness as soon as it gets into a pathological state. With regard to the anima, I would particularly like to draw attention to the case described by Nelken. Now the remarkable thing is that these figures show the most striking connections with the poetic, religious, or mythological formulations, though these connections are in no way factual. That is to say, they are spontaneous products of analogy. One such case even led to the charge of plagiarism: the French writer Benoit gave a description of the anima and her classic myth in his book L’Atlantide, which is an exact parallel of Rider Haggard’s She. The lawsuit proved unsuccessful; Benoit and never heard of She. (It might, in the last analysis, have been an instance of cryptomnesic deception, which is often extremely difficult to rule out.) #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
The distinctly “historical” aspect of the anima and Benoit’s condensation with the figures of the sister, wife, mother, and daughter, plus thus associated incest motif, can be found in Goethe (“You were in times gone by my wife of sister”), as well as in the anima figure of the regina and femina alba in alchemy. The English alchemist Eirenaeus Philalethes (“love of truth”), writing about 1645, remarks that the “Queen” was the King’s “sister, mother, or wife.” The same idea can be found, ornately elaborated, in Nelken’s patient and in a whole series of cases observed by me, where I was able to rule out with certainty any possibility of literary influence. For the rest, the anima complex is one of the oldest features of Latin alchemy. When one studies the archetypal personalities and their behaviour with the help of the dreams, fantasies, delusions of patients, one is profoundly impressed by their manifold and unmistakable connections with mythological ideas completely unknown to the layperson. They form a species of singular beings whom one would like to endow with ego-consciousness; indeed, they almost seem capable of it. And yet this idea is not borne out by the facts. There is nothing in their behaviour to suggest that they have an ego-consciousness as we know it. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
The behaviours show, on the contrary, all the marks of fragmentary personalities. They are masklike, wraithlike, without problems, lacking self-reflection, with no conflicts, no doubts no sufferings; like gods, perhaps, who have no philosophy, such as the Brahma-gods of the Samyutta–nikaya, whose erroneous views needed correction by the Buddha. Unlike other contents, they always remain strangers in the World of consciousness, unwelcome intruders saturating the atmosphere with uncanny forebodings or even with the fear of madness. If we examine their content, id est, the fantasy material constituting their phenomenology, we find countless archaic and “historical” associations and images of an archetypal nature. This peculiar fact permits us to draw conclusions about the “localization’ of anima and animus in the psychic structure. They evidently live and function in the deeper layers of the unconscious, especially that phylogenetic substratum which I have called the collective unconscious. This localization explains a good deal of their strangeness: they being into our ephemeral consciousness an unknown psychic life belonging to a remote past. It is the mind of our unknown ancestors, their way of thinking and feeling, their way of experiencing life and the World, gods and humans. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The existence of these archaic strata is presumable the source of the human’s belief in reincarnations and in memories of “previous existences.” Just as the human body is a museum, so to speak, of its phylogenetic history, so too is the psyche. We have no reason to suppose that the specific structure of the psyche is the only thing in the World that has n history outside its individual manifestations. Even the conscious mind cannot be denied a history reaching back at least five thousand years. It is only our ego-consciousness that has forever a new beginning and an early end. The unconscious psyche is not only immensely old, it is also capable of growing into an equally remote future. It moulds the human species and is just as much a part of its as the human body, which, though ephemeral in the individual, is collectively of immense ago. The anima and animus live in a World quite different from the World outside—in a World where the pulse of time beats infinitely slowly, where the birth and death of individuals count for little. No wonder their nature is strange, so strange that their irruption into consciousness often amounts to a psychosis. They undoubtedly belong to the material that comes to light in schizophrenia. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
What I have said about the collective unconscious may give you give a more or less adequate idea of what I mean by their term. If we now turn back to the problem of individuation, we shall see ourselves faced with a rather extraordinary task: the psyche consists of two incongruous halves which together should form a whole. One is inclined to think that ego-consciousness is capable of assimilating the unconscious, at least one hopes that such a solution is possible. However, unfortunately the unconscious really is unconscious; in other words, it is unknown. And how can you assimilate something unknown? Even if you can form a fairly complete picture of the anima and animus, this does not mean that you have plumbed the depths of the unconscious. One hopes to control the unconscious, but the past masters in the art of self-control, the yogis, attain perfection in samadhi, a state of ecstasy, which so far as we know is equivalent to a state of unconsciousness. It makes no difference whether they call our unconscious a “universal consciousness”; the fact remains that in their case the unconscious has swallowed up ego-consciousness. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
They do not realize that a “universal consciousness” is a contradiction in terms, since exclusion, selection, and discrimination are the root and essence of everything that lays claim to the name “consciousness.” “Universal consciousness” is logically identical with unconsciousness. It is nevertheless true that a correct application of the methods described in the Pali Canon or the Yoga-sutra induces a remarkable extension of consciousness. But, with increasing extension, the contents of consciousness lose in clarity of detail. In the end consciousness becomes all-embracing, but nebulous; and infinite number of things merge into an indefinite whole, a state in which subject and object are almost completely identical. This is all very beautiful, but scarcely to be recommended anywhere north of the Tropic of Cancer. For this reason we must look for a different solution. We believe in ego-consciousness and in what we call reality. The realities of a north climate are somehow so convincing that we feel very much better off when we do not forget them. For us it makes sense to concern ourselves with reality. Our European ego-consciousness is therefore inclined to swallow up the unconscious, and if this should not prove feasible we try to suppress it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
However, if we understand anything of the unconscious, we know that it cannot be swallowed. We also know that it is dangerous to suppress it, because the unconscious is life and this life turns against us if suppressed, as it happens in neurosis. When one of them is suppressed and injured by the other, conscious and unconscious do not make a whole. If they must contend, let it at least be a fair fight with equal rights on both sides. Both are aspects of life. Consciousness should defend its reason and protect itself, and the chaotic life of the unconscious should be given the chance of having its way too—as much of it as we can stand. This means open conflict and open collaboration at once. That, evidently, is the way human life should be. It is the old game of hammer and anvil: between them the patient iron is forged into an indestructible whole, and “individual.” This, roughly, is what I mean by the individuation process. As the same shows, it is a process or course of development arising out of the conflict between the two fundamental psychic facts. The symbol of formation has the closet affinities with alchemical ideas, and especially with the conception of the “uniting symbol,” which yield highly significant parallels. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
Naturally these are processes which have no meaning in the initial stages of psychological treatments. On the other hand, more difficult cases, such as cases of unresolved transference, develop these symbols. Knowledge of them is of inestimable importance in treating cases of this kind, especially when dealing with cultured patients. How the harmonizing of conscious and unconscious data is to be undertaken cannot be indicated in the form of a recipe. It is an irrational life-process which expressed itself in definite symbols. It may be the task of the analyst to stand by this process with all the help one can give. In this case, knowledge of the symbols is indispensable, for it is in them that the union of conscious and unconscious contents is consummated. Out of this union emerge new situations and new conscious attitudes. I have therefore called the union of opposites the “transcendent function.” This rounding out of the personality into a whole may well be the goal of any psychotherapy that claims to be more than a mere cure of symptoms. As experience piles up, self-structures gradually establish themselves and, in doing so, separate out more and more from other structures which have less to do with one’s identity. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
In the course of this process, as the self becomes more distinct, other people and things also gain coherence and individuality. There is a growing sense of “Ah yes, this is me, and that is that, and you are you, and this is what goes on between us.” Gradually, with further experiences, if all goes well, the personality develops a relatively stable sense of itself in its environment and a stable sense of what is not self but other people and things. Our life-experiences are increasingly reorganized and integrated, with more linkages to the more central regions of the self, and/or with more clearly delineated object-imagery. Our experiences can become more closely connected with (or, on the other hand, more distant from) the feelings or excitements which originally accompanied the experiences. This is a process through which our experiences can also become relatively less integrated with the person with whim we first experienced them, and relatively less integrated with the feelings or excitements with which we first experienced them. Thus feelings and excitements can be isolated from the structures in terms of which they were first experienced, isolated from structures of self and/or isolated from object-imagery. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
To give an imaginary illustration of a very complicated process, the experience may be of a child being hugged by the mother and enjoying it. In words: “I like being hugged by mother.” This may be broken up into such substructures as “hugging is lovely” (whoever hugs whom: the “depersonalized” relationship), as well as “I liked being hugged,” “I love mother,” “I like hugging,” “mother loves me,” “mother loves hugging me,” “mother likes hugging,” and so on. This example is also useful in letting us realize just how many structures can emerge out of one experience; it is a mistake to think of an experience being broken up into one self-concept, one object-concept, one relationship, one emotion. “Depersonalizing” is used to describe this process. Depersonalizing is a useful way of coping with distressing feelings, I shall often call it “distancing” or “disowning.” In depersonalizing, emotions and objects differentiate. My first experience of a dog may have been frightening, but “frightening” and “dog” will eventually probably differentiate from each other, so that in due course I can distinguish between the dog which scared me, and dogs in general which have no personal significance for me either frightening or lovable, and so on. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
At that level of abstraction, dogs remain dogs, whatever my experience of them: object-constancy has been achieved. In depersonalizing, the emotions and self differentiate. “I” and “frightened” differentiate. More generally, I learn that I am not wholly (always) good or wholly (always” bad, or wholly (always) happy or wholly (always) unhappy. Later I have to discover that my feeling hat someone or something is good or bad does not mean that it is so. And I have to discover that my feeling that someone or something is good or bad does not mean that other people think so. Subjectivity is thus turned into objectivity. This process of depersonalizing may be patchy or superficial. Underneath what we have learned about dogs which helps us say we know that not all dogs are frightening although we once knew a frightening puppy, there may be unconscious connections very tightly integrated with a feeling of good or bad about dogs. Part of psychotherapy is to being these unconscious connections into consciousness. When thinking about feelings, it is useful sometimes not to think in a “distancing” or depersonalized way of “love,” or “distress,” or “fear.” It can be instructive to think for a while in terms of “love-of,” and “distress-from,” and “fear-of,” and “hate-of,” and “greed-for,” and “bliss-with.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
If we think of feelings apart from who-feels-what-towards-whom, we risk being cut from out roots. Feeling are experienced as relational—once stated, it seems obvious, at least for a healthy functioning organism. Feelings are relational from the start except when something has gone wrong with our biochemistry. When feelings are detached from the experiences in which they were aroused, that is normally due to a later and defensive manoeuver. This component in the object-relation does not therefore separate out in an organized way, as self-structures or object-imagery do in the healthy infant. On the contrary, it looks as though health may consist in keeping feelings attached to the experiences with which they are bound up. Healthy people may have a clear sense of self and of the people and things around them, but they are not much visited by isolated waves of “fear-of” or “bliss-with.” Such feelings would normally be anchored in an experience. Depersonalized feelings are very weird. One of the many contributions made by Dr. Melanie Klein and her associates comes from their intuitive understanding that “I am angry (with a person or thing)” is very close to “Someone or something is very angry with me.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
The feeling “angry-with” may be depersonalized, detached from particular experiences, and associated at random with self or with other. Similarly “I feel torn apart (by something in the course of hunger)” may become “I have torn apart (the breast associated with hunger).” For some people there is no differentiation between self-and-feeling; for others there is none between others-and-feeling. It seems that people vary in this respect. The former are likely to experience “I am fine, sad, content, frightened, furious,” et cetera. The latter are likely to experience “He is nice, she is frightening, that is nasty, this is sweet, the other wicked.” Only people who are very out of touch would be assailed by feelings of fear or well-being or anger or love without any clear connections with anything. Illustrating the extreme, a person mainly organized in terms of self-structures, and distant from the World of people and things, might say, “I was so worried when I did not hear…I wondered what I had done wrong. I felt so guilt and worried, then I remembered that I am always forgetting people’s birthdays. Are I not awful.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Another kind of person, mainly organized in terms of other people and things, and distant from one’s own feelings, might say, “They sent this letter which said they were closing down. With a cheque. The cheque was an insult. They have no right to send a notice like that through the post. I went to the Citizens’ Advice Bureau round the corner from where I used to live—not last year but the year before. Almost everyone there was new, much younger and two were Asian.” Yet another kind of person hardly experiences either self or other people, but picks up feelings without firmly attaching them to anyone: “It was really eerie, a dangerous atmosphere. There were a lot of booming noises and a lot of talk which I do not remember. It felt very heavy and threatening. It did not mater, though.” People differ in how they are aware, more in some ways, less in others. One wonders at which point thee types begin to become fixed. It is an interesting area to speculate in. Whole cultures or subcultures may be found which prefer one or other type, so that polite conventional speech requires more awareness of some aspect than another. Thus in some circles it is discourteous to talk about oneself, and in others it is band manners to talk about others, and in yet other circles one should not talk about impersonal matters. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Because I cannot deal with the soul here in a thorough and systematic manner that would address main issues (I refer again to the literature noted), my strategy will be twofold: First, I will elaborate a picture or image of the soul, and second, I will look at certain things said about the soul in the Bible. Now the image: Our soul is like an inner stream of water, which gives strength, direction, and harmony to every other element of our life. When that stream is as it should be, we are constantly refreshed and exuberant in all we do, because our soul itself is then profusely rooted in the vastness of God and His kingdom, including nature: and all else within us is enlivened and directed by that stream. Therefore we are in harmony with God, reality, and the rest of human nature at large. As is usual in biblical themes, a little child that has been allowed to develop naturally and have been natured in all the aspects of its being gives us the best presentation of that a life flooded with a healthy soul looks like. Now, beyond the image or picture of an inner stream is this reality: Life is self-initiating, self-directing, self-sustaining activity and power. In this full sense, of course, only God has life. That is the biblical view. Moreover, it his “hand is the soul of every living thing,” Job tells us (Job 12.10). #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Can it be truth that all this cast travail, all this long long ingathering of experience, all this travel to the farthest limit, is only to end in negation, in unlearning all knowledge and returning to where we started? My heart does not believe it, my reason cannot accept it. “The Father has life in Himself,” Jesus taught, and “gave to the Son also to have life in Himself,” reports John 5.26. “He alone possesses undying life,” reports 1 Timothy 6.16, according to Saint Paul, and is the one “who gives and preserves life to all things,” reports 1 Timothy 5.13. The individual living thing receives its relatively “self-initiating, self-directing, self-sustaining power” from the hand of God. This derivative life flows through the living being in the form of its own soul. As for the human, its peculiar form of soul is related to the unique spirit relationship it has to be God (Genesis 2.7). It is its peculiar form of soul that enlivens everything else in the creature, and its overall condition reflects the state of its soul. In the human being, spiritual life in the kingdom of God is central to its soul and its life. This, we seriously suggest, is not an image but a reality, and one that the image of a stream of water can portray with some force. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
When we speak of the human soul, then, we are speaking of the deepest level of life and power in the human being. On this land, please pour blessings, O Lord, pour blessings. On this house please pour blessings, O Lord pour blessings. Spirits of the Ancestors, do you see what has been done? A house has been born to continue your line. Once again, a link is forged in the ancient chain and we are all connected that much tighter. Bless this Victorian Mansion; it carries your memory forward to the future. Because God has set His love upon Sarah Winchester’s Mansion and estate, He will protect it; God will protect it because it knows His name. God will rescue the Winchester and its fine Victorian architecture and bring honour to it. Give will give Mrs. Winchester’s estate abundance of long life, and the Winchester mansion shall witness God’s salvation. Hallelujah. Praise the name of the Lord; give praise, ye servants of the Lord, who stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of God. Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good; sing praise unto the name of God, for it is pleasant. For the Lord hath chosen this estate as wonder of the World and a treasure for many generations to enjoy. Indeed I know that the Lord is great, that our Lord is above all who are worshipped as gods. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
Winchester Mystery House
Sarah Winchester’s Daisy Bedroom – the room she was trapped in during the 1906 earthquake. Legend says that she had the front of the house boarded up after the earthquake.
Explore in 360 http://ow.ly/280u50CXeNm
I Had Loved the Prairie as a Man with a Heart Shot Full of Pain Over Love!
I have not been calling the signals. I have been in the position of a lineman doing some of the downfield blocking. And although I have often been accused of putting my foot in my mouth, I will never put my hand in your pockets. When genuine love predominates in our gathers, all pretense will vanish from out lives. The is an important element in the spiritually transformed social dimension of the self. Love between Christians then would, as Saint Paul say to the Romans, “be genuine.” And that is the central factor in the beautiful picture of what the local gatherings of disciples into “churches” should be like, given by Saint Paul in Romans 12.1-21. Christ’s apprentices would be carrying out their particular work in the group life with a grace and power that is not from themselves, but from God. “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honour one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
“Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord. On the contrary: ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed one; if he is thirsty, give one something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on one’s head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good,” reports Romans 12.9-21. Let love be completely real. Abor what is evil. Cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in family-like love (philostorgoi). Outdo one another in giving honour. Serve the Lord with ardent spirit and all diligence. Rejoice in hope. Be patient in trouble. Be devoted constantly to prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints. Pursue (run after) hospitality. Bless persecutors and not curse them. Be joyful with those who are rejoiceful and be sorrowful with those in sorrow. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Live in harmony with each other. Not be haughty, but fit right in with the “lowly” in human terms. Not see yourself as wise. Never repay evil for evil. Have due regard for what everyone takes to be right. Be at peace with everyone, so far as it depends on you. Never take revenge, but leave that to whatever God may decide. Provide for needy enemies. Not be overwhelmed by evil, but overwhelm evil with good. This is the most adequate biblical description of what the details of a spiritually transformed social dimension look like. We should pause to contemplate it. Just think for a moment what it would be like to be part of a group of disciples in which this list was the conscious, shared intention, and see, where it is actually lived out, even if with some imperfection. You can see, I think, how it would totally transform the marriage relation and the home and family. Its effect on the community would be incalculable, as it in fact has been wherever realized throughout the history of Christ’s people on Earth. The abandonment of all defensiveness and its many strategies would clearly be achieved in such a group. There would no longer be any need for them. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
In their place would be receptiveness and blessing for all, even enemies. Certainly, to achieve this in our social dimension we must have heard and accepted the gospel of grace, of Jesus’ defenseless death on the cross on our behalf, and of his acceptance of us into his life beyond death and beyond the worst that could be done to him or to us. We must stand safe and solid in his kingdom. Another element of Godliness is an opening up of our broader social dimension to redemption. Not having the burden of defending and securing ourselves, and acting now from the resources of our new life from above, we can devote our lives to the service of others. This is the beneficial moment in redemption of the social side of the self. It is not just a matter of not attacking or withdrawing. That redemption will naturally and rightly be chiefly focused in blessing upon those closet to us, beginning with out family members and moving out from there, proportional to our degree of life involvement with others. The social World is set before us as an infinite task, which can only be carried out in the power of God. We accept that. Just as we cannot be husband or wife or parent God intends except in the power of God, so for our life as a whole. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
We do not even how to pray as we ought, Saint Paul tells us, “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And what who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will,” reports Romans 8.26-27. And, if we invite him, wait on him, and proceed as best we can, the Spirit of God will enter into all of our social connections. We have the promise of Jesus to those who live by his living water. That water “shall become in one as well of water springing up to eternal life,” reports John 4.14, and “from his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water,” (John 7.38; compare Isiah 58.11). Spiritual formation in Christ obviously requires that we increasingly be happily reconciled to living in and by the direct upholding of the hand of God. This is clearly what the entire biblical view of life calls for, and especially what Jesus himself lived and presented as the truth. Only from within this gospel outlook on life can we begin to approach the Godly reformation of the self in its social World. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
However, from within that outlook we can cease from assault and withdrawal can extend ourselves in blessing to all whose lives we touch. What circles of sufficiency have you enjoyed in your lifetime? Describe in detail some occasions when you experienced completeness in them. Or occasion when they were broken. How does rejection affect us? Why does it affect us as it does? Can you recall an occasion, perhaps as a child or youth, when you rejected someone and how they responded? Do assault and withdrawal cover the field of the evils people do to others? Think about the role these play in ordinary life. Is it possible to disagree with or correct others without assault or withdrawal? Consider violations of each of the last six of the Ten Commandments as forms of assault. Do you see how they are? What they do to people? How would love as Jesus loved eliminate assault and withdrawal withing familiar personal relationships? How does the Trinitarian nature of God cast light on what human relations could and should be? “One nation under God.” How could that possibly be realized? How do assault and withdrawal find the way into the lives of children? #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Must we accept coldness between people as normal now? Do you agree that redemption of the marriage relation is central to any hope for transforming our broader social situation today? Or is that just too much to put on a man-woman or more modern relationships? How can we come to see ourselves whole in God’s life, and how would that help heal our social dimension? Could Saint Paul’s picture of the redemptive fellowship of Christ’s people (Romans 12.1-21) be put int place in your group? “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, individual, with liberty and justice for all.” Now, if it is a kingdom of God that is to be established, it must be introduced by God. God must not only be the originator of it, but the controller also; and any means short of these must fail of the object designed. The great evils that now exist in the World are the consequences of human’s departure from God. This has introduced this degeneracy and imbecility, and nothing but a retracing of one’s steps, and a return to God can bring about a restitution. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
God gave humans a moral agency, as head of the World, under Himself to reign and rule without God physically being here. The natural consequence is, that we have inherited all the evils of which I have spoken, and nothing but the wisdom, goodness, power, and compassion of God, can deliver us therefrom, restore the Earth to its pristine excellence, and put humans again in possession of those blessings which they have forfeited by their transgression. Emperors, kings, princes, potentates, statemen, philosophers, and churches, have tried for ages to bring this state of things about; but they have all signally failed, not having derived their wisdom from the proper source. And all human means made use of at the preset time to ameliorate the condition of the World must fail, as all human means have always done. There are some who suppose that the influence of Christianity, as it is now preached and administered, will bring about a Millennial reign of peace. The ideas in a human’s mind are hidden and secret until one expresses them through actions, or as speech, or as the visible creations and productions of one’s hands, or in behaviour generally. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Those ideas are neither lost nor destroyed. They are a permanent part of the human’s memory and character and consciousness and subconsciousness, where they have been recorded as automatically and as durably as a master phonograph disc records music. Just as wax copy may be burnt but the music will still live on in the master disc, so the cosmos may be annihilated or disintegrate completely but the creative idea of it will still live on in the World-Mind. More, in the same ways a human’s body may die and disintegrate, but the creative idea of one will still remain in the World-Mind as one’s Soul. It will not die. It is one’s real Self, one’s perfect Self. It is the true Idea of one which is forever calling to be realized. It is the unmanifest image of God in which humans are made and which one has yet to bring into manifestation in one’s everyday consciousness. If the World is a thought in the mind of God, then humans are thoughts in the World-Mind, who is their God in reality and in logic. If all thoughts must go in the end, this is true also of the World-Mind, except that here millions of years are involved. The World-Mind works in and through everything. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
The World-Idea reveals a mere hint of its wisdom and intelligence to that projection from Itself which is the human. Every law of the Universe and every principle of its operation can be found reflected in the nature and life of every human. In the complicated structure of the human personality, we find different levels of being, with different forces operating at each level. Humans are what they are. Nothing can alter that. Out of the immortal, benign, eternal Mind they came, to It they shall return. Meanwhile It is one’s very essence, that is, It is life. Humans are Mind individualized. We must see in each human the beginning of a fresh and unique attempt of the Infinite to express itself in the finite World of space-time. he Unseen Power (without beginning) and (without end), is One. Every other kind of power derives from It. And this holds true even of the little power which a little ant shows. Hence the energies of a human being are linked with It. From this we may deduce that one is unaware of, and not using, all one’s potential resources. Though it seems entirely our own faculty, this thought-making power is derived from a hidden one, The Universal Mind, in which all other human’s minds lie embedded. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
What one does with this power is a human’s own concern, for better or worse, yielding one more knowledge or more ignorance. The human who, according to the Bible, is made in the image of God is not the Earthly human, visible to all and speaking in a voice that sounds in physical ears. One is to be found in the deep center of consciousness, where there is a Void, and one speaks in silence to the attentive mind, not to other persons. The human that is made in the image of God is not physical human or desire-filled humans or thought-breeding humans but one who dwells behind all these—silent, serene, and unnoticed. Here, and here alone, is the real meaning and true portrait of humans. What is the inner purpose of human life as apart from its outer object? What is the highest end of the life of humans? We may not be able to comprehend the Universe’s meaning—why it should come into existence at all—simply because human capacity is too limited; but we should be able to comprehend some meaning—enough for practical purposes—in our own personal existences. To enquire into such matters is very far from being a remote and unimportant affair, for on its final result depend the answers to such questions as: “Does this Earthly life exhaust all possibilities of human life?” #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
“Is there anything more than death for humans to expect as the final experience life offers one?” “What are we here for?” If we begin at some time to wonder at the starred sky and go on to speculate at our human destiny, there will be moments when a feeling rises that there must be something behind it all. They pass and mystery engulfs us again. If we do not know the “why” of universal existence, we do know the “why” of human existence. It provides the field of experience for discovering the divine soul. The integral quest which ends in this discovery is, consequently, the greatest and mist important of human undertakings. Where is the possibility for the puny intellect of human beings to hold in its consciousness simultaneously and all-embracingly the innumerable stars, planets, suns, systems, galaxies, and Universes? Yet human’s curiosity cannot be stilled; one’s eager mind insists on knowing more and more, one’s ever-upwelling stream of questions never stops flowing. What do these two conflicting situations mean when put together? The answer is simply that there is something which one can and must know in order to fulfill oneself, but it is not a piling-up of numbered facts; it is nothing other than one’s relation to the source of the cosmos. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Human’s experience is so limited and one’s mental equipment so small that one’s attempt to understand the Universe would seem impertinent were it not for the assurance of great prophets and seers that where intellect and sense fail, intuition succeeds. The structure of the human being—one’s bodily senses and mental faculties—does not permit one to get more than a limited awareness of one’s environment. The remainder—which may be very large—is not only unknow but likely to remain unknowable. This means that what one does know, being neither complete nor completely true, concerns a World that is only relatively real. The World as it is really is in itself escapes one’s knowledge and remains the greatest mystery. Only those who are piqued by their ignorance of reality look beyond science, beyond the intellect even, for truth. If human life has any higher purpose, it is that the human ego should find its way back to that harmony with God which has become disturbed but never disrupted. We must all give life what it demands from the human—that it shall seek to transcend its present state, that is, transcend itself in the end. For life as we know it is only one expression of the World-Idea, the inexorable will of the World-Mind. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Everywhere in the advanced countries specialists, experts, and scientists are seeking more knowledge of the human body and its World or are applying this knowledge to practical use. Yet the highest work in which intellectual power can engage is to seek the reason for human existence. This will lead it to discover, and bow before, the World-Mind. If a creature is capable of conceiving the highest purpose for human life as something which transcends physical existence and even overpasses its ordinary thinking and image-making existence, there is here a phenomenon where this creature is either intuiting or predicting its own destiny. And it must be something glorious, something whose nature few cultures and civilizations have yet enjoyed. The goal of life is to be consciously united with Life. Human’s need is twofold: recollection of one’s divine nature and redemption from one’s Earthly nature. If it be asked whether there is any purpose in life, the answer must be “Yes!—to perfect ourselves and know ourselves; to find the happiness which comes as a fruit of such fulfillment.” Attaining to our humanity is good chiefly as it provides us with the chance, during subsequent years, of attaining to our higher selfhood. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
The higher purpose of existence is to advance humans until one can live in the awareness of one’s divine selfhood. It is within the ultimate capacity of human and part of the higher purpose for one to achieve this awareness. Revelation establishes that the sequence of events in our Universe is an orderly one, while observation confirms it. They do not just happen by chance and chaos is not their background. Many will admit this but yet they are unable to admit that this orderliness is not limited to stars and planets alone, nor to the chemical elements also, nor to the physical forces of Nature in addition. They are unable to extend it to human life, to its birth, course, fortunes, and death. However, the philosophic revelation tells us that law and order are here not less than elsewhere. It is unreasonable to suggest that although they rule all the lower kingdoms, they do not touch us. Our experiences too are controlled by Heaven’s laws. There is order in the starry systems, on the planets, and on this Earth, because the World-Idea provides law and pattern. What is true of the Universe is also true of humans, of one’s body and one’s inner being. There is an orderly structure in the Universe and an orderly pattern in the lives of its creatures. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
If everything else is governed by laws, why not the growth of human’s spirituality? All personal fates are fulfilled within the larger predetermination of the World-Idea. And only within that larger meaning can humans find any real meaning in their own lives. The divine pattern is there not only in Nature but in Man, not only in inspired written revelations but in secret unwritten prayers. You are part of the World-Mind’s World-Idea. Therefore, you are a part of its purpose too. Seek to be shown what that is, and how you may realize it, rather than mope in misery, frustration, or fear. Looking upon your situation—personal, domestic, career, mental, emotional, spiritual—as having significance within that purpose, as teaching you some specific lesson or telling you what to do or not to do. It is nonsense to say that any human is lone in one’s trouble One is in the great World-Idea, part of it, belonging to it, sustained by it. Humans imagine they are acting for their own personal objectives only and for their own personal choices. They believe that they are moving through their life-scenes by their own freedom. However, the fact is that, all unwittingly, they are acting for the World-Idea and moving by the power which inheres in it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
What are we to say of the many whose lives evince no purpose, whose years show no progress? This judgment is a surface one. All people respond to the power of God, and perform their role in the idea of God, however alight be the measure of their response or however hidden be their role. Every person is unconsciously trying to fulfill a higher purpose set for one by God, and all the purposes fit together and combine to form a part of the World-Idea. Humans are part of the World-Idea; mist of what comes to them is within that part too: much of what comes from them likewise. They are free only within the World-Idea. Whether we like it or not we must submit to the World-Idea. It is there and must be accepted—reluctantly, resentfully, or blindly and devotedly. None of us has total freedom; that is an illusion, for it could never exist in a World based upon orderliness and equilibrium. However, the distinctive feature of will is the power of choice. The mind has a faculty of will and election. Appetitive movement revealed no such feature: it is involuntary, habitual, unconscious of itself. In a completely literal sense, will can move or not move, act or not act. The power of will is always evident in the power to stay action. If the will were to move it has to be moved; to act, it has first to be acted upon. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Will is like an artist. As the efficient cause of one’s picture, the artist can elect to paint, or not; one can exercise one’s power of reviewing one’s intentions, inspecting one’s materials, and apprising one’s manner of treating and forming them so as to realize one’s intentions. So with the will. Furthermore, the will could call for the delay of action. It could put brakes on the appetite. It need not respond at once to the recommendations of reason. It can temporize with reason, asking that noble faculty to review its processes; and it can expect imagination to do its proper work. Yet in checkmating ill-considered recommendations and impulses, the will can not expect either mind or body to do the impossible. It is restrained by a person’s innate limitations. It is my power and will to run; but to run faster than according to my lightness or disposition of body, is not in my power nor will. Knowledge of what is possible is derived from experience and reason; and what must not only teach what is good, but what is possible. Because a decision by the will is always necessary if rational thought are to result in action, classical and medieval tradition classifies will as an intellectual faculty. The doctrine concerning the Intellect and the doctrine concerning the Will of humans, are as it were twins at birth. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
For purity of illumination and freedom of will begins and falls together; and nowhere in the universal nature of things is there so intimate a sympathy as between truth and goodness. In thus alluding to Adam’s fall from perfect wisdom and perfect goodness, we recognize a sort of primordial intimacy between will and intellect. The actions of life and the determinations of will depend upon the intellect. There are a small number of ways of training and improving the understanding, reason, and memory, but there are a relatively large number of ways of molding will, appetite, and affections. The will of humans is most maniable and obedient and admitteth most medicines to cure and alter it. However, the intellectual powers have fewer means to work upon them than the will or body of humans. Clearly, will is not placed among things intellectual. Perhaps it is unimportant, perhaps impossible, to characterize the will with any precision. It may be important only that the will be placed in the service of the rational Angels and not at the command of the passions devils. Dear Lord in Heaven, may each loss be an addition to your power, a thread in the pattern woven by you in the secret places. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
It happened this way: When the time was right, when the season had come, one came to the deadly place and was sacrificed. Knowingly one came, willingly one came, in honour and sorrow one came, to do what had to be done. One’s death made life possible; from it sprang the food we eat. Grain grew where one’s blood flowed; animals walked forth from the shade of one’s fallen body. Like an ash felled by an axe, one’s body lay and, with its rotting, nourished the ground. This is the way it happened, and the way it happens today. For each moment dies and nourishes the next as it is birthed by God. Each year dies and nourishes the next as it is birthed by God. Each life ends and nourished the next as it is birthed by God. You who die and are reborn, in this season of death we remember you deeds. You who die and are reborn, in this season of life we remember your sacrifice. You who ide and are reborn, in this season of life and death we remember what happened, and we praise you in our living, and we praise you in our dying. Please keep back Thy servant also from willful sins, that they may not have dominion over me; then shall I be blameless, and I shall be clear from great transgression. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable before Thee, O Lord, my Rock, and my Redeemer. I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be on my lips. My soul shall glory in the Lord; the humble shall hear of it and be glad. O exalt the Lord with me, and let us extol His name together. I sought the Lord, and He answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. The humble looked unto Him and were radiant; and their faces shall never be abashed. Here is a poor man who cried out; the Lord heard hum and saved him from all his troubles. The Angel of the Lord encamps round about them that revere Hum, and delivers them. O try and you shall see that the Lord is good; happy is the person that takes refuge in God. O revere the Lord, you who are His holy ones; for they who revere God suffer no want. They that deny God may lack, and suffer hunger; but they that seek the Lord shall not lack any good. Come, you children, hearken unto me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Who is the person that loves life, and desires long life filled with joy? Then keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking guile. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
CRESLEIGH MEADOWS AT PLUMAS RANCH
Plumas Lake, CA |
Now Selling!
Cresleigh Meadows is now selling! Found just north of Feather River Boulevard, Cresleigh Meadows is home of the largest neighborhood in Plumas Ranch as well as the popular Bear River Park. With four floor plans available, ranging from approximately 2,000 – 3,500 square feet offering, three to five bedrooms, we are certain you will find the home that fits your needs and lifestyle.
Popular design elements include open floor plans, large kitchen islands, and flex spaces are staples in Cresleigh homes. Multi-generational living options also available in select homes.
Homeowners will love the convenient commuter access to nearly Sacramento and Yuba City.
Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Go.
The Owner’s ensuite in every #PlumasRanch home is fitted with a standing tub and large shower, meaning you get to choose what kind of spa experience you want each morning. 🧖♀️🧖♂️ https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/
Most Cresleigh homes can be personalized with options that add additional bedrooms, bathrooms, and square footage. Easily prepare meals from the gorgeous kitchen, further enhanced by a generous center island, plenty of cabinet space, and a desirable pantry.
Rubbing their Sleepy Eyes with Lazy Wrists–There is the Brute and the Angel in Almost Every Human!
Americans are trained from infancy for mutationhood. Western civilization is a human running with increased speed through an air-sealed tunnel in search of additional oxygen. In your prayers, pour out your heart to your Father in Heaven in thanks for the blessings you have received. Please be specific in thanking God for His goodness, for your family, for your friends, for your home, for your leaders and teachers, for the gospel, and for His Son, Jesus Christ. If we prayed for the small and simple blessings of if our prayers were only prayers of gratitude, what would our prayers be like? Recognizing our blessings and expressing gratitude increases our happiness. God gives us commandments to protect us and help us to be happy. The commandment to be grateful is no exception. Gratitude takes us outside of ourselves and focuses our attention on God and others. At this beautiful time of year, may our hearts be softened and changed as we increase our gratitude. May we always choose, no matter the season, to be grateful and qualify for God’s acknowledgement and promised blessings. “And one who recieveth all things with thankfulness shall be made glorious; and the things of this Earth shall be added unto one, even an hundred fold, yea, more,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 78.19. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
When things get tough, perseverance is demonstrated by those who keep going, who do not give up even when others say it cannot be done. When we encounter challenged, success is usually earned by persevering and not becoming discouraged. Early warning signals are evident in many aspects of our lives. For example, a fever can be a first symptom of sickness of disease. Various financial and labour market indicator are used to forecast future trends in local and national economies. And depending upon the area of the World in which we live, we may receiver flood, Earthquake, avalanche, hurricane, tsunami, tornado, or winter storm warnings. We are also blessed by spiritual early warning signals as a source of protection and direction in our lives. Recall how Noah was alerted by God of things not yet seen, and he “prepared the ark to the saving of his house,” reports Hebrews 11.7. Consider the language of the Lord in the revelation known as the Word of Wisdom: “In consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring humans in the last days, I have warned you, and forewarn you, by giving unto you this word of wisdom by revelation,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 89.4. Spiritual warning should lead to increasingly vigilant watching. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
You and I live in “a day of warning,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 63.58. And because we have been and will be warned, we need to be, as the Apostle Paul admonished, “watching with all perseverance,” reports Ephesians 6.19. I pray for the guidance of the Holy Ghost. The highest possibility which separates humans from beast is attainment of insight into truth, experience of one’s divine source. A tension holds all thins in equilibrium between coming together of their elements, temporary maintenance of their forms, and passing away int dissolution. This includes the mineral, the plant, the animal, and the human. However, when we look at the last-named, a new possibility opens up which could not have happened to Nature’s earlier kingdoms. All things dissolve in the end, but humans alone dissolve consciously into a higher Consciousness. We are not just higher animals and nothing more, but as human beings we possess a self-consciousness which can be developed until it matures into a thinking power as well as a totally superior kind of awareness—that of God. A human life presents only the opportunity for attaining the realization of God. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
Developing the full potential of the human mind ought not to be taken away from any human, however evil one may be, and however remote from this goal, in punishment for one’s crimes. Our sole objective where the truths of salvation are concerned should be to find out what the Lord has revealed and then to believe and act accordingly. We testify that God is infinite and eternal and that He ordained the laws whereby His spirit children might have power to advance and progress and become like Him. We know the salvation is in Christ; that He was the Firstborn Son of the Eternal Father; that he was chosen and foreordained in the councils of Heaven to work out the infinite and eternal atonement; that Christ was born into the World as the Son of God; and that He has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. We believe with perfect surety that Christ came to ransom humans from the temporal and spiritual death brought into the World by the Fall of Adam and that Christ took upon Himself the sins of all humans on condition of repentance. We testify that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the plan of salvation; and that through the Lord’s atoning sacrifice all humans shall be raised in immortality to be judged by Jesus Christ according to the deeds done in the flesh. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
Those that believe and obey the fullness of gospel shall be raised also unto eternal life in our Father’s kingdom. We believe it is by grace that we are saved after all that we can do, and that building upon the foundation of the atonement of Christ, all humans must work out their salvation with fear and trembling before the Lord. We proclaim that to gain salvation humans must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, repent of their sins, receive the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands, and then press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, keeping the commandments and enduring to the end. How can humans be so blind to the truth of their very being? Their quality of consciousness provides the clue, but it must be followed up. It is questionable whether the advantages of being a human creature are outweighed by the disadvantages. Why? Simply because humans may use their human faculties to transcend their present level and, as they call it, “realize oneself.” The choice between submitting or not submitting to one’s terrestrial genes and hormones belongs to humans, but the tendency to follow them belongs to the earlier stage; it is very, very ancient and is coming under their control very, very slowly. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
When this transcendence of their ancestry is complete, humans fulfill themselves as truly human. If a human walks upright, it is because this upright poster is symbolic of their gradual progression into ruling their terrestrial body and human nature. The ordinary ego-driven unenlightened human is acted on by lower cosmic Nature, just as plants and animals are. However, in human animal, individuality and intellect are additionally present—whether slightly in the savage or markedly in the highly civilized person. The enlightened human is also acted on, but in one’s case it is by higher cosmic Nature. Instead of being guided by passion and desire, one is guided by intuition. The changeover from lower to higher requires one’s contribution, one’s effort to control nature, to discipline individuality, and to achieve self-mastery. It is not only in the possession of reason and the reception of intuition that the human form of life is superior to other beings, but also in the exercise of will. Humans are an individualized creature. They are aware of their own separate identity and special personality. If humans feel one feel they are not individually responsible for their actions, being entirely responsive to their instincts, they have the choice to learn how to modify their behaviour. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Human beings add a new urge, that of conscious development through intelligence to the Earth. The impersonal and eternal part of us is the God in us, symbolized by the upper half of the Sphinx’s head, as the lower half symbolizes the human part, and as the body itself symbolizes the terrestrial part. We cannot separate the importance of the body from the importance of the mind. We are animals in one part of our nature, human beings in the second part, and sometimes angelic in the third part. All make one creature. We learn what our bodies are through the physical senses. We learn a part of what the mind is through our thoughts. We learn still more about the mind’s deeper phases through our non-thoughts—that is, intuitions. Such is the triple nature of humans—a lower self of animal instincts, a middle self of human thoughts, a higher self of divine nature. We may well wonder how animal lust, human cunning, and angelic nobility can come to be mingled in a single entity. That indeed is the mystery of humans. When the whole cosmos shows its double-face of Eternal Consciousness, shadow and light, we must expect the individual creature to show the same. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Hence, humans are half animal and half god, with reason as their link; only when they establish an equilibrium between then do they fulfill themselves. Nature is what it is—bipolar—so existence involves struggle and conflict of all of us until the genius in a million finds the point of equilibrium between the two opposing pulls, between the savage and the saint in one. The animal nature is naturally selfish, the spiritual nature unselfish. Between those two poles, humans are brought more and more into conflict with oneself as one evolves. Because they are human animals bonded to a divine spirit, we see humans as erratic in their behaviour and irrelevant in their purposes. They bear the human form externally but are largely predatory animal internally. Mind—that is, character and consciousness—is the real essence of a human. There is the brute and the angel in almost every human. However, how much there is of the one and how little of the other, differs with every human. Returning for a moment to the metaphor of “islands,” it has to be acknowledged that the islands undergo some atypical developments in the course of time. As the infant encounters further experiences, we may think of the island both as disintegrating and as merging in new ways. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
However, this transformation happens not on a geographical but on a multidimensional scale, and it is not easily visualized on a flat map. It is as though all the green on al the islands (green of leaves, of sea, of stones) merged to contribute to the more abstract concept of “green” without, however, bleaching the green objects on the island. It is as though the flying of the birds and of the leaves in the win were integrated to make the concept of flying. In short, each experience remains itself although generalized abstracted aspects may grow in relative importance as further experiences contribute to them. Differentiating, generalizing, and abstracting go together. Abstraction, differentiation, and generalization are names for different aspects of the same process which are in connection with learning to recognize triangles, oranges, and musical notation: the formation of concept. The concepts now under consideration are at a higher level, that is all. In order to conceptualize the colour puce, I have to perceive and recognize as puce a particular shade in a variety of contexts—generalizing. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
I have to disentangle it from other features of the situation in which it is embedded—abstracting. And I have to distinguish it from other shades which are not puce—differentiating. Three main sets of abstractions, generalizations, and differentiations with which we are concerned just now are to do with the achievement of some sense of self, some sense of other people and things, and, thirdly, some ways in which self is experienced as related to other people and things. These will be considered one by one. However, perhaps yet another caution is needed before we do so. It is only for the sake of clarity we look at these three sets one by one and “abstract” them. Except in very rare circumstances, my experience of myself is not of me in some pure abstract sense. I am aware at this moment, not of “me,” but of me-getting-an-idea-across-to-you-the-reader and of you-the-reader-understanding-me, you-liking-this-point, you-put-off-by-my-style. In short, and to say it yet again, our experiences come in units of relationship. Gradually, if all goes well, a self, and a sense of self, is established, made up from all the bits of experience in which the persons has been involved. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
The memory-traces of all these bits remain, but the structures which they form are profoundly affected by the context which the evolving structures provide for each new experience as it happened. Some experiences will have integrated with much that has gone before; some will have been left more or less isolated. Under the influences of a well integrated ego-identity, more central controls gain increasingly more dominance over new information coming in, and the map is no longer so easily modified by further experience. New information, although registered, then has relatively little effect on behaviour or indeed on consciousness. This is in reference to the process of selective perception, by which certain meanings come to predominate over others. Through these processes the sense of self differentiates from not self. Strong psychological structures are created in which the self is involved—self-structures. Self-structures are often strong enough to be functioning as “maps” to the working model of what is going on in and around the organism at a particular time. When this is so, they are strong enough to steer behaviour in a particular direction. When this has happenes, we recognize a stable identity. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Appetite and will are two different faculties, yet they have the same function: they impel humans to action. The two faculties are essential to action. Appetite is the efficient and effective cause of processes not having sense organs. It appears, for example, in the movements of nutrition and excretion. It seemed logical to postulate the same kind of originative power for all kinds of movement. That is why we admonish the mora philosophers who spend such an infinite quantity of debate touching good and the highest good to cast their eye abroad upon nature and behold the appetite that is in all things to receive and to give. With receiving and giving as the controlling ideas, there are appetitive motions more precise than that of philosopher in their long and wandering discourses of pleasure, virtue, duty, and religion. Furthermore, if one looks deeply into the experience of human desire one can detect movement, for every obtaining of a desire hath a shew of advancement, as motion though in a circle hath a shew of progression. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
That is, a desire—say that of obtaining political office, or a mistress—directs one initially to a goal, and arriving at the goal is like retuning to one’s starting point. The will, too, seems to be the immediate impetus to any action that is the outcome of reasoning and judgment. Reason might work well and true, judgment might be sound, but unless the will were moved the intellect would have cerebrated in vain. One function of the imagination, described previously, is that of making reason appealing to the will; and the art of rhetoric discharged its office by applying the dictates of reason to imagination for “better’ moving of the will. As efficient causes, appetite and will allowed two different kinds of behaviour, the sensuous and the rational. In sensuous actions, three features were always present. First, they were immediate and nonreflective; there was no thinking about consequence. Desire, for example, was often touched off by some unlawful wish, and the wish rashly granted before it has been understood and weighed. Second, pleasure and pain attend sensuous actions, and hence were guides to desire. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
These qualities of experience are shown most clearly in the passions, some emotional experience giving pleasure, as with joy, other experiences giving pain, as with anger. Pleasure and pain are to the particular affections, as light is to particular colours. That is, pleasure or pain is always a feature of emotional experience, just as light is always present in colour. As a quality of experience, pleasure is not most pure and satisfying when accompanying knowledge and learning. Delight always attends upon learning; there is no satiety for satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangeable. Many other kinds of behaviour give pleasure because of their novelty. Accordingly, some of life’s pleasures can be graded, the pleasures of knowing exceed those of affections, the affections those of the senses, achievement and victory those of a strong dinner. If the pleasure of learning be not insatiable, why do voluptuous men turn friars, and ambition men turn melancholy? The third feature of sensuous behaviour in some manner involves the affections of passions; that is, sensuous actions are emotional to some degree, great or small. The center of emotional experience is in the heart or its region. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Both affections and passions are linked to appetite rather than will. Their activity, strongly tinctured with pleasure and pain, powerfully affects the appetite. Their influence, however, need not be bad. In fact, in the scheme of things, if it does not conflict with reason and will, appetitive behaviour is coloured with good. The affections, indeed, can be properly enlisted by the imagination in efforts to move the will. Only when the affections of their perturbation rise up to disturb judgment and overpower the will are the issues of appetite are evil. As a general rule, behaviour controlled by will is preferable to actions controlled by appetite. “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth. Now the Earth was a formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day,’ and the darkness he called ‘night.’ And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day,” reports Genesis 1.1-3. Light is a species of quality. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Some writers have said that the light in the air has not a natural being such as the colour on a wall has, but only an intentional being, as a similitude of colour in their air. However, this cannot be the case for two reasons. First, because light gives a name to the air, since by it the air becomes actually luminous. However, colour does not do this, for we do not speak of the air as coloured. Secondly, because light produces natural effect, for by the rays of the sun bodies are warmed, and natural changes cannot be brought about by mere intentions. Others have said that light is the sun’s substantial form, but this also sems impossible for two reasons. First because substantial forms are not of themselves objects of the senses; for the object of the intellect is what a thing is. Whereas light is visible of itself. In the second place, because it is impossible that what is the substantial form of one thing should be accidental for of another; since substantial forms of their very nature constitute species: wherefore the substantial form always and everywhere accompanies the species. However, light is not the substantial for of air, for if it were, the air would be destroyed when light is withdrawn. Hence it cannot be the substantial form of the sun. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
We must say, then, that as heat is an active quality consequent on the substantial form of fire, so light is an active quality consequent on the substantial form of the sun, or of another body that is of itself luminous, if there is any such body. A proof of this is that the rays of different stars produce different effects according to the diverse natures of bodies. Since quality is consequent upon substantial form, the mode in which the subject receives a quality differs ad the mode differs in which a subject receives a substantial form. For when matter receives its form perfectly, the qualities consequent upon the form are firm and enduring; as when, for instance, water is converted into fire. When, however, substantial form is received imperfectly, so as to be, as it were, in process of being received, rather than fully impressed, the consequent quality lasts for a time but is not permanent; as may be seen when water which has been heated returns in time to its natural state. However, light is not produced by the transmutation of matter, as though matter were in receipt of a substantial form, and light were a certain inception of substantial form. For this reason light disappears on the disappearance of its active cause. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
It is accidental to light not to have a contrary, forasmuch as it is the natural quality of the first corporal cause of change, which is itself removed from contrariety. As heart acts towards perfecting the form of fire, as instrumental cause, by virtue of the substantial form, so does light act instrumentally, by virtue of the Heavenly bodies, towards producing substantial forms; and towards rendering colours actually visible, inasmuch as it is a quality of the first sensible body. God hath done all things, whatsoever He would. The will of God must needs always be fulfilled. In proof of which we must consider that since an effect is confirmed to the agent according to its form, the rule is the same with active causes as with formal causes. The rule in forms is this: that although a thing may fall short of any particular form, it cannot fall short of universal form. For though a thing may fail to be, for example, a man or a living being, yet it cannot fail to be a being. Hence the same must happen in active causes. Something may fall outside the order of any particular cause, but not outside the order of the universal cause; under which all particular causes are included: and if any particular cause fails of its effect, this is because of the hindrance of some other particular cause, which is included in the order of the universal cause. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
Even in corporeal things this is clearly seen. For it may happen that a star is hindered from producing its effects; yet whatever effect does result, in corporeal things, from this hindrance of a corporal cause, must be referred though intermediate causes to the universal influence of Heaven first. Since, then, the will f God is the universal cause of all things, it is impossible that the divine will should not produce its effect. Hence that which seems to depart from the divine will in one order, returns into it in another order; as does the sinner, who by sin falls away from the divine will as much as lies in one, yet falls back into the order of that will, when it is punished. In the spiritually transformed social dimension is abandonment of all defensiveness. This of course could occur only in a social context where Christ dwells—that is, among his special people. However, it is natural it would occur in the absence of attack and withdrawal, wherever that may be, or where we have an impregnable defense against it. This abandonment includes a willingness to beknown in our most intimate relationships for who we really are. It would include abandonment of all practices of self-justification, evasiveness, and deceit, as well as manipulation. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
That is not to say we should impose all the fact about ourselves upon those close to us, much less on others at large. Of course we should not. However, it does mean that we do not hide and we do not follow strategies for “looking good.” Jesus’ teachings about not performing for public approval, about letting our “yes” be a “yes” and nothing more, and about not being a hypocrite—having a face that differs from our reality—all find application here. “Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before humans, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have n reward from your Heavenly Father,” reports Matthew 6.1. (Important to read Matthew chapters 5 and 6 in the Christian Bible.) Frequently, death comes as an intruder. It is an enemy that suddenly appears in the midst of life’s feasts, putting out is lights and gaiety. It visits the aged as they walk on faltering feet. Its summons is heard by those who have scarcely reached midway in life’s journey, and often it hushes the laughter of little children. Death lays its heavy hand upon those dear to us and at times leaves us baffled and wondering. In certain situations, as in great suffering and illness, death comes as an Angel of mercy. However, for the most part, we think of it as the enemy of human happiness. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
The darkness of death can ever be dispelled by the light of revealed truth. “I am the resurrection, and the life,” spoke the Master. “One that believeth in me, though one were dead, yet shall one live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die,” reports John 11.25-26. This reassurance, yes, even holy confirmation of life beyond the grace, could well be the peace promised by the Saviour when he assured his disciples: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the World giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, nether let it be afraid,” reports John 14.27. So all those who walk with God in this Earthly pilgrimage will be blessed and know that God will not abandon his children who trust in Him. In the night of death God’s presence will be better than a light and safer than a known way. The door is starting to swing from hot to cold. Although it is not as cold as it should be, occasionally a cold day comes. The pokeberries are purple, the sassafras is starting to turn, and the gardens are heavy with tomatoes and mandarin oranges. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
It is a time to stop and pay attention: the spirit of the land are very busy. I pray to them at this liminal time to open my eyes. Do not let me awake one day and ask where winter has gone. May I be aware of its heavy rain and feet and feet of deep snow, and artic chill. May I be aware of winter’s presence, may we experience rain and lightning and thunder storms, and be as thrilled with it as I will be with arrival of the spring. I set my face to the dark I will travel with the Sun through the dark. I will go with confidence in the deepest dark. Though about me the dark may grow, God is always at my side guiding me to light. This is what I know, God of the Universe. This is what you are telling me and this is what I tell you: the Earth prepares for a great change. Light and dark are equal today, but that will not last. I see the Heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God. The Earth makes its way around the Sun and takes u with it into the year’s dark half. We travel with it, not in calm resignation, but with wild anticipation of what dreams may be dreamt in the night of the World. May they be good dreams. For we saw Him, even on the right hand of God; and we heard the voice bearing record that he if the Only Begotten of the Father. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
That by God, and through God, and of God, the World are and were created, and the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters of God. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork; day unto day expresses His greatness; night unto night makes Him known. There is no speech, there are no words, their voice is not heard. Yet their sway extends over all the Earth and their message to the ends of the World. In the Heavens, He hath set a tent for the Sun. For the Sun is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber it rejoices as a strong human to run its course. Its going forth is from one end of the Heaven, and its circuit unto the other; nothing is hidden from its heat. The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever; the judgments of the Lord are true, they are righteous altogether; more to be desired are they than gold, yea, than must fine gold; sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. More over by them is Thy servant warned; in keeping of the there is great reward. What can humans discern of their own errors? Please clear me of my hidden faults. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
Winchester Mystery House
The Witches Cap – named for it’s conical resemblance of a witches hat. Many famous mediums claim this room was “important” to Sarah Winchester, all though we do not know what it may have been used for. How did you feel when you experienced the Witches Cap for the first time?
Winchester Mystery House
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻 The original mansion still stands, but there were also other Victorian houses on the estate for employees. Be sure to show your support and help keep tours possible in the future by taking virtual tours and exploring items in the online gift shop.
🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com
And Now the Purple Dusk of Twilight Time Steals Across the Meadows of My Heart!
Civilization beings with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos. If one is always a little hungry, never quite warm enough, and never falling prey to the dangers of the soft life of self-gratification, a person can think and meditate better. Meditation is just oiling the machinery and making the unused parts come into use. You have not done enough, you have never done enough, so long as it is possible that you have something of value to contribute. Let us now consider whether justice requires the toleration of the intolerant, and if so under what conditions. There are a variety of situations in which this question arises. Some political parties in democratic states hold doctrines that commit them to suppress the constitutional liberties whenever they have power. Again, there are those who reject intellectual freedom but who nevertheless hold positions in the university. It may appear that toleration in these cases is inconsistent with the principles of justice, or at any rate not required by them. I shall discuss the matter in connection with religious toleration. With appropriate alterations the argument can be extended to these other instances. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Several questions should be distinguished. First, there is the question whether an intolerant sect has any title to complain if it is not tolerated; second, under what conditions tolerant sects have a right not to tolerate those which are intolerant; and last, when they have the right not to tolerate them, for what ends it should be exercised. Beginning with the first question, it seems that an intolerant sect has no title to complain when it is denied an equal liberty. At least this follows if it is assumed that one has no title to object to the conduct of others that is in accordance with principles one would use in similar circumstance to justify one’s action toward them. A person’s right to complain is limited to violations of principles one acknowledges oneself. A complaint is a protest addressed to another in good faith. It claims a violation of a principle that both parties accept. Now, to be sure, an intolerant human will say that one acts in good faith and that one does not ask anything for oneself that one denies to others. One’s view, let us suppose, is that one is acting on the principle that God is to be obeyed and the truth accepted by all. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
This principle is absolute authority is perfectly general and by acting on it one is not making an exception in one’s own case. As one sees that matter, one is following the correct principle others reject. The reply to this defense is that, from the standpoint of the original position (designed to be a fair and impartial point of view that is to be adopted in our reasoning about fundamental principles of justice), no particular interpretation of religious truth can be acknowledged as binding upon citizens generally; nor can it be agreed that there should be one authority with the right to settle questions of theological doctrine. Each person must insist upon an equal right t decide what one’s religious obligations are. One cannot give up this right to another person or institutional authority. In fact, a human exercises one’s liberty in deciding to accept anther as an authority even when one regards this authority as infallible, since in doing this one in no way abandons one’s equal liberty of conscience as a matter of constitutional law. For this liberty as secured by justice is imprescriptible: a person is always free to change one’s faith and this right does not depend upon one’s having exercised one’s powers of choice regularly or intelligently. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
We may observe that human beings having an equal liberty of conscience is consistent with the idea that all humans ought to obey God and accept the truth. The problem of liberty is that of choosing a principle by which the claims humans make on one another in the name of their religion are to be regulated. Granting that God’s will should be followed and the truth recognized does not as yet define a principle of adjudication. From the fact that God’s intention is to be complied with, it does follow that any person or institution has authority to interfere with another’s interpretation of one’s religious obligations. This religious principle justifies no one in demanding in law or politics a greater liberty for oneself. The only principles which authorize claims on institutions are those that would be chosen in the original position. Let us suppose, then, that an intolerant sect has no title to complain of intolerance. We still cannot say that tolerant sects have the right to suppress them. For one thing, others may have a right to complain. They may have this right not as a right to complain on behalf of the intolerant, but simply as a right to object whenever a principle of justice is violated. For justice is infringed whenever equal liberty is denied without sufficient reason. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
The question, then, is whether being intolerant of another in grounds enough for limiting someone’s liberty. To simplify things, assumes that the tolerant sects have the right not to tolerate the intolerant in at least one circumstances, namely, when they sincerely and with reason believe that intolerance is necessary for their own security. This right follows readily enough since, as the original position is defined, each would agree to the right of self-preservation. Justice does not require that humans must stand idly by while others destroy the basis of their existence. Since it can never be to human’s advantage, from a general point of view, to forgo the right of self-protection, the only question, then, is whether the tolerant have a right to curb the intolerant when they are of no immediate danger to the equal liberties of others. Suppose that, in some way or other, an intolerant sect comes to exist within a well-ordered society accepting the two principles of justice. How are the citizens of this society to act in regard to it? Now certainly they would not suppress it simply because the members of the intolerant sect could not complain were they to do so. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Rather, since a just constitution exists, all citizens have a natural duty of justice to uphold it. We are not released from this duty whenever others are disposed to act unjustly. A more stringent condition is required: there must be some considerable risks to our own legitimate interests. Thus just citizens should strive to preserve the constitution with all its equal liberties as long as liberty itself and their own freedom are not in danger. They can properly force the intolerant to respect the liberty of others, since a person can be required to respect the rights established by principles that one would acknowledge in the original position. However, when the constitution itself is secure, there is no reason to deny freedom to the intolerant. The question of tolerating the intolerant is directly related to that of the stability of a well-ordered society regulated by the two principles. We can see this as follows. It is from the position of equal citizenship that persons join the various religious associations, and it is from this position that they should conduct their discussions with one another. Citizens in a free society should not think one another incapable of a sense of justice unless this is necessary for the sake of liberty itself. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
If an intolerant sect appears in a well-ordered society, the others should keep in mind the inherent stability of their institutions. The liberties of the intolerant may persuade them to a belief in freedom. This persuasion works on the psychological principle that those whose liberties are protected by and who benefit from a just constitution will, ceteris paribus (other things equal), acquire an allegiance to it over a period of times. So even if an intolerant sect should arise, provided that it is not so strong initially that it can impose its will straightway, or does not grow so rapidly that the psychological principle has no time to take hold, it will tend to lose its intolerance and accept liberty of conscience. This is the consequence of the stability of just institutions, for stability means that when tendencies to injustice arise other forces will be called into play that work to preserve the justice of the whole arrangement. Of course, the intolerant sect may be so strong initially or growing so fast that the forces making for stability cannot convert it to liberty. This situation presents a practical dilemma which philosophy alone cannot resolve it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Whether the liberty of the intolerant should be limited to preserve freedom under a just constitution depends on the circumstances. The theory of justice only characterizes the just constitution, the end of political action by reference to which practical decisions are to be made. In pursuing this end the natural strength of free institutions must not be forgotten, nor should it be supposed that tendencies to depart from them go unchecked and always win out. Knowing the inherent stability of a just constitution, members of a well-ordered society have the confidence to limit the freedom of the intolerant only in the special cases when it is necessary for preserving equal liberty itself. Therefore, while an intolerant sect does not itself have title to complain of intolerance, its freedom should be restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and with reason believe that their own security and that of the institutions of liberty are in danger. The tolerant should curb the intolerant only in this case. The leading principle is to establish a justice constitution with the liberties of equal citizenship. The just should be guided by the principles of justice and not the fact that the unjust cannot complain. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
It should be noted that even when the freedom of the intolerant is limited to safeguard a just constitution, this is not done in the name of maximizing liberty. The liberties of some are not suppressed simply to make possible a greater liberty for others. Justice forbids this sort of reasoning in connection with liberty as much as it does in regard to the sum of advantages. It is only the liberty of the intolerant which is to be limited, and this is done for the sake of equal liberty under a just constitution the principles of which the intolerant themselves would acknowledge in the original position. The argument in this and in the preceding sections suggests that the adoption of the principle of equal liberty can be viewed as a limiting case. Even though their differences are profound and no one knows how to reconcile them by reason, humans can, from the standpoint of the original position, still agree on this principle if they can agree on any principle at all. This idea which arose historically with religious toleration can be extended to other instances. Thus we can suppose that the persons in the original position know that they have moral convictions although, as the veil of ignorance requires, they do not know what these convictions are. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
They understand that the principles they acknowledge are to override these beliefs when there is a conflict; but otherwise they need not revise their opinions nor give them up when these principles do not uphold them. In this way the principles of justice can adjudicate between opposing moralities just as they regular the claims of rival religions. Within the framework that justice established, moral conceptions with different principles, or conceptions representing a different balancing of the same principles, may be adopted by various parts of society. What is essential is that when persons with different convictions make conflicting demands on the basic structure as a matter of political principle, they are to judge these claims by the principles of justice. The principles that would be chosen in the original position are the kernel of political morality. They not only specify the terms of cooperation between persons but they define a pact of reconciliation between diverse religions and moral beliefs, and the forms of culture to which they belong. If this conception of justice now seems largely negative, we shall see that it has a happier side. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
When we overcome our own selfish desires and put God first in our lives and covenant to serve God regardless of the cost, we are then living the law of sacrifice. One of the best ways to be sure we are keeping the first great commandment is to keep the second. “I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt not have any strange god before me. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” The faithful are required to honour the name of God. If we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, it makes sense that we are naturally to respect the name of God with equal passion and vigour. The law of sacrifice provides an opportunity for us to prove to the Lord that we love Him more than any other thing. As a result the course sometimes becomes difficult since this process of perfection that prepares us for the celestial kingdom to “dwell in the presence of God and His Christ forever and ever,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 76.62. The sacred mission of the Church is to “invite all to come unto Christ,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 20.59. Come unto Christ and be perfected in Him. In that light, the law of sacrifice has always been a means for God’s children to come unto the Lord Jesus Christ. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Let us here observe, that a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation; it is though the medium of the sacrifice of all Earthly things that humans do actually know that they are doing the things that are well pleasing in the sight of God. When a human has offered in sacrifice all that one has for the truth’s sake, not even withholding one’s life, and believing before God that one has been called to make this sacrifice because one seeks to do one’s will, one does know, most assuredly, that God does and will accept one’s sacrifice and offering, and that one has not, nor will seek one’s face in vain. Under these circumstances, then one can obtain the faith necessary for one to lay hold on eternal life. We know what we do is pleasing before God and understand that this knowledge comes to us through sacrifice and obedience. Those who come unto Christ in this way receive a confidence that whispers peace to their souls and that will eventually enable them to lay hold upon eternal life. Sacrifice allows us to learn something about ourselves—what we are willing to offer the Lord through our obedience. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Through sacrifice and service, one comes to know the Lord. As we sacrifice our selfish desires, serve our God and others, we become more like Him. We do this by our obedience to the commandments of God. Thus, the laws of obedience and sacrifice are indelibly intertwined. As we comply with these and other commandments, something wonderful happens to us. We become more sacred and holy—more like our Lord! In fact, the word sacrifice means literally “to make scared,” or “to render sacred.” Our first lessons about the law of sacrifice, as well as other gospel principles, began in our premotal life. We were taught the fulness of the gospel and the plan of salvation. We knew of the Saviour’s mission and of His futre atoning sacrifice, and we willingly sustained Christ as our Saviour and our Redeemer. In fact, we learn from Revelation 12.9, 11 that it is by “the blood of the Lamb” (Christ’s atoning sacrifice) and our testimony that we are able to overcome Satan. The Lord designed in the beginning to place before humans the knowledge of good and evil, and gave one a commandment to cleave to good and abstain from evil. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
However, if one should fail, God would give unto one the law of sacrifice and provide a Saviour for one, that one might be brought back again into the presence and favour of God and partake of eternal life with God. This is the plan of redemption chosen and instituted by the Alight before human was placed on Earth. Adam and Eve were taught the law of sacrifice and were commanded to practice it by giving offerings. These included two emblems: the firstlings of the flock and the first fruits of the field. They obeyed without questioning. The effect of this law was that the best of the Earth produced, the best specimen in the flock or heard should not be sued for self, but for God. At a time in history when it was a struggle to make sure the family had food, those who sought to worship the Lord were asked to sacrifice the best part of their source of life. It was the real test of Adam and Eve’s faith, and they obeyed. “And now I speak concerning baptism. Behold, elders, priests, and teachers were baptized; and they were not baptized save they brought forth fruit meet that they were worthy of it. Neither did they receive any unto baptism save they came forth with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, and witnessed unto the church that they truly repented of all their sins. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
“And none were received unto baptism save they took upon them the name of Christ, having a determination to serve him to the end. And after they had been received unto baptism, and were wrought upon and cleansed by the power of the Holy Ghost, they were numbered among the people of the church of Christ; and their names were taken that they might be remembered and nourished by the good word of God, to keep them in the right way, to keep them continually watchful unto prayer, relying alone upon the merits of Christ, who was the author and the finisher of their faith. And the church did meet together oft, to fast and to pray, and to speak one with another concerning the welfare of their souls. And hey did meet together oft to partake of bread and wine, in remembrance of the Lord Jesus. And they were strict to observe that there should be no iniquity among them; and whoso was found to commit iniquity, and three witnesses of the church did condemn them before the elders, and if they repented not and confessed not, their names were blotted out, and they were not numbered among the people of Christ. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
“However, as oft as they repented and sought forgiveness, with real intent, they were forgiven. And their meetings were conducted by the church after the manner of the workings of the Spirit, and by the power of the Holy Ghost; for as the power of the Holy Ghost led them whether to preach, or to exhort, or to pray, or to supplicate, or to sing, even so it was done,” reports Moroni 6.1-9. It is especially in our families and similarly close associations that we must identify the elements of assault and withdrawal that defeat love and right relation to others. By insight and practice we must break away from them and reserve them, first by learning a calm but firm non-cooperation with those poisonous elements, and then by initiatives of goodwill and blessing in the midst of them. What we do in our meetings as Christians should be focused on enabling us to do this effectively wherever we are. Those meetings should and could be centers from which powerfully redemptive community spreads. Where to start? In various parts of the United States of America, publicly owned vehicles (police, street maintenance, schools) wear a bumper sticker that proclaims, “There is No Excuse for Domestic Violence.” It is a wonderful idea. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
However, we need to go deeper, of course. We need to become the kind of people whom domestic violence is unthinkable and never an option. We must be transformed in such a way that our minds and bodies—our very souls—simply do not have the makeup for it. This is the work of the Christian spiritual formations. We must begin in the family. Now the slogan must be, “There is No Excuse for Assault or Withdrawal in the Home.” Do you think that would take care of intimate partner violence? Of course it would. However, the reserve is not true: merely avoiding the subject of intimate partner violence, domestic violence or assault can still leave the home a hell of cutting remarks, contempt, coldness, and withdrawal or noninvolvement. Such a hell is often found in the homes of Christians and even of Christian leaders. Frequently they seem to honestly think that such a condition is normal, and they have no knowledge of any other way. Their very theology may strengthen this tragically false outlook. If I were married, I would seek the help of my spouse in this matter. If not, then a trusted friend who is spiritually mature and not abusive. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
I would then number my areas of need in order of importance, say: Purity, Mind, Prayer, Witness, Giving, Work, Friendship, and Leadership. Then, beginning with the first need, Purity, I would look over the suggested sub-disciplines and choose one to three things which I think would best help me improve. In doing this, I would resist the temptation to commit myself to too many disciplines. Better to succeed in a few than to assure failure by overcommitment. Perhaps, regarding the discipline of Purity I would choose to commit myself, first, to memorizing Scripture which help steel me to temptations, and second, to not watching anything sensual on TV or at the movies. Perhaps under Witness, I would make commitments to pray that God would give me someone to share Christ with and to join an interest club to meet unchurched people. After going through my life I would have perhaps twenty specific things which I could do to improve my eight weakest areas. However, before commitment to the specifics, I would look at the whole list with honest realism, asking, “Are the things which I am about to commit to really within my reach with the help of God?” #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Perhaps, regarding the discipline of Mind, I have become so convicted that I am considering committing myself to reading the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice, plus reading The Book of Mormon. Make sure your commitments make you sweat, but also make sure that taken together they are manageable. It is better to increase your commitments as you succeed than to bite off more than you can do. Success begets success. Before setting your commitments in concrete, give yourself a week to think about them and pray over them. Seek the Holy Spirit’s guidance for other ways of personal discipline not mentioned in this essay. Ask your spouse of friend to hold you accountable for your disciplines. Even if it has to be over the phone, make sure you regularly confer and pray. Be honest about your success and failures. And be willing to take advice and make adjustments. You may have some complications, no doubt, and may not succeed at time. When this happens, wounded pride and embarrassment can make you want to take your marbles and go home. We do not like to do things which we fail. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
However, we must realize that failure is a part of succeeding, provided we admit our failures and go at it again. Moreover, we are not under Law but grace. God is not counting our failure against us, and we are not building a treasure of merit with our success. We are simply trying to live a disciplined life which pleases our loving Father—and He understands our failures better than we understand our own children’s. When the movement in one direction has exhausted itself, there is a pause, and then a reversal directs the movement into the opposite direction. The flow of Nature follows the course indicated by the Principle of Reversion, which throws it back after a time in the opposite direction. When the point of farthest travel is reached, the forces reverse themselves. In this way, excess disciplines and even defeats itself. In this way too the Universe and all the different kinds of existence in it are kept in equilibrium. In the to-and-fro movement of human breathing, we have a kay to human development. Study it well with this assistance and you will discern a forward and backward movement, a pendulum-like swing, here too. Everything in the Universe is subject to a pendulum-like movement. It shuttles to and from with a coming-to-be and a ceasing-to-be effect. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Winchester Mystery House
Sarah Winchester had multiple rooms dedicated to plants and flowers. This room, her South Conservatory, contains over 200 panes of glass to allow for natural light. How would you spend a day alone in this room?
Explore the house from the comfort of your own home!
Learn More Link in bio. winchestermysteryhouse.com
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
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The Unconscious Thinks and Lives in Terms of Millennia–for that We Require the Help of the Black Magician!
People who take an optimum amount of vitamin C will experience only a quarter as much illness as those who do not. Through proper use, we could raise the average life expectancy by eight years. We have certain ideas as to how a civilized or educated or moral being should live, and we occasionally do our best to fulfill these ambitious expectations. Vegetables are interesting but lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat. We call the unconscious “nothing,” and yet it is a reality in poetentia. The thought we shall think, the deed we shall do, even the fate we shall lament tomorrow, all lie unconscious in our today. The unknown is us which the affect uncovers was always there and sooner or later would have presented itself to the conscious. Sarah Winchester’s mansion has hosted many glittering, star studded parties and was regarded as the place to see and been seen. Conrad Nicholson Hilton, Constance Hilton, Zsa Zsa Gabor, William Randolph Heart, Phoebe Apperson, Vivien Leigh, Hattie McDaniel, and Sidney Howard are said to have visited. As often happens, the intensity of emotion experienced over the years by those anxious to be recognized at the mysterious mansion has left the grand Queen Anne, Eastlake, Gothic mansion uniquely stocked with echoes from the past. #RandolphHarris 1 of 28
The only slightly surprising element to this haunted house is that ghosts were apparently not officially acknowledged until 1985, just prior to the mansion’s $40-million renovation. During mid-December in 1985, everyone at the Winchester mansion was busy preparing for the upcoming day when the mansion would once again receive guests. No matter what their usual duties or job titles, all employees were directly involved with the last-minute details—secretaries were sweeping, butlers were dusting, waitresses were helping make up guest rooms. The place was a veritable model of industry. Mr. Jim was in the Grand Ballroom, which some consider the most beautiful room in the house, in anticipation of the new carpet being installed. Like many of those on the staff, Mr. Jim was a part-time Hollywood actor; given the star-studded history of the mansion, the “day job” was very much a labour of love. Being able to devote some of himself this gorgeous room that had been so important to the history of movie-making felt more like a privilege than a chore. It was also a perfect time, he thought, to commune with the spirits of those who came to the mansion to celebrate receiving Academy Awards here. As Mr. Jim’s experience unfolded, it became a far closer encounter than he anticipated. #RandolphHarris 2 of 28
The Grand Ballroom is large and the job had to be done thoroughly, so Mr. Jim was taking his time and making sure he did not miss any part of the floor. After repeatedly going back over to a certain area in the Grand Ballroom, he realized that while the rest of the room was kept at a very comfortable temperature, the air in that particular spot was incredibly chilly. More puzzled than concerned Mr. Jim wanted to determine what was causing this draft. The temperature was an inexplicably 20 degrees Fahrenheit cooler in this circle which was about 45 inches in diameter near a wall, mahogany framed mirror. As Mr. Jim wiped his cloth over the reflective glass, he was astonished to see the face a young man, with slick dark hair, smoking a cigarette staring back at him. Mr. Jim was alone in the room, so he quickly turned around to see who had joined him. There was no one else in the room, and that was not his face in the mirror. He turned back to the mirror. The image was still there. That was enough for Mr. Jim. He took it as a sign to remove the carpet he had just installed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 28
According to information released by the mansion, the mirror was gifted to the mansion by Boris Karloff with a note saying, “A warm private friendship has subsisted between us for half our lives, interrupted by no untoward occurrence, and never for a moment cooling into indifference. Of this friendship, the source of so much happiness to me, I wish to leave, if not an enduring memorial, at least an affectionate and grateful acknowledgment. I inscribe this mirror to you.” One night, I was in the Winchester mansion, standing in the presence of a sublime hieratic figured we now called the “Warlock” who was clothed in a long black robe reflecting from the mirror. This warlock was Boris Karloff, and he had just ended a lengthy discourse with the words, “And for that we require the help of black magician.” Then the door suddenly opened and an old man came in, the “black magician,” who however was dressed in a white rob. He too looked noble and sublime. The black magician evidently wanted to speak with the warlock, but he hesitated to do so in my presence. As that the warlock, point to me, said, “Speak, only an innocent is here.” So the black magician began to relate a strange story of how he had found the lost keys of Paradise and did not know how to use them. #RandolphHarris 4 of 28
The black magician told the warlock (Boris) that the king of the country in which he lived was seeking a suitable tomb for himself. The king’s subjects had chanced to dig up an old sarcophagus, threw away the bones, and had the empty sarcophagus buried again for later use on the spot that this sprawling mansion now occupies. However, no sooner had the bones seen the light of day than the being to whom they once had belonged—the virgin—changed into a black horse that galloped off into the desert. The black magician pursued it across the sandy coast and beyond, and there after many vicissitudes and difficulties he found the lost keys of Paradise. That was the end of history, and also, unfortunately, of the warlock and his mirror. It supposedly shattered into pieces, was sent out to San Francisco for repair and never returned. This haunting did not fall out as we had wished, no one understand what the warlock, the black magician, and the king were trying to tell us. The meaning of the story died with the disappearance of the haunted mirror. We were confronted with a problem and one which life is always brining us up against: namely, the uncertainty of all moral valuation, the bewildering interplay of good and evil, and the remorseless concatenation of guilt, suffering, and redemption. #RandolphHarris 5 of 28
This path to the primordial religious experience is the right one, but how many recognize it? It is like a still small voice, and it sounds from afar. It is ambiguous, questionable, dark, presaging danger and hazardous adventure; a razor-egged path, to be trodden for God’s sake only, without assurance and without sanction. Hence we must always reckon with the presence of things not yet discovered. These, as I have said, may be unknow quirks of character. However, the possibilities of future development may also come to light in this way, perhaps in just such an outburst of affect which sometimes radically alters the whole situation. The unconscious has a Janus-face: on one side its contents point back to a preconscious, prehistoric World of instinct, while on the other side it potentially anticipates the future—precisely because of the instinctive readiness for action of the factors that determine human’s fate. If we had complete knowledge of the ground plan lying dormant in an individual from the beginning, one’s fate would be in large measure predictable. #RandolphHarris 6 of 28
Now, to the extent that unconscious tendencies—by they backward-looking images or forward-looking anticipations—appear in visions, vision have been regarded, in all previous ages less as historical regression than as anticipations of the future, and rightly so. For everything that will be happens on the basis of what has been, and of what—consciously or unconsciously—still exists as a memory-trace. In s far as no human is born totally new, but continually repeats the stage of development last reached by the species, one contains unconsciously, as an a priori datum, the entire psychic structure developed both upwards and downwards by one’s ancestors in the course of the ages. That is what gives the unconscious its characteristic “historical” aspect, but it is at the same time the sine qua non for shaping the future. For this reason it is often very difficult to decide whether an autonomous manifestation of the unconscious should be interpreted as an effect (and therefore historical) or as an aim (and therefore teleological and anticipatory). The conscious mind thinks as a rule without regard to ancestral preconditions and without taking into account the influence this a priori factor has on the shaping of the individual’s fate. #RandolphHarris 7 of 28
Whereas we think in periods of years, the unconscious thinks and lives in terms of millennia. So when something happens that seems to us an unexampled novelty, it is generally a very old story indeed. We still forget, like children, what happened yesterday. We are still living in a wonderful new World where humans think themselves astonishingly new and “modern.” This is unmistakable proof of the youthfulness of human consciousness, which has not yet grown aware of its historical antecedents. As a matter of fact, the “normal” person convinces me far more of the autonomy of the unconscious than does the insane person. Psychiatric theory can always take refuge behind real or alleged organic disorders of the brain and thus detract from the importance of the unconscious. However, when it comes to normal humanity, such a view is no longer applicable. What one sees happening in the World is no just a shadowy vestige of activities that were once conscious, but expression of a living psychic condition that still exists and always will exist. Were that not so, one might well be astonished. However, it is precisely those who give least credence to the autonomy of the unconscious who are the most surprised by it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 28
Because of its youthfulness and vulnerability, our consciousness tends to make light of the unconscious. This is understandable each, for if one wants to start something on one’s own account. a young person should not let oneself be overawed by the authority of one’s parents. Historically as well as individually, our consciousness has developed out of the darkness and somnolence of primordial unconsciousness. There were psychic processes and functions long before any ego-consciousness existed. Thinking existed long before humans were able to say: “I am conscious of thinking.” The primitive “perils of the soul” consist mainly of dangers to consciousness. Fascination, bewitchment, “loss of soul,” possession, et cetera are obviously phenomena of the dissociation and suppression of consciousness caused by unconscious contents. Even civilized humans are not yet entirely free of the darkness of primeval times. The unconscious is the mother of consciousness. Where there is a mother there is also a father, yet one seems to be unknown. #RandolphHarris 9 of 28
Consciousness in the pride of its youth, may deny its father, but it cannot deny its mother. That would be too unnatural, for one can see in every child how hesitantly and slowly its ego-consciousness evolves out of a fragmentary consciousness lasting for single moments only, and how these islands gradually emerge from the total darkness of mere instinctuality. Consciousness grows out of an unconscious psyche which is older than it, and which goes on functioning together with it or even in spite of it. Although there are numerous cases of conscious contents becoming unconscious again (through being repressed, for instance), the unconscious as a whole is far from being a mere remnant of consciousness. Or are the psychic functions of animals remnants of consciousness? There is little hope of our finding in the unconscious an order equivalent to that of the ego. It certainly does not look as if we were likely to discover an unconscious ego-personality, something in the nature of a Pythagorean “counter-Earth.” And this of course means “miraculous” interposition, but not necessarily of the gross sort our fathers took such delight in representing, and which has so lost is magic for us. #RandolphHarris 10 of 28
If evil were really one under the same sun, the sky would incontinently shrivel to a snakeskin and cast it out in spasms. However, the spasms of Nature are years and centuries; and it will tax human’s patience to wait so long. We may think of the reserved possibilities God keeps in his own hand, under as invisible and molecular slowly self-summating a form as we please. We may think of them as counteracting human agencies which God inspires ad hoc. In short, signs and wonders and convulsions of the Earth and sky are not the only neutralizers of obstruction to God’s plans of which it is possible to think. As long as languages contain a future perfect tense, determinists, following the bent of laziness or passion, the lines of least resistance, can reply in that tense, saying, “It will have been fated,” to the still small voice which urges an opposite course; and thus excuse themselves from effort in a quiet unanswerable way. Vampires, Ghost, and Demons—God Himself, you think, can have no use for them. An immortality of every separate specimen must be to Him and to the Universe as indigestible a load to carry as it is to you. #RandolphHarris 11 of 28
So, engulfing the whole subject in a sort of mental giddiness and nausea, you drift along, first doubting that the mass can be immortal, then losing all assurance in the immortality of a particular person, precious as you all the while feel and realize the latter to be. This, I am sure, is the attitude of mind of some of you before me. However, is not such an attitude due to the verist lack and dearth of your imagination? You take these swarms of alien kinsmen as they are for you: an external picture painted on your retina, representing a crowd oppressive by tis vastness and confusion. As they are for you, so you think they positively and absolutely are. I feel no call for them, you say; therefore there is no call for them. However, all the while, beyond this externality which is your way of realizing them, they realize themselves with the acutest internality, with the most violent thrills of life. It is you who are dead, stone-dead and blind and senseless, in your way of looking. You open your eyes upon a scene of which you miss the whole significance. Each of these grotesque or even repulsive aliens is animated by an inner joy of living as hot or hotter than that which you feel beating in your private breast. #RandolphHarris 12 of 28
The sun rises and beauty beams to light his path. To miss the inner joy of him is to miss the whole of him. Not a being of the countless throng is there whose continued life is not called for, and called for intensely, by the consciousness that animates the being’s form. That you neither realize nor understand nor call for it, that you have no use for it, is an absolutely irrelevant circumstance. That you have a saturation-point of interest tells us nothing of the interest that absolutely are. The Universe, with every living entity which her resources create, creates at the same time a call for that entity, and an appetite for its continuance—creates it, if nowhere else, at least within the heart of the entity itself. It is absurd to suppose, simply because our private power of sympathetic vibration wit other lives gives out so soon, that in the heart of infinite being itself there can be such a thing as plethora, or glut, or supersaturation. It is not as if there were a bounded room where the minds in possession had to move up or make place and crowd together to accommodate new occupants. Each new mind brings its own edition of the Universe of space along with it, its own room to inhabit; and these spaces never crowd each other—the space of my imagination, for example, in no way interferes with yours. #RandolphHarris 13 of 28
The amount of possible consciousness seems to be governed by no law analogous to that of the so-called conservation of energy in the material World. When one human wakes up, or is born, another does not have to go to sleep, or die, in order to keep the consciousness of the Universe a constant quantity. There is a law of the Universe called the Law of Increase of Spiritual energy, by Dr. Wundt, which expressly oppose the law of conservation of energy in physical things. There seems no formal limit to the positive increase of being in spiritual respects; and since spiritual being, whenever it conies, affirms itself, expands and craves continuance, we may justly and literally say, regardless of the defect of our own private sympathy, that the supply of the individual life in the Universe can never possibly, however immeasurable it may become, exceed the demand. The demand for that supply is there the moment the supply itself comes into being, for the beings supplied demand their own continuance. Through many diversified channels of expression, the eternal Spirit of the Universe affirms and realizes its own infinite life. However, if we are theists, we can go no farther without altering the result. #RandolphHarris 14 of 28
God, we can then say, has so inexhaustible a capacity for love that His call and need is for literally endless accumulation of created lives. God can never faint or grow weary, as we should, under the increasing supply. God’s scale is infinite in all things. His sympathy can never know satiety or glut. Furthermore, consciousness in this process does not have to be generated de novo in a vast number of places. It exists already, behind the scenes, coeval with the World. The condition of consciousness is a certain kind of psychophysical movement. Before consciousness can come, a certain degree of activity in the movement must be reached. This requisite degree is called the threshold; but the height of the threshold varies under different circumstances: it may rise of fall. When it falls, as in states of great lucidity, we grow conscious of things of which we should be unconscious at other times; when it rises, as in drowsiness, consciousness sinks in amount. This rising and lowering of a psychophysical threshold exactly conforms to our notion of a permanent obstruction to the transmission of consciousness, which obstruction may, in our brains, grow alternately greater or less. #RandolphHarris 15 of 28
The transmission-theory also puts itself in touch with a whole class of experiences that are with difficulty explained by the production-theory. I refer to those obscure and exceptional phenomena reported at all times throughout human history which the psychical-researchers are doing to much to rehabilitate; such phenomena, namely, as religious conversions, providential leadings in answers to prayer, instantaneous healings, premonitions, apparitions at time of death, clairvoyant visions or impressions, and the whole range of mediumistic capacities, to say nothing of still more exceptional and incomprehensible things. If all our human thought be a function of the brain, then of course, if any of these things are fact—and to my own mind some of them are fact—we may not suppose that they can occur without preliminary brain-action. However, the ordinary production-theory of consciousness is knit up with a peculiar notion of how brain-action can occur—that notion being that all brain-action, without exception, is due to a prior action, immediate or remote, of the bodily sense-organs on the brain. #RandolphHarris 16 of 28
Such action makes the brain produce sensations and mental images, and out of the sensations and images the higher forms of thought and knowledge in their turn are framed. As transmissionists, we also must admit this to the condition of all our usual thought. Sense-action is what lowers the brain-barrier. My voice and aspect, for instance strike upon your ears and eyes; your brain thereupon becomes more previous, and an awareness on your part of what I say and who I am slips into this World from the World behind the veil. However, in the mysterious phenomena to which I allude, it is often hard to see where the sense-organs can come in. A medium, for example, will show knowledge of his sitter’s private affairs which it seems impossible he should have acquired through sight or hearing, or inference therefrom. Or you will have an apparition of some one who is now dying hundreds of miles away. We need only suppose the continuity of our consciousness with a mother sea, to allow for exceptional waves occasionally pouring over the dam. Of course the causes of these odd lowerings of the brain’s threshold still remain a mystery on any terms with its grouping of Heavenly and Hellish forces upon a common center. #RandolphHarris 17 of 28
If it were the dark nor even if all were in the light, we could see no form of anything at all. The contrast of shadow and light is needed to define the form. Opposites are always necessary to each other. This is why they are present throughout the Universe and moreover present in all possible combinations and proportions in all possible rhythms and patterns. It is present in life, in all things, in planets and seasons. It is the eternal and invariable law of manifested existence. For anything to exist for us at all, it needs an opposite to compare it with, or it will remain non-existent to our consciousness. Unless it recognizes the pairs of opposites, thinking cannot come into existence at all. If we had not experienced Evil, we could not appreciate Good. If we had not become lost in Appearance, we could not appreciate Reality. It may be that for us humans, the ultimate meaning of the cosmos lies implicit in this truth. The acting self needs an outer World and an inner one—both. All things in human’s experience can be classified into pairs of opposites—that which experiences and that which is experienced. In each pair the first member itself becomes, on analysis, the second member of another pair. #RandolphHarris 18 of 28
Whatever we look at, we see only in a relationship of contrast to something else. It is a mistake to consider this opposition to be antagonistic. On the contrary, if our perception is to be true and our judgment correct, each should be considered a part of the other. This teaches us to synthesize, to look at both sides of a thing, to include both points of view in an argument, and to add the similarities also instead of nothing the differences alone. It may be unusual, inconsistent, startling, to propose that we think in terms of opposing ideas, of conflicting statements, and find identity in variety, but this is Nature’s own way—her balance. Balance is a teaching which plays on contradictions and finds room for opposites. It seems them both in the structure of the Universe and in the movement of evolution. It puts them in its approach to human problems. Each to view of a thing or idea implies the existence of the contrary view. To understand that the universal evolution depends upon a two-way interconnected movement, and that its comprehension requires us to think about it in oppositional terms, is to be liberated from the narrow, one sided, incomplete, and intolerant thinking which is responsible for so many absurdities and miseries in human history. #RandolphHarris 19 of 28
When both ignore the two-face character of fortune and Nature, optimism becomes unreasonable pessimism. The life of the human being is one of relating to others. We reemphasize: The life of the human beings is one of relating to others. Though many are cursed to live and die alone, we are born of relations and into relations. One of the heart-rending stories found in Sarah Winchester’s diary is of a broken human being living on the streets. He was dying, and Mrs. Winchester took him in and had her staff care for him. When he recovered, she gave him a job and a place to stay on her estate. To merely welcome another, to provide for one, to make a place, is one of the most life-giving and life-receiving things a human being can do. They are the basic, universal acts of love. Our lives were meant to be full of such acts, drawing on the abundance of God, and they achieve their greatest fulfillment precisely when, like Jesus, we “lay down our lives for the brethren.” This “relating” quality reaches into every dimension of human existence. It characterizes the basic nature of all thought and feeling, which is always thought of or feeling something other than itself. #RandolphHarris 20 of 28
The way relate to others pervades the deepest reaches of our body, soul, and World, where our very identity—who we really are—is always intermingled (if sometimes negatively, by reaction) with others who have given us life, sustained us, or walked with us—or perhaps have deeply injured us. The call of “the other” on our lives is a constant for everyone. It is the basic reality of a moral existence, which we retreat from only into a living death of isolation. If we make our purpose to save our life by withdrawal, we lost it. So Jesus said. However, this is not only a revealed truth, it is also a testable fact of life. If you would live, then give—and receive. Now you understand why Sarah Winchester, even though she withdrew, created a microcosm in her own mansion, and kept people employed for 38 years of nonstop construction. “And it came to pass when Corintumr had recovered of his wounds, he began to remember the words which Ether had spoken unto him. He saw that there had been slain by the sword already nearly two millions of his people, and he began to sorrow in his heart; yea, there had been slain two millions of mighty men, and also their wives and the children. #RandolphHarris 21 of 28
“He began to repent of evil which he had done; he began to remember the words which had been spoken by the mouth of all the prophets, and he saw them that they were fulfilled thus far, every whit; and his soul mourned and refused to be comforted. And it came to pass that he write an epistle unto Shiz, desiring him that he would spare the people, and he would give up the kingdom for the sake of their lives of the people. And it came to pass that when Shiz had received his epistle he wrote an epistle unto Coriantumr, that is he would give himself up, that he might slay him with his own sword, that he would spare the lives of the people. And it came to pass that the people repented not of their iniquity; and the people of Coriantumr were stirred up to anger against the people of Shiz; and the people of Shiz were stirred up to anger against the people of Coriantumr; wherefore, the people of Shi did give battle unto the people of Coriantumr. And when Coriantumr saw that he was about to fall he fled again before the people of Shiz. And it came to pass that he came to the waters of Ripliancum, which, by interpretation, is large, or to exceed all; wherefore, when they came to these waters they pitched their tents. #RandolphHarris 22 of 28
“And Shiz also pitched his tents near unto them; and therefore on the morrow they did come to battle. And it came to pass that they fought and exceedingly sore battle, in which Coriantumr was wounded again, and he fainted with the loss of blood. And it came to pass that the armies of Coriantumr did press upon the armies of Shiz that they beat them, that they caused them to flee before them; and they did flee southward, and did pitch their tents in a place which was called Ogath. And it came to pass that they army of Coriantumr did pitch their tents by the hill Ramah; and it was that same hill where my father Mormon did hide up the records unto the Lord, which were sacred. And it came to pass that they did gather together all the people upon all the face of the land, who had not been slain, save it was Ether. And it came to pass that Ether did behold all the doings of the people; and he beheld that the people who were for Coriantumr were gathered together to the army of Coriantumr; and the people who were for Shiz were gathered together to the army of Shiz. Wherefore, they were for the space of four years gathering together the people, that they might get all who were upon the face of the land, and that they might receive all the strength which it was possible that they could receive. #RandolphHarris 23 of 28
“And it came to pass that when they were all gathered together, every one to the army which he would, with their wives and their children—both men, women, and children being armed with weapons of war, having shields, and breastplates, and head-plates, and being clothed after the manner of war—they did march forth one against another to battle; and they fought all that day, and conquered not. And it came to pass that when it was night they were weary, and retired to their camps; and after they had retired to their camps they took up a howling and a lamentation for the loss of the slain of their people; and so great were their cries, their howling and a lamentation for the loss of the slain of their people; and so great were their cries, that they did rend the air exceedingly. And it came to pass that on the morrow they did go again to battle, and great and terrible was that day; nevertheless, they conquered not, and when the night came again they did rend the air with their cries, and their howlings, and their mournings, for the loss of the slain of their people. And it came to pass that Coriantumr wrote again an epistle unto Shiz, desiring that he would not come again to battle, but that he would take the kingdom, and spare the lives of the people. #RandolphHarris 24 of 28
“However, behold, the Spirit of the Lord had ceased striving with them, and Satan had full power over the hearts of the people; for they were given up unto the hardness of their hearts, and the blindness of their minds that they might be destroyed; wherefore they went again to battle. And it came to pass that they fought all that day, and when the night came they slept upon their swords. And on the morrow they fought even until the night came. And when the night came they were drunken with anger, even as a man who is drunken with wine; and they slept again upon their swords. And on the morrow they fought again; and when the night came they had fallen by the sword save it were fifty and two of the people of Coriantumr, and sixty nine of the people of Shiz. And it came to pass that they slept upon their swords that night, and on the morrow they fought again, and they contended in their might with their swords and with their shields, all that day. And when the night came there were thirty and two of the people of Shiz, and twenty and seven of the people of Coriantumr. And it came to pass that they ate and slept, and prepared for death on the morrow. And they were large and mighty men as to the strength of men. #RandolphHarris 25 of 28
“And it came to pass that they fought for the space of three hours, and they fainted with the loss of blood. And it came to pass that when the men of Coriantumr had received sufficient strength that they could walk, they were about to flee for their lives; but behold, Shiz arose, and also his men, and he swore in his wrath that he would slay Coriantumr or he would perish by the sword. Wherefore, he did pursue them, and on the morrow he did overtake them; and they fought again with the sword. And it came to pass that when they had all fallen by the sword, save it were Coriantumr and Shiz, behold Shiz had fainted with the loss of blood. And it came to pass that when Croiantumr had leaned upon his sword, that he rested a little, he smote off the head of Shiz. And it came to pass that after he had smitten off the head of Shiz, that Shiz raised up on his hands and fell; and after that he had struggled for breath, he died. And it came to pass that Coriantumr fell to the Earth, and became as if he had no life. And the Lord spake unto Ether, and said unto him: Go forth. And he went forth, and beheld that the words of the Lord has all been fulfilled; and he finished his record; (and the hundredth part I have not written) and he hid them in a manner that the people of Limhi did find them. #RandolphHarris 26 of 28
“Now the last words which are written by Ether are these: Whether the Lord will that I be translated, or that I suffer the will of the Lord in the flesh, it mattereth not, if it so be that I am saved in the kingdom of God. Amen,” reports Ether 15.1-34. “But the LORD said to him, ‘Not so; if anyone kills Cain, one will suffer vengeance seven times over.’ Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. So Cain went out from the LORD’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden,” reports Genesis 4.15-16. A view of the World which fails or refuses to recognize that the opposites are essential to it, which accepts its beauty but not its ugliness, is not complete and only a half truth. If there is suffering as well as sweetness in life, that is not accident, nor is it brought into the scheme of things by human evil alone: nothing exists without its contrary. In the end, a human must recognize that there are two forces a work in Nature—and therefore in one’s own life—the ne benign, the other hostile. The cold time is here: time to work and time to rest, time to celebrate inside, time to enjoy the harvest. All about us, the Land of Spirits are singing. All about us, the deities are speaking. Please help me listen, all you divine beings. May I hear your voices. #RandolphHarris 27 of 28
I need much help in cooling my Earth. I cannot do it alone I ask for help from the Sky: please give rise to your cloud with plentiful moisture and ice so the Earth can cool and have water. I ask for help from the rain: please give your moisture to be the plants’ own blood. I ask for help from the soil: please give your minerals from which the plants will form their bodies. I will give my time, I will give my care, I will give my loving stewardship. All these will I give my garden and I ask for your others to give what the garden of Eden will need as well. We will do it together and I will not forget your contribution. Glory His holy name; may your heart rejoice, ye who seek the Lord. Seek the Lord and His strength; seek His presence continually. Remember the marvellous works that He hath done, His wonders, and the judgments He decreed, O seed of Israel, His servant, Children of Jacob, His beloved ones. He is the Lord our God; His judgments are throughout the Earth. Remember His covenant forever, the word which He commanded to a thousand generations. In Luke 18.1-8, Jesus told a parable about an unfair, unjust judge who finally was willing to listen to a woman’s case because of her continual persistence. When it comes to God, that is the way we need to be of what he said. What promises or promises from God are you bringing to His constant remembrance? #RandolphHarris 28 of 28
Winchester Mystery House
WMH 13 Days of Christmas #7
Sarah Winchester’s innovations for water conservation was far ahead of her time. She had multiple rooms dedicated for plants, each with a complex drainage system that allowed for the reuse of water. On today’s episode of the Winchester Mystery House 13 Days of Christmas, explore Sarah’s North Conservatory and learn more about her magnificent innovations.
Winchester Mystery House
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com
Where Forces Rules, there is No Love, and where Love Reigns Force Does Not Count!
When the satisfaction or the security of another person becomes as significant to one as one’s own satisfaction or security, then the state of loves exists…Under no other circumstances is a state of love present, regardless of the popular usage of the word. But what has the individual personality to do with the plight of the many? In the first place one is part of the people as a whole, and is as much at the mercy of the power that moves the wholes as anybody else. The only thing that distinguishes one from all the others is one’s vocation. One has been called by that all-powerful, all-tyrannizing psychic necessity that is one’s own and one’s people’s affliction. If one hearkens to the voice, one is not once set apart and isolated as one has resolved to obey the law that commands one from within. “One’s own law!” everybody will cry. However, one knows better: it is the law, the vocation for which one is destined, no more “one’s own” than the lion that fells one, although it is undoubtedly this particular lion that kills one and not any other lion. Only in this sense is one entitled to speak of “one’s” vocation, “one’s” law. With the decision to put one’s way above all other possible ways one has already fulfilled the greater part of one’s vocation as a redeemer. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
One has invalidated all other ways for oneself, exalting one’s law above convention and thus making a clean sweep of all those things that not only failed to prevent the great danger but actually accelerated it. For conventions in themselves are soulless mechanisms that can never understand more than the mere routine of life. Creative life always stands outside convention. That is why, when the mere routine of life predominated in the form of convention and tradition, there is bound to be a destructive outbreak of creative energy. Only when it is a mass phenomenon, is this outbreak is a catastrophe, but never in the individual who consciously submits to these higher powers and serves them with all one’s strength. The mechanism of convention keeps people unconscious, for in that state they can follow their accustomed tracks like blind brutes, without the need for conscious decision. This unintended result of even the best conventions is unavoidable but is no less a terrible danger for that. For when new conditions arise that are not provided for under the old conventions, then, just as with animals, panic is liable to break out among human beings kept unconscious by routine, and with equally unpredictable results. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Personality, however, does not allow itself to be seized by the panic terror of those who are just waking to consciousness, for it has put all its terrors behind it. It is able to cope with the changing times, and has unknowingly and involuntarily become a leader. All human beings are much alike, otherwise they could not succumb to the same delusion, and the psychic substratum upon which the individual consciousness is based is universally the same, otherwise people could never reach a common understanding. So, in this sense, personality and its peculiar psychic make-up are not something absolutely unique. The uniqueness holds only for the individual nature of the personality, as it does for every individual. To become a personality is not the absolute prerogative of the genius, for a human may be a genius without being a personality. In so far as every individual has the law of one’s life inborn in one, it is theoretically possible for any human to follow this law and so become a personality, that is, to achieve wholeness. However, since life only exists in the form of living unite, id est, individuals, the law of life always tends towards a life individual lived. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
So although the objective psyche can only be conceived as a universal and uniform datum, which means that all humans share the same primary, psychic condition, this objective psyche must nevertheless individuate itself if it is to become actualized, for there is other way in which it could express itself except through the individual human being. When the psyche seizes hold of a group, in which case it must, of its own nature, precipitate a catastrophe, because it can only operate unconsciously and is not assimilated by any consciousness or assigned its place among the existing conditions of life, this is the only exception. Only the human who can consciously assent to the power of the inner voice becomes a personality; but if one succumbs to it one will be swept away by the blind flux of psychic events and destroyed. That is the great and liberating thing about any genuine personality: If it were lived unconsciously by the group, one voluntarily sacrifices oneself to one’s vocation, and consciously translates into one’s own individual reality what would only lead to ruin. One of the most shining examples of the meaning of personality that history has preserved for us is the life of Christ. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
In Christianity, which, be it mentioned in passing, was the only religion really persecuted by the Romans, there rose up a direct opponent of the Caesarean madness that afflicted not only the emperor, but every Roman as well: civis Rmanus sum. The opposition showed itself wherever the worship of Caesar clashed with Christianity. However, as we know from what the evangelists tell us about the psychic development of Christ’s personality, this opposition was fought out just as decisively in the soul of its funder. The story of the Temptation clearly reveals the nature of the psychic power with which Jesus came into collision: it was the power-intoxicated devil of the prevailing Caesarean psychology that led him into dire temptation in the wilderness. As if it were trying to make a Caesar of him, this devil was the objective psyche that held all the peoples of the Roman Empire under its sway, and that is why it promised Jesus all the kingdoms of the Earth. Obeying the inner call of his vocation, Jesus voluntarily exposed himself to the assaults of the imperialistic madness that filled everyone, conqueror and conquered alike. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
In this way, by exposing himself to the World’s suffering, Christ recognized the nature of the objective psyche which had plunged the whole World into misery and had begotten a yearning for salvation that found expression even in the pagan poets. Far from suppressing or allowing oneself to be suppressed by this psychic onslaught, Christ let it act on him consciously, and assimilated it. Thus was World-conquering Caesarism transformed into spiritual kingship, and the Roman Empire into the universal kingdom of God that was not of this World. While the whole Jewish nation was expecting an imperialistically minded and politically active hero as a Messiah, Jesus fulfilled the Messianic mission not so much for one’s own nation as for the whole Roman World, and pointed out to humanity the ancient truth that where force rules there is no love, and where love reigns force does not count. The religion of love was the exact psychological counterpart to the Roman devil-worship of power. This Roman devil-worship of force and power has its grip on Americans, especially those in California. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
However, the example of Christianity is perhaps the best illustration of the previous abstraction argument. This apparently unique life became a sacred symbol because it is the psychological prototype of the only meaningful life, that is, of a life that strives for the individual realization—absolute and unconditional—of its own particular law. Well may we exclaim with Tertullian: anima naturaliter christiana! (A natural Christian soul.) The deification of Jesus, as also of the Buddha, is not surprising, for it affords a striking example of the enormous valuation that humanity places upon the ideal of personality. Though it seems at present as if the blind and destructive dominance of meaningless collective forces would thrust the ideal of personality into the background, yet this is only a passing revolt against the dead weight of history. Once the revolutionary, unhistorical, and therefore uneducated inclinations of the rising generation have had their fill of tearing down tradition, new heroes will be sought and found. Even the Bolseviks, whose radicalism leaves nothing to be desired, have embalmed Lenin and made a saviour Karl Marx. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
The ideal of personality is one of the ineradicable needs of the human soul, and the more unsuitable it is the more fanatically it is defended. Indeed, the worship of Caesar was itself a misconceived cult of personality, and modern Protestantism, whose critical theology has reduced the divinity of Christ to vanishing point, has found its last refuge in the personality of Jesus. Yes, this thing we call personality is a great and mysterious problem. Everything that can be said about it is curiously unsatisfactory and inadequate, and there is always a danger of the discussion losing itself in pomposity and empty chatter. They very idea of personality is, in common usage, so vague and ill-defined that one hardly ever finds two people who take the word in the same sense. If I put forward a more definite conception of it, I do not imagine that I have uttered the last word. I should like to regard all I say here only as a tentative attempt to approach the problem of personality without making any claim to solve it. Or rather, I should like my attempt to be regarded as a description of the psychological problems raised by personality. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
All the usual explanations and nostrums of psychology are apt to fall short here, just as they do with the human of genius or the creative artist. Inferences from heredity or from environment do not quite come off; inventing fictions about childhood, so popular today, ends—to put it mildly—in unreality; explanations from necessity—“he had no money,” “he was a sick man,” et cetera—remain caught in externals. There is always something irrational to be added, something that simply cannot be explained, a deus ex machina or an asylum ignorantiae, that well-known sobriquet for God. The problem thus seems to border on the extrahuman realm, which always been known by a divine name. Wherever we look or search, probe or analyse in this Universe, we find nothing that is permanent. Everything is moving slowly or swiftly to change of condition, whether this be growth or deterioration, and moves in the end to complete disintegration. There is no stability anywhere but only the show of it. Whether it be human’s fortunes or a mountain’s surface, everything is evanescent. Only the rate of this evanescence differs but the fact of it does not. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Throughout all things in the Universe and not only in the plant and animal kingdoms, we find the presence of growth and decay, and ripe and rot. There are no golden ages, no utopias, no Heavens on Earth. This World is a scene of continuous process, or diversification—which means it is an ever-changing scene. Sometimes it is better, sometimes it is worse—if looked at from a human standpoint—but none these two conditions remains forever fixed. Only romantic dreamers or pious, wishful thinkers look or wait for one that is. If fortunate, what we may reasonably look for and, hope to find, is an inner equilibrium within ourselves which will yield a peace or a presence. Let us not lessen what we are by refusing to accept the responsibility, by practising self-pity, or by blaming environments. They have their place and may make their contribution, but in the end it is our own ignorance of our own possibilities which is the basic cause. Whatever is done to improve human affairs and arrangements will not last. When it will need to be improved again, the time will come. In just the same way even the planet itself changes its features, turns tropical zones to temperate ones and great seas to sandy deserts. Only in the Void is there no activity, no change. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
If anything is perfect it cannot be improved. Whoever therefore demands perfection must understand that one is demanding finality. Perhaps that is why, even at an approximate 24,000 square feet (which is at least ten times larger than most homes), Sarah Winchester’s Mansion was never completed, even though it is one of the largest and most unique estates in the World! Could there be such a thing in this ever-changing World as perfection? There are no permanent solutions because there are no permanent problems. Millions of animal and human bodies have entered the Earth’s composition through drowning in vast floods or dying in droughts, famines, and epidemics, through earthquakes and eruptions. It has been an immense graveyard and crematorium. Yet equally it has brought into living existence millions of new beings. Men and women terrify themselves with mental pictures of age, of its diseases and infirmities, its growing cancers and shrinking arteries. Yet they seldom relate their personal experience to the wider scheme of things, to the Universe as a whole. If they did, they would soon see that not only are decay and disintegration everywhere in nature, but brutality and murder are there also on an appalling scale. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Millions of animals, insects, birds, fish, and sometimes humans, attack, deform, mutilate or kill other creatures. Civilizations do not progress; they grow, but they crumble by their own weight, or, rather, overweight. If anything every impressed me with the truth of civilization’s transformatory nature it was my reading of the Frenchman Volney’s book The Ruins of Empires, together with my visit to the remains of two cities. One, Anuradhapura in Ceylon, sixteen miles long and sixteen miles wife stretching in the sunshine with thousands of golden and sliver pillars, was eaten up by jungle growth or dissolved into dust! The other, Angkor in Cambodia, displayed huge temples rising out of the thick clogging undergrowth and broken, weather-beaten states of Buddhas tangled with, root-bound in, gnarled wrinkled trees. If it was in Beijing or Shanghai, maybe X’ian, possibly Hangzhou, I cannot recall. However, something else I found fascinating was in China, they have statues of God carved into the mountain and they must be 100 feet tall, and one of them even had brown skin. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Despite the ever-confronting evidence that change is ceaseless throughout the Universe and throughout human experience, we persistently get the feeling of solidity in the Universe and permanency in experience. Is this only an illusion and the World merely a phantasm? The answer that there IS something unending behind both. There is no stability anywhere in the Universe, given enough time, and there is none in human life. Yet the craving for it exists. That there is a metaphysical meaning behind this phenomenon. It exists because THAT which is being the craving person is the only stable thing there is, or rather no-thing, because IT has no shape, no colour, is soundless and invisible and beyond the grasp of ordinary thoughts. It is this hidden contact, or connection, which keeps humans seeking for what one never finds, hoping for what one never attains, refusing to accept the message of ceaseless change which Nature and Life continue to utter in one’s ears, and opposing the adjustments that experience and events demand periodically from one. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
There is no permanency anywhere except in ourselves. And even there it is so deep down, and so hard to find, that most people accept the mistaken idea that their ego’s ever-changing existence is the only real existence. The communities of God, to which Christ has become teacher and guide, are, in comparison with communities of the pagan people among whom they live as strangers, like Heavenly lights in the World. “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. One who does not love abides in death,” reports 1 John 3.14. Now, if we are to be spiritually formed in Christlikeness, we must find out what our relationships to others must be like. The natural condition of life for human beings is one of reciprocal rootedness in others. As firmness of footing is a condition of walking and secure movement, so assurance of others being for us is the condition of stable, healthy living. There are many ways this can be present in individual cases, but it must be there. If it is not, we are but walking wounded, our life more or less a shambles until we die. When the required type of “for-ness” is adequately present, human “circles of sufficiency” emerge. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
The most fundamental form of a circle of sufficiency is that of a mother and child (the Virgin Mary and Jesus). Then perhaps mother and child and father. (What some more modern spiritualist consider the “Holy Trinity.”) Then there are young lovers, reciprocally absorbed, as well as mature mates. Of course numerous forms of human association can take on some degree of this “sufficiency,” and always with a distinctive character arising out of the precise nature of the relationships involved. These circles of sufficiency, natural and essential to the human condition and so profoundly beautiful to behold, are always illusory at the merely human level, and even the illusion itself is terrifyingly fragile. To assure an anxious child we may say, “Everything is okay now.” However, it never is. In this World it is never true that everything is okay, and perhaps it is least true in those very situations where we feel the need to say it. Every human circle presupposes for its “really being okay” a larger context or circle that supports it. The mother and child, for example, presuppose the larger family that cares for and sustains them, making it possible for them to be absorbed in one another as they need to be, ignoring all else. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
These larger circles also depend upon yet larger circles, which, while ever less intimate, are still crucial to making the inner circles possible. That is just how human life is. The togetherness of the mother and child may be drastically affected by economic conditions on the other side of the Earth. Ultimately, if it is not caught up in the life of the only genuinely self-sufficient circle of sufficiency, that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, every human circle is doomed to dissolution. Only when rooted in that divine Trinitarian circle can the broken individuals from the broken circles recover from the wounds received in their circles of origin and find wholeness on their long journey from the womb to the eternal City of God. Of course it was never God’s intention that the natural human circles of sufficiency, or reciprocal rootedness, would be illusory, fragile, and eventually broken; and if they were lived within his kingdom, they would not be. “And there came also in the days of Com many prophets, and prophesied of the destruction of the great people except they should repent, and turn unto the Lord, and forsake their murders and wickedness. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
“And it came to pass that the prophets were rejected by the people, and they fled unto Com for protection, for the people sought to destroy them. And they prophesied unto Com many things; and he was blessed in all the remainders of his days. And he lived to a good old age, and begat Shiblom; and Shiblom reigned in his stead. And the brother of Shiblom rebelled against him, and there began to be an exceedingly great war in all the land. And it came to pass that the brother of Shiblom caused that all the prophets who prophesied of the destruction of the people should be put to death; And there was great calamity in all the land, for they had testified that a great curse should come upon the land, and also upon the people, and that there should be a great destruction among them, such an one as never had been upon the face of the Earth, and their bones should become as heaps of Earth upon the face of the land except they should repent of their wickedness. And they hearkened not unto the voice of the Lord, because of their wicked combinations; wherefore, there began to be wars and contentions in all the land, and also many famines and pestilences, insomuch that there was a great destruction. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
“The destruction was so great that is was such an one as never had been known upon the face of the Earth; and all this came to pass in the days of Shiblom. And the people began to repent of their iniquity; and inasmuch as they did the Lord did have mercy on them. And it came to pass that Shiblom was slain, and Seth was brought into captivity, and did dwell in captivity all his days. And it came to pass that Ahah, his son, did obtain the kingdom; and he did reign over the people all his days. And he did do all manner f iniquity in his days, by which he did cause the shedding of much blood; and few were his days. And Ethem, being a descendant of Ahah, did obtain the kingdom; and he also did do that which was wicked in his days. And it came to pass that in the days of Ethem there came many prophets, and prophesied again unto the people; yea, they did prophesy that the Lord would utterly destroy them from off the face of the Earth except they repented of their iniquities. And it came to pass that the people hardened their hearts, and would not hearken unto their words; and the prophets mourned withdrew from among the people. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
“And it came to pass that Ethem did execute judgment in wickedness all his days; and he begat Moron. And it came to pass that Moron did reign in his stead; and Moron did that which was wicked before the Lord. And it came to pass that there arose another mighty man; and he was a descendant of the brother of Jared. And it came to pass that he did overthrow Moron and obtain the kingdom; wherefore, Moron dwelt in captivity all the remainder of his days; and he begat Coriantor. And it came to pass that Coriantor dwelt in captivity all his days. And in the days of Coriantor there also came many prophets, and prophesied of great and marvelous things, and cried repentance unto the people, and except they should repent the Lord God would execute judgment against them to their utter destruction; and that the Lord God would send or bring forth another people to possess the land, by his power, after the manner by which be brought their fathers. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“And they did reject all the words of the prophets, because of their secret society and wicked abominations. And it came to pass that Coriantor begat Ether, and he died, having dwelt in captivity all his days,” reports Ether 11.1-23. Lord, our hearth, God who guards the heart of our home, threefold flame who shines in the center: we honour and praise you, we offer you our words of worship. King of Poets, may our lives be creative. King of Smithers, may our lives be useful. King of healers, may our lives be healthy. Your family is standing before you here, confident you will do what is right. May the snow start falling to create the waters of the Earth, so it can soak deep into the Earth, and conceive a healthy environment. Being to birth the cold and rainy days. And be God’s treasured people in His hand, a diadem His kingly brow to band. By God, we were uplifted, carried, crowned, thus honoured inasmuch as precious found. God’s glory is on me, and mine on Him. And when I call God is not far or dim. God loves His folks; the meek will glorify, and, shrined in prayer, draw their rapt reply. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Truth is Thy primal word; at Thy behest the generations pass—O assist our quest for Thee, and set my host of song on high, and let my psalmody come very nigh. My praises as a coronal account, and let my prayer as Thine incense mount. Deem precious unto Thee the poor man’s song, as those that to Thine altar did belong. Rise, O my blessing, to the lord of birth, the breeding, quickening, righteous force of Earth. Do Thou receive it with acceptant nod, my choicest incense offered to my God. And let my meditation grateful be, for all my being is athirst for Thee. Thine, O Lord, is the greatness and the power, the glory and victory and the majesty; for all that is in the Heaven and on the Earth is Thine. Thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and Thou art exalted supreme above all. Who can recount the mighty acts of the Lord? Who can proclaim all His full praise? I will extol Thee, O Lord, for Thou hast raised me up, and hast not allowed mine enemies to rejoice in triumph over me. O Lord, my God, I cried unto Thee, and Thou didst heal me; O Lord, Thou savest me from the peril of death; Thou didst keep me alive, that I should not go down to the grave. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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There was No Time for Last Good-Byes, No Slow Unraveling of the Bonds that Gave Security!
All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast. Life is full of opportunities, but you must grasp them and work hard for success. Not all interactions are vigorous. Some are calm, gentle, as pleasant as a Summer breeze under a clear, star-filled sky. Others are full of anguish and struggle, with a sense of helplessness threatening—lie finding oneself caught undertow, with the fingers of death pulling one down. Our own fears and anxieties limit our life experiences. Our own inner paradoxes, our undigested memories, our compromises with life, pull us back from encounter. Sometimes it can be a tragedy that fills an individual with sorrow that remains long after the event. One has to find the courage to continue living one’s own life with a heightened sense of morality. Never underestimate the willingness of others to open their hearts and minds. Many people have an intuitive understanding of the needs of others. As life goes on, many people ask a metaphorical chess master, What is the best move in chess? Of course this question cannot be answered in any absolute sense, so the master will reply that the best move at any given time depends on the ability of the person and the specific content of the game. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
A person who is confronted with a choice, with the paradoxical pull of two equally valid concerns—community and individual, limitation and possibility, or any other significant existential issue—beings to find liberation by being more immersed in the experience itself. There is no absolute answer. How a person thinks, feels, and acts depends upon one’s abilities and the context as one understands it. An ability to hear, understand, and reflect back the explicit and implicit feelings and meanings that a person is expressing is crucial to evoking an existential moment. When one listens for feelings and meanings, conversations tend to move deeper. Usually, most people have a tendency of learning to avoid their own internal states. They seek distraction from their confusing emotions and can become estranged from their own subjective lives. Our entire focus of attention, however, must be on the subjective and intersubjective experience. Put alternatively, it is concerned with the individual’s being in the World, a condition shared by us all in that we must each experience it uniquely. The concept of being requires awareness, in the deepest possible sense, of one’s unique presence in the present as it becomes the future. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
Perseverance means to continue in a given course until we have reached a goal or objective, regardless of obstacles, opposition, and other counterinfluences. Therefore, life can only be approached through one’s own immediate experience. Life requires an encounter, to engage with one’s full attention, in the present moment, one’s layers of pretense and diversion. We each construct a veil of distracting irritations and pleasure, of mental busywork, designed to protect us from awareness of our deepest existential concerns: death, isolation, responsibility, and how we are to find meaning in our lives. continuous awareness of such profound problems of existence can cause us terrible anxiety. Our diversions, if they are effective—that is, flexible and mature—allow us to go about our daily lives relatively unencumbered. Still, in life, our strengths can easily become our weaknesses. We long for what has been and desire what is not because the memories we cling to cause pain and offer comfort, as well. That is why the human experience is paradoxical. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
Humans can entertain both joy and sorrow simultaneously, and one can evoke the others. Sometimes people who feel they are facing the World alone are haunted and unwilling to master their fate, and they create dark spaces in their homes, usually a bedroom. The dark spaces represent how one experiences their present life. All the people and things around them have fallen away, and they are left, alone with the memories of loved ones and, gradually, alone with less and less will to live. Of course, our goals should be to fill the measure of our creation as sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father—that is, to reach exaltation and eternal life. The chronic warding off of existential awareness is often experienced as an illusion that one is “in control” of one’s life. This is a common attitude among people with substance abuse problems. Since their use of drugs and alcohol provides a particularly predictable subjective experience, they become particularly sensitized to the discomfort of unpredictable events. In addition, people who abuse substances may have unusually labile arousal regulation and hence be especially uncomfortable in the face of change. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
Those with substance abuse issues know that they can give themselves the comfort and reassurance of a known future and superimpose it like camouflage over that unknown that actually lies ahead. The fact that this chemical future is false become it is contained within the illusory reality of their addiction may eventually become troublesome. However, until it does, substance abuse serves as a rigid and powerful chemical armor against an unappealing option—living life as it is. Many people struggle to express their creativity and them being alone is a deep concern. These people often balance the needs for autonomy with the needs for relationship, feel vulnerable, and face gaining along. Their creativity may not be in the service of work and consciousness, but in the service of the unconscious; they may immerse themselves in journal writing, doomed love affairs, and dreams. Therefore, darkness may exert a strong pull and death a romantic fascination. Death is often envisioned as a dark or ghostly lover. Vampire movies speak of the archetypal combination od death, blood, and bliss. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
Instead of denying death, as so common in our culture, these people experience death as a morbid fascination, an obsession, an addiction; in fact, as a denial of living. We who are alive must make clear the distinction between creativity and self-destruction. The tendency to confuse the two has claimed too many victims. The obstacles and opposition we meet are the temptations and enticement of Satan that are designed to frustrate the Lord’s work and glory: “To bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of humans,” reports Moses 1.39. Perseverance is a beneficial, active, characteristic, not passively waiting and hoping for something good to happen. It gives us hope by helping us realize that the righteous suffer no failure except in giving up and no longer trying. Genius is only the power of making continuous efforts. The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it; so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it. So many people have given up when a little more effort, a little more patience would have achieved success. There is no defeat except within, no really insurmountable barrier saves one’s own inherent weakness of purpose. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
We often expect great things of the pedagogue, of trained professionals, who, Heaven help us, have been stuffed full of “psychology” and is bursting with ill-assorted views as to how individuals are supposed to be constituted and how one ought to be handled. It is presumed that the youthful persons who have picked on education as a career are themselves educated; but nobody, I daresay, will venture to assert that they are all “personalities” as well. By and large, they suffer from the same defective education as the hapless children they are supposed to instruct, and as a rule are as little “personalities” as their charges. Our whole educational problem suffers from a one-sided approach to the child who is to be educated, and from an equally one-sides lack of emphasis on the uneducatedness of the educator. Everyone who has finished one’s course of studies feels oneself to be fully educated; in a word, one feels grown up. One must feel this, one must have this solid conviction of one’s own competence in order to survive the struggle for existence. Any doubt or feeling of uncertainty would hinger and cripple one, undermining the necessary faith in one’s own authority and unfitting one for a professional career. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
People expect medical professionals to be efficient and good at their jobs and not to have doubts about oneself and one’s capabilities. The professional human is irretrievably condemned to be competent. Everyone knows that these conditions are not ideal. However, with reservations, we can say that they are the best possible under the circumstances. We cannot imagine how they could be different. We cannot expect more from the average parent. If one is good at one’s job we have to be content with that, just as we have to be content with parents bringing up their children as best they can. In every individual there lurks a child—an eternal child, something that is always becoming, is never completed, and that calls for unceasing care, attention, and education. That is the part of the human personality which wants to develop and become whole. However, the humans of today are far indeed from this wholeness. Dimly suspecting of one’s own deficiencies, one seizes upon child education and fervently devotes oneself to child psychology, fondly supposing that something must have gone wrong in one’s own upbringing and childhood development that can be weeded out in the next generation. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
This intention is highly commendable, but it comes to grief on the psychological fact that we cannot correct in a child a fault that we still commit. Children are not half as stupid as we imagine. They notice only too well what is genuine and what is not. If there is anything that we wish to change in our children, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could be better changed in ourselves. It may be an uncomfortable reminder that many people are still children in many respects and still need a vast amount of education. Personality is a seed that can only develop by slow stages throughout life. No one can train the personality unless one has it oneself. And it is not the child, but only the adult, who can achieve personality as the fruit of a full life directed to this end. The achievement of personality means nothing less than the optimum development of endless variety of conditions that have to be fulfilled. A whole lifetime, in all its biological, social, and spiritual aspects is needed. Personality is the supreme realization of the innate idiosyncrasy of a living being. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Personality is an act of high courage flung in the face of life, the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual, the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence coupled with the greatest possible freedom for self-determination. To educate a human to this seems to me no light matter. It is surely the hardest task of the modern mind has set itself. And it is dangerous too, dangerous to a degree many have never imagines. However, the winsome humanity of God incarnate will elevate our spiritual horizons and galvanize our allegiance. When we read words Jesus spoke, it is clear that they are the truest things we have ever heard, and this sets our heart aflame. We know and love Jesus Christ! When john Bunyan’s Pilgrim met Christ at the front of the cross, his joy was so great he wanted to shout it to the trees and starts and brooks and birds—to breathe it to everything and everyone. George Whitefield, the evangelist of the Great Awakening, records in his diary the same phenomenon when he met Christ: “O! with what joy—joy unspeakable—even joy that was full and big with glory, was my soul filled…Surely it was the day of mine espousals—a day to be had in everlasting remembrance! At first my joys were like spring tide, and overflowed the banks.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
My heart resonates with this because that was precisely my experience when I met Christ. In fact, some of my well meaning friends tried to tone me down, saying, “We are happy for you…But take it easy!” The reality is, I simply could not keep it in, for in meeting Jesus I had experienced the primary motivation and qualification for sharing him. Humans, we must not let the self-evident nature of the truth dull us to its profundity, which is this: the more immediate and personal one’s knowledge of Christ, the more natural it is to share Christ with others. This is why those who have newly met Christ are often so verbal and successful in leading other to Him despite the absence of learned arguments. If you know Christ, you have the essential heart qualification to share him—even if you do not have all the answers. And the key to ongoing effectiveness if a perpetual freshness in your growing knowledge of Christ. Although there are men and women who have always resisted Christ, and will continue to do so, there are untold thousands who will be magnetized to Him when they understand the truth about Him. If we want pure hearts, we must repeatedly expose ourselves to the raw realities of Christ as they are recorded in the Gospels. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Magnetized hearts draw others to Christ. “The body is not for immorality, but for the Lord; and the Lord is for your body,” reports 1 Corinthians 6.13. Because the body is holy (separated to God) we will also properly care for it: nourish, exercise, and rest it. The practical center of proper care for the body is Sabbath. Now, Sabbath is a quite profound and intricate subject, and we cannot deal adequately with it here. However, no treatment of spiritual formation and the body can be complete without at least touching upon the meaning of Sabbath. The Christian philosopher and scientist Blaise Pascal commented, “I have discovered that all the unhappiness of humans arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.” This remark, though somewhat of an exaggeration, contains deep insight. The capacity to simply be, to rest, would remove one from mist of the striving that leads to misery. This is a capacity that comes to fullness only when it reaches our body. Peace is a condition of the body, and until it has enveloped our body it has not enveloped us. When it is at home in the rightness and power of God, peace comes to our body. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
The infinite permutations of Nature are so vast and so varied only because they are an attempt to express the infinite being in terms of time, space, form, and motion. However, such an attempt can never come to any finality; it is endless: a forever-turning spiral. That which is finite has an end; who would deny that? Again that which has an end is seen from some point outside itself; that too must be granted; but the Universe is not seen from without itself; we cannot question that proposition either; therefore since it has no end the Universe must be infinite. Each Universe, however vast, is finite. However, the possible number of Universes is not. The Infinite Being, by some strange necessity (from the human standpoint, contemplating a fathomless mystery), forever sponsors fresh Universes as old ones decay and disappear. In this was It seems (again from the human standpoint), by giving expression to an infinite number of Universes, to be expressing Its own infinite nature. God is intelligent, God has life most perfect and eternal because His intellect is most perfect and always in act. God moves Himself. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
As God is His very own very existence and understanding, so is He His own life; and therefore He so lives that He has not principle of life. Life in this lower World is bestowed on a corruptible nature, that needs generation to preserve the species, and nourishment to preserve the individual. For this reason life is not found here below apart from a vegetative soul: but this does not hold good with incorruptible natures. “And now I Moroni proceed with my record. Therefore, behold, it came to pass that because of the secret combinations of Akish and his friends, behold, they did overthrow the kingdom of Omer. Nevertheless, the Lord was merciful unto Omer, and also to his sons and to his daughters who did not seek his destruction. And the Lord warned Omer in a dream that he should depart out of the land; wherefore Omer departed out of the land with his family, and traveled many days, and came over and passed by the hill of Shim, and came over by the place where the Nephites were destroyed, and from thence eastward, and came to a place which was called Ablom, by the seashore, and there he pitched his tent, and also his sons and hi daughters, and all his household, save it were Jared and his family. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
“And it came to pass that Jared was anointed king over the people, by the hand of wickedness; and he gave unto Akish his daughter to wife. And it came to pass that Akish sought the life of his father-in-law; and he applied unto those whom he had sworn by the oath of the ancients, and they obtained the head of his father-in-law; and he applied unto those whom he had sworn by the oath of the ancients, and they obtained the head of his father-in-law, as he sat upon his throne, giving audience to his people. For so great had been the spreading of this wicked and secret society that it had corrupted the hearts of all the people; therefore Jared was murdered upon his throne, and Akish reigned in his stead. And it came to pass that Akish began to be jealous of his son, therefore he shut him up in prison, and kept him upon little or no food until he had suffered death. And now the brother of him that suffered death, (and his name was Nimrah) was angry with his father because of that which his father had done unto is brother. And it came to pass that Nimrah gathered together a small number of humans, and fled out of the land, and came over and dwelt with Omer. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
“And it came to pass that kish begat other sons, and they won the hearts of the people, notwithstanding they had sworn unto him to do all manner of iniquity according to that which he desired. Now the people of Akish were desirous for gain, even as Akish was desirous for power; wherefore, the sons of Akish did offer them money, by which means they drew away the more part of people after them. And there began to be a war between the sons of Akish and Akish, which lasted for the space of many years, yea, unto the destruction of nearly all the people of the kingdom, yea, even all, save it were thirty souls, and they who fled with the house of Omer. Wherefore, Omer was restored again to the land of his inheritance. And it came to pass that Omer began to be old; nevertheless, in his old age he begat Emer; and he anointed Emer to be king to reign in his stead. And after that he had anointed Emer to be king he saw peace in the land for the space of two years, and he died, having seen exceedingly many days, which were full of sorrow. And it came to pass that Emer did reign in his stead, and did fill the steps of his father. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
“And the Lord began again to take the curse from off the land, and the house of Emer did prosper exceedingly under the reign of Emer; and in the space of sixty and two years they had become exceedingly strong, insomuch that they became exceedingly rich—having all manner of fruit, and of grain, and of silks, and of fine linen, and of gold, and of silver and of precious things; and also all manner of cattle, of oxen, and cows, and of sheep, and of swine, and of goats, and also of many other kinds of animals which were useful for the good of humans. And they also has horses, and asses, and there were elephants and cureloms and cumoms; all of which were useful to humans, and more especially the elephants and cureloms and cumoms. And thus the Lord did pour out his blessings upon this land, which was choice above all other lands; and he commanded that whoso should possess the land should possess it unto the Lord, or they should be destroyed when they were ripened in iniquity; for upon such, saith the Lord: I will pour out the fulness of my wrath. And Emer did execute judgment in righteousness all his days, and he begat many sons and daughters; and he begat Coriantum, and he anointed Coriantum to reign in his stead. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
“And after he had anointed Coriantum to reign in his stead he lived four years, and he saw peace in the and; yea, and he even saw the Son of Righteousness, and did rejoice and glory in his day; and he died in peace. And it came to pass that Coriantum did walk in the steps of his father, and did build many mighty cities, and did administer that which was good unto his people in all his days. And it came to pass that he had no children even until he was exceedingly old. And it came to pass that his wife died, being an hundred and two years old. And it came to pass that Coriantum took to his wife, in his old age, a young maid, and begat sons and daughters; wherefore he lived until he was an hundred and forty and two years old. And it came to pass that he begat Com, and Com reigned in his stead; and he reigned forty and nine years, and he begat Heth; and he also begat other sons and daughters. And the people had spread again over all the face of the land, and there began again to be an exceedingly great wickedness upon the face of the land, and Heth began to embrace the secret plans again of old, to destroy his father. And it came to pass that he did dethrone his father, for he slew him with his own sword; and he did reign in his stead. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
“And there came prophets in the land again, crying repentance unto them—that they must prepare the way of the Lord or there should come a curse upon the face of the land; yea, even there should be a great famine, in which they should be destroyed if they did not repent. However, the righteous people believed not the words of the prophets, but they cast them out; and some of them they cast into pits and left them to perish. And it came to pass that they did all these things according to the commandment of the king, Het. And it came to pass that there began to be a great dearth upon the land, and the inhabitants began to be destroyed exceedingly fast because of the dearth, for there was no rain upon the face of the Earth. And there came forth poisonous serpents also upon the face of the land, and did poison many people. And it came to pass that their flocks began to flee before the poisonous serpents, towards the land southward, which was called by the Nephites Zarahemla. And it came to pass that there were many of them which did perish by the way; nevertheless, there were some which fled into the land southward. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
“And it came to pass that the Lord did cause the serpents that they should hedge up the way that the people could not pass, that whoso should attempt to pass might fall by the poisonous serpents. And it came to pass that the people did follow the course of the beasts, and did devour the carcasses of them which fell by the way until they had devoured them all. Now wen the people saw that they must perish they began to repent of their iniquities and cry unto the Lord. And it came to pass that when they had humbled themselves sufficiently before the Lord, he did send rain upon the face of Earth; and the people began to revive again, and there began to be fruit in the north countries, and in all the countries round about. And the Lord did show forth his power unto them in preserving them from famine,” reports Ether 9.1-35. I believe that perseverance is vital to success in any endeavour, whether spiritual or temporal, large or small, public or personal. Think seriously how important perseverance, or the lack of it, has been in your own endeavours, such as Church callings, schooling, or employment. I believe that essentially all significant achievement results largely from perseverance. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
The ultimate example of perseverance is our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who has and will overcome every obstacle in doing the will of our Heavenly Father. Indeed, Jesus is perfect in perseverance and has taught us to be perfect even as he and is father are perfect. “Therefore I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in Heaven is perfect,” reports 3 Nephi 12.48. Studying his life can help us learn and live this important principle. Around me burn the lights of Yule; I am filled with their light, renewed by their light. I pray to you, Lord, reborn, please open up us to us a new year, a new time. Please look behind and ahead and guide us through the year that is beginning. How great are Thy deeds, O Lord! Thy thoughts are very deep. The ignorant human does not know, nor does the fool understand this—the wicked may spring up as the grass, and the workers of iniquity may flourish, only to be destroyed forever. However, Thou, O Lord, shalt be exalted forever. The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? When evil-doers drew near to destroy me, even mine enemies and my foes, they stumbled and fell. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
Though a host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war were waged against me, even then I would be confident. One thing have I asked of the Lord, this do I desire: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the graciousness of the Lord, and to enter into His sanctuary. For He concealeth me in His pavilion in the day of trouble; he hideth me in the shelter of His tent; He lifteth me up upon a rock. Now shall my head be lifted up victoriously above mine enemies round about me; and I will bring to His tabernacle offerings with trumpet-sound; I will sing, yea, I will sing praises unto the Lord. Hear, O Lord my voice when I call; be gracious unto me, and answer me. Of Thee, saith my heart, “Seek God”; indeed, O Lord I will seek Thee. Conceal not Thy presence from me, turn not away Thy servant in anger. Thou hast ever been my help; cast me not off, nor forsake me, O God of my salvation. Even if my father and mother forsook me, the Lord would take me under His care. Teach my Thy way, O Lord, and lead me in an even path, because of them that lie in wait for me. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Hand me not over unto the will of my adversaries; for false witnesses have risen against me, and such as breathe out violence. Yea, I have faith that I shall yet se the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Hope in the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; yea, hope in the Lord. For centuries our ancestors suffered and sacrificed that we might be the recipients of the blessings of freedom. If they were willing to sacrifice so much to establish us as a free people, should be not be willing to do the same to maintain that freedom for ourselves and for future generations? Only in this foreordained land, under its God-inspired Constitution and the resulting environment of freedom, was it possible to have establish one nation under God. It is our responsibility to see that this freedom is perpetuated to that America may more easily flourish in the future. How then can we best befriend the Constitution in this critical hour and secure the blessings of liberty and ensure the protection and guidance of our Father in Heaven? First and foremost, we must be righteous. John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
Winchester Mystery House
Sarah Winchester’s historic Victorian Mansion has stood in the center of Silicon Valley for almost an entire century, and it will be here for the next century for future generations to unlock the secrets. We can’t wait to have you back in 2021!
Legend says that Sarah Winchester had the front-side of the house boarded up after the 1906 earthquake. Today, the most well-preserved rooms are in the front-side of the mansion. The well preserved rooms perhaps represented how she experienced her life. All the things around her had fallen away, but she kept sacred the part of her mansion that was in the best repair. As if she were symbolically holding on to the memories of when her life was “perfect.”
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With Every Morn their Love Grew Tender, with Every Eve Deeper and Tenderer Still!
We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the World. Time is not the fourth dimension, and should not be so identified. Time is only a relative observation. Existentialism of Personalism embraces interconnected attitudes of aesthetic, sacred consciousness with social, political awareness. Transpersonal and existential realities are captured in the sacred and profane events of life. The ecstasy and numinous awesomeness of an I-and-Thou encounter with the Supreme Personality can be experienced in any time and in any place and through any object, person, or event. It is not limited to an inner, individualistic mysticality, nor is it particular to community worship and ceremony. The personal relationship with Supreme Personality creates a “sense of being” and “becoming” that is spontaneous and goes on ceaselessly in a constant dialogue with self, other, and nature. It is contained in form and is experienced in existential, concrete, everyday life. Flora Jones, Wintu medicine woman, speaks about the spirits like they are living personalities in a partnership of existence with human beings. #RandolphHarris 1 of 27
Witness the following statement from Flora Jones: “This is what the spirit tells me—get my people together. Whoever has sacred places must wake them up, the same as I am doing here—to keep my old World within my heart and with the spiritual. For them to help me and for me to help my people.” The personalism expressed by Flora Jones is the basis of most Victorian, African-American and American-Indian traditions. All of these cultures have a dual theme of Being-in-the World and Being-beyond-the-World. The Supreme Personality is experienced as an integrated intelligence and love that is expressed through the archetypes of mythologies, rituals, worship, dreams, and visions. The archetypal spirituality of the meeting in the Between confirms that the Supreme Personality lies within the human personality and in the meeting as he Ground of Being. The Supreme Personality, as a living personality, offers love, knowledge, mystery, gift giving, and sharing in relationship with the human person. The I-and-Thou encounter bring to “awareness” constellations of fascination and fear, destiny and freedom, death and life, anxiety and joy, interest and surprise, love and shame, and guilt and excitement. #RandolphHarris 2 of 27
Existentialism of Personalism came out of my practice and theory in a circle of understanding and interpretation through dialogue with American Indians, Victorian people, and African-Americans. Alex Haley in his book Roots (1976) describes how the father of Kunta Kinte presented his infant son to the Universe. He writes, “Carrying little Kunta in his strong arms, he walked to the edge of the village, lifted his baby up with his face to the Heavens, and said softly….Behold—the only thing greater than yourself” (p.13). Haley is showing that the living Universe is the father/mother of Kunta Kinte and that the child’s personality is sacred. In the Navajo tradition, the man who holds his infant up to Father Sun and says, “Father Sun, this is your child,” is expressing that the Universe is personal and loving. The Navajo infant is a direct descendant of the living Universe, and, therefore, its personality is sacred. American-American, Victorian, and American Indian traditions demonstrate a continual dialogue between the human personality and the Supreme Personality that reveals the sacred and the profane as not separated but forming an interconnected metaphysical reality that is remythologized in every I-and-Thou meeting. #RandolphHarris 3 of 27
However, philosophy does not accept the Semitic belief in a World created for the first time by a personal creator, and this is as true of the highest Greek philosophy as expressed, for instance, in Aristotle’s work on metaphysics as in the highest Asiatic philosophy associated with Buddhism and Hinduism. The word “creation” is inadmissible here for it signifies producing something out of nothing. No one, not even God himself, can produce something out of nothing. Therefore, the orthodox Christian idea of a mysterious creation is completely untenable. That the existence of manufactured things indicates a manufacturer is sound logic, but to apply the same analogy to the World is not. For the World is something quite other than them; it is in a category not only altogether apart from them but altogether by itself. There was never a time when the Universe was created or fabricated by a Creator or Maker. This is a case of man making God in his own image. Through successive cycles of the Universe comes and goes, is born and dies, as the World-Mind rethinks the World-Idea or lets it lapse. #RandolphHarris 4 of 27
The Universe was never created for the first time for it has always and incessantly appeared and disappeared, activated and rested, come forth, evolved, and retreated into latency. There has never been a time when there was not a Universe, by which I do not mean our own. There is nothing arbitrary in this “creation.” It is really self-determined. Everything brings itself into existence under the necessity of its own being and the laws of its own possibilities. Where a circle begins it also ends; the Universe is like that: it has n real beginning or ending. It is not a creation in the Biblical sense but an intermittent continuation. Aristotle: “The Universe unfolds out of its own essence, not being made.” We could add that its pattern unfolds too out of the World-Idea. The Universe has never had a beginning, and cannot have an end, but its forms and states may change and therefore must have a beginning and end. It is more correct to speak of the Universe’s birth, not of its creation. The Universe was not made, in a workshop sense; it was emanated. It flowed out of the Original Source and it will flow back there at the appointed time. The cosmos is neither a phantom to be disdained nor an illusion to be dismissed. #RandolphHarris 5 of 27
The cosmos is more of a remote expression in time and space and individuality of that which is timeless, spaceless, and infinite. If it is not the it is not the Reality in its ultimate sense, it is an emanation of the Reality. Hence it shares in some way the life of its source. To find that point of sharing is the true object of incarnation for all creates within the cosmos. The World of external Nature, being eternal, is not brought into existence by an act of sudden creation out of nothing. Furthermore, this World is rooted in the divine substance and is consequently not an empty illusion but an indirect manifestation of divine reality. A thought exists in intimate relation with the World-Mind, God. The World is not bereft of reality although it does not possess ultimate reality. The World is neither a trap nor an illusion, neither a degradation of the divine essence nor an indication of the divine absence. What is the meaning of the World? If it is nothing more than an illusion, it can have no real meaning at all. However, if it is an expression of the infinite intelligence it must everywhere pervaded by immense meaning. #RandolphHarris 6 of 27
The truth is ever here, whether unwritten and bodiless or scripted and described. The image of it can be looked at by other generations long afterwards, but the reality of it remains always in the World-Idea and is never lost. If the World is sheer illusion, how could man—himself a part of this illusion—ever know the Real? Were humans merely an illusion man and woman could see only further illusions. Were one part of the Real one could see only further reality. Since our experience of illusion is itself in accordance with the World-idea, why should we be afraid of admitting its existence? What we should be afraid of is letting it blot out Reality. The whole Universe is a symbol, whose meaning can be read only when we have learned the alphabet of philosophic laws and experiences. Our World is but a fleeting symbol, yet we may not disdain it. For it is the arched entrance under which we must pass through to the infinite life. The World is a spectacle presented for our meditation in depth. It is a clue, a pointing sign, and even a mystery play. What is the Universe but a gigantic symbol of God? Its infinite variety hints at the infinite endless of the Absolute itself. #RandolphHarris 7 of 27
The World stands for something else: it is, first, a token that God exists, second, an image of God’s being. The Universe is a cipher which needs to be decoded. The scientist does this on one level of investigation, the metaphysician on a different level; the religionist does not attempt the effort but reveres the cipher’s Author. Was it not Goethe who wrote: “Everything which happens is only a symbol”? Is not the whole gigantic cosmic effect in the end only a symbolic expression indicating that paradoxically it is and is not? The more we learn about the Universe, the more mysterious it becomes. Once, in America, I was consulted by a business man about twenty-five, whose case is a good illustration of the sublimation of free energies. He was a typical American self-made man who had worked his way up from a novice to an expert. He had been very successful and had founded an immense business. He has also succeeded in organizing it in such a way that he was able to think of retiring. Two years before I saw him, he had in fact taken his farewell. #RandolphHarris 8 of 27
Until then he had lived entirely for his business and concentrated all his energies on it with the incredible intensity and one-sidedness peculiar to successful American business men. He had purchased a splendid estate where he thought of “living,” by which he meant horse, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Rolls Royce, Bentley, Porsche, golf, tennis, parties and what not. However, he had reckoned without his host. The energy which should have been at his disposal would not enter into these alluring prospects, but went capering off in quite another direction. A few weeks after the initiation of the longed-for life of bliss, he began brooding over peculiar, vague sensations in his body, and a few weeks more sufficed to plunge him into a state of extreme hypochondria. He had a complete nervous collapse. From a healthy man, of uncommon physical strength and abounding energy, he became a peevish child. That was the end of all his glories. He fell from one state of anxiety to the next and worried himself almost to death with hypochondriacal mopings. He then consulted a famous specialist, who recognized at once that there was nothing wrong with the man but lack of work. The patient saw the sense of this, and returned to his former work. #RandolphHarris 9 of 27
However, to his immense disappointment, no interest in the business could be aroused. Neither patience nor resolution was of any use. His energy could not by any means be forced back into the business. His condition naturally became worse than before. All that had formerly been living, creative energy in him now turned against him with terrible destroying force. His creative genius rose up, as it were, in revolt against him; and just as before he had built up great organizations in the World, so now his daemon spun equally subtle systems of hypochondriacal delusion that completely annihilated him. When I saw him, he was already a hopeless moral ruin. Nevertheless I tried to make clear to him that though such a gigantic energy might be withdrawn from the business, the question remained, were should I go? The finest horses, Porches, Mercedes and farms, even the most amusing parties may very likely fail to allure the energy, although it would be rational enough to think that a man who had devoted his whole life to serious work had a sort of natural right to enjoy himself. Yes, if fate behaved in a humanly rational way, it would certainly be so: first work, then well-earned rest. #RandolphHarris 10 of 27
However, fate behaves irrationally, and the energy of life inconveniently demands a gradient agreeable to itself; otherwise it simply gets dammed up and turns destructive. It regresses to former situations—in the case of this man, to the memory of an internal inflammatory condition of the medical nature. Yet even this was only a stage on the way to the resuscitation of infantile reminiscences which had all but vanished in the meantime. It was the original relation to his mother that mapped the course of his symptoms: there were an “arrangement” whose purpose it was to compel the attention and interest of is long-dead mother. Nor was this stage the last; for the ultimate goal was to drive him back, as it were, into his own body, after he had lived since his youth only in his head. He had differentiated one side of his being; the other side remained in an inert physical state. He would have needed this other side in order to “live.” The hypochondriacal “depression” pushed him down into the body he had always overlooked. Had he been able to follow the direction indicated by his depression and hypochondriacal illusion, and make himself conscious of the fantasies which proceed from such a condition, that would have been the road to my salvation. #RandolphHarris 11 of 27
My argument naturally met with no response, as was to be expected. A case so far advanced can only be cared for until death; it can hardly be cured. This example clearly shows that it does not lie in our power to transfer “disposable” energy at will to a rationally chosen object. The same is true in general of the apparently disposable energy which is disengaged when we have destroyed its unserviceable forms through the corrosive of reductive analysis. This energy, as we have said, can at best be applied voluntarily for a short time. However, in most cases it refuses to seize hold, for any length of time, of the possibilities rationally presented to it. Psychic energy is a very fastidious thing which insists on fulfillment of its own conditions. However much energy may be present, we cannot make it serviceable until we have succeeded in finding the right gradient. The question of the gradient is an eminently practical problem which crops up in most analyses. For instance, when in a favourable case the disposable energy, the so-called libido (psychic energy, which is equivalent to the intensity with which psychic contents are charged), does seize hold of a rational object, we think we have brought about the transformation through conscious exertion of the will. #RandolphHarris 12 of 27
However, we are deluded, because even the most strenuous exertions would not have sufficed had there not been present at the same time a gradient in that direction. How important the gradient is can be seen in the cases when, despite the most desperate exertions, and despite the fact that the object chosen or the form desired impresses everybody with its reasonableness, then transformation still refuses to take place, and all that happens is a new repression. It has become abundantly clear to me that life can flow forward only along the path of the gradient. However, there is no energy unless there is tension of opposites; hence it is necessary to discover the opposite to the attitude of the conscious mind. It is interesting to see how this compensation by opposites also plays its part in the historical theories of neurosis: Dr. Freud’s theory espoused Eros, Dr. Adler’s the will to power. Logically, the opposite of love is hate, and of Eros, Phobos (fear); but psychologically it is the will to power. Where love reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will to power is paramount, love is lacking. The one is but the shadow of the other: the human who adopts the standpoint of Eros finds one’s compensator opposite in the will to power, and that of the human who puts the accent on power is Eros. #RandolphHarris 13 of 27
Seen from the one-sided point of view the conscious attitude, the shadow is an inferior component of the personality and is consequently repressed through intensive resistance. However, the repressed content must be made conscious so as to produce a tension of opposites, without which no forward moment is possible. The conscious mind is on top, the shadow underneath, and just as high always longs for low and hot for cold, so all consciousness, perhaps without being aware of it, seeks its unconscious opposite, lacking which it is domed to stagnation, congestion, and ossification. Life is born only of the spark of opposites. It was a concession to intellectual logic on the one had and to psychological prejudice on the other that impelled Dr. Freud to name the opposite of Eros the destructive or death instinct. For in the first place, Eros is not equivalent to life; but for anyone who thinks it is, the opposite of Eros will naturally appear to be death. And in the second place, we all feel that the opposite of our own highest principle must be purely destructive, deadly, and evil. We refuse to endow it with any beneficial life-force; hence we avoid and fear it. #RandolphHarris 14 of 27
Before there are any outward disciplines of giving, there must be a disciplined understanding of giving. First, you must bear in mind that giving is not a meritorious work which will enhance your position before God. Similarly, giving will not make you better than other Christians. Second, you need to understand that while giving will not gain favour with God, giving does bring blessing! Jesus said: “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you,” reports Luke 6.38. Correspondingly, Paul wrote: “Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously,” reports 2 Corinthians 9.6. Admittedly these blessings are essentially spiritual. However, which would you rather have—a spiritual blessing or a bigger bank and bigger Benz (The bigger the bank, the bigger the Benz, the better the chance I have to get close to his rich friends, bank accounts in the Philippines, blank note to take everything! )—inner contentment or a new yacht? Third, you must keep in mind that giving which pleases God is generous and sacrificial. As we have seen, the Macedonians gave out of their deep poverty. #RandolphHarris 15 of 27
We can also profitably reflect on what Jesus said about the poor widow who humbly gave only a fraction of a penny: “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others,” reports Mark 12.43. Fourth, you must understand that what you give is to be determined between you and God. Giving should never be decided casually or flippantly, but through serious prayer—asking God what He wants you to give. With the mental disciplines of giving firmly in mind, the way is ready for the act of giving. To begin with, the act of giving should be accompanied by offering oneself to the Lord, just as did the Macedonians who “gave themselves first to the Lord,” reports 2 Corinthians 8.5. This should be done silently, not so someone will see out pious act of worship. And giving oneself to God is need worship. “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship,” reports Romans 12.1. Second, it is strongly recommended, in light of the great giving requirements imposed on God’s ancient people Israel, that everyone should at least consider the first 10 percent as a starting point in giving—a minimum. #RandolphHarris 16 of 27
And in the case of the Macedonians’ grace giving, the amount must have been way over 10 percent because a tenth of their “extreme poverty” (1 Corinthians 8.2) would not have helped anyone. Third, your giving ought to be regular. Paul advised this same Corinthians church on another occasion, “On the first day of every week, each one of your should set aside a sum of money in keeping with one’s income, saving it up, so that when I come no collections will have to be made,” report 1 Corinthians 16.2. The apostle knew that regular, systematic giving would help the people meet their regular obligations and most emergencies. Fourth, you must begin giving now. The natural tendency is to put giving off until you feel able to give. Such thinking keeps many from ever giving. A preacher came to see a farmer and asked him, “If you had $2,00.00, would you give $1,000.00 or it to the Lord?” “I would.” “If you have two Ultimate Driving Machines, would you give one of them to the Lord?” “Sure.” “If you had two Cresleigh Homes, would you give one of them to the Lord?” The farmer said, “Now that is not fair! You know I have two Cresleigh Homes.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 27
Giving should not only be regular, but responsive to need, spontaneous, like that of the Macedonians and Mary of Bethany who in anointing Jesus so lavishly poured out her resources. High Heaven rejects the lore of nicely calculated les and more. Finally, your giving should be joyous—“for God loves a cheerful giver,” reports 2 Corinthians 9.7. As we have been so often reminded, “cheerful” can be translated “hilarious,” suggesting a joy which leaps over all restraints. The act of giving is a blessed state. We do well to remember that our Lord Jesus Himself said, “It is more blessed to give then to receive,” reports Acts 20.35. May we be faithful and disciplined in giving ourselves and all we have to God! What does the phrase “grace giving” mean to you? What does grace have to do with giving? When you give to the church or various Christian ministries, do you generally do so out of obligation or willingness? How much of your income do you believe God wants you to give to Him? Support your answers with Scripture; then ask God in prayer whether He agrees. “Will a human rob god? Yet you rob me. But you ask, ‘How do we rob you?’ In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse—the whole nation of you—because you are robbing me. #RandolphHarris 18 of 27
“Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of Heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. I will present pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not cause their fruit,” says the LORD Almighty. “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the LORD Almighty,” reports Malachi 3.8-12. What did God speak to you about most specifically, most powerfully in this essay? Talk to Him about it right now! The World-idea has been represented by Churches and statues, and stained-glass windows. They are seen as places and refuge and the images tell a story. There are pictorial stories because people could not always read and also because they wanted the stories to pass on for generations. The statues also serve a purpose. The World-Mind has been embodied in images and idols. These things can be and are used in religious worship and mystic meditation. The idols act as reminders to its devotees; one is not a fool to confuse a piece of stone with the power of God. #RandolphHarris 19 of 27
We live in what appears as a multiverse, a timed and spaced existence—in a short, a finite one. However, those who can pierce through to its secret—and some have done so—find that it is actually the Unconditioned revealing itself as if it were the Conditioned. This Universe appearing in time and space under innumerable forms, its particles and planets ever in motion, hides as its supreme secret THAT which is timeless and placeless, without shape, intangible and immobile. Is this not the greatest paradox, this solid something whose essence is Nothing? Few humans know God even when they see Him, as they are unrealizingly do when they look around at the World or even when they merely look at it. “And now I, Moroni, proceed to give the record of Jared and his brother. For it came to pass after the Lord had prepared the stones which the brother of Jared had carried up into the mount, the brother of Jared came down out of the mount, and e did put forth the stones into the vessels which were prepared, one in each end thereof; and behold, they did give light unto the vessels. And thus the Lord caused stones to shine in darkness, to give light unto men, women, and children, that they might not cross the great waters in darkness. #RandolphHarris 20 of 27
“And it came to pass that when they had prepared all manner of food, that thereby they might subsist upon the water, and also food for their flocks and herds, and whatsoever beast or animal or fowl that they should carry with them—and it came to pass that when they had done all these things they got aboard of their vessels or barges, and set forth into the sea, commending themselves unto the Lord their God. And it came to pass that the Lord God caused that there should be a furious wind blow upon the face of the waters, towards the promised land; and this they were tossed upon the waves of the seas before the wind. And it came to pass that they were many times buried in the depths of the sea, because of the mountain waves which broke upon them, and also the great and terrible tempests which were caused by the fierceness of the wind. And it came to pass that when they were buried in the deep there was no water that could hurt them, their vessels being tight like unto a dish, and also they were tight like unto the ask of Noah; therefore when they were encompassed about by many waters they did cry unto the Lord, and he did bring them forth again upon the top of the waters. #RandolphHarris 21 of 27
“And it came to pass that the wind did never cease to blow towards the promised land while they were upon the waters; and thus they were driven forth before the wind. And they did sing praises unto the Lord; yea, the brother of Jared did sing praises unto the Lord, and he did thank and praise the Lord all the day long; and when the night came, they did not cease to praise the Lord. And thus they were driven forth; and no monster of the sea could break them, neither whale that could mar them; and they did have light continually, whether it was above the water or under the water. And thus they were driven forth, three hundred and forty and four days upon the water. And they did land upon the shore of the promised land. And when they had set their feet upon the shores of the promised land they bowed themselves down upon the face of the land, and did humble themselves before the Lord, and did shed tears of joy before the Lord, because of the multitude of his tender mercies over them. And it came to pass that they went forth upon the face of the land, and began to till the Earth. #RandolphHarris 22 of 27
“And Jared had four sons; and they were called Jacom, and Gilgah, and Maha, and Orihah. And the brother of Jared also begat sons and daughters. And the friends of Jared and his brothers were in number about twenty and two souls; and they also begat sons and daughters before they came to the promised land; and therefore they began to be many. And they were taught to walk humbly before the Lord; and they were also taught from on high. And it came to pass that they began to spread upon the face of the land, and to multiply and to till the Earth; and they did wax strong in the land. And the brother of Jared began to be old, and saw that he must soon go down to the grave; wherefore he said unto Jared: Let us gather together our people that we may number them, that we may know of them what they will desire of us before we go down to our graves. And accordingly the people were gathered together. Now the number of the sons and daughters of the brothers of Jared were twenty and two souls; and the number of sons and daughters of Jared were twelve, he having four sons. And it came to pass that they did number their people; and after that they had numbered them, they did desire of them the things which they would that they should do before they went down to their graves. #RandolphHarris 23 of 27
“And it came to pass that the people desired of them that they should anoint one of their sons to be a king over them. And now behold, this was grievous unto them. And the brother of Jared said unto them: Surely this thing leadeth into captivity. However, Jared said unto his brother: Suffer them that they may have a king. And therefore he said unto them: Choose ye out from among our sons a king, even whom ye will. And it came to pass that they chose even the firstborn of the brother of Jared; and has name was Pagag. And it came to pass that he refused and would not be their kind. And the people would that his father should constrain him, but his father would not; and he commanded them that they should constrain no human to be their king. And it came to pass that they chose all the brothers of Pagag, and they would not. And it came to pass that neither would the sons of Jared, even all save it were one; and Orihah was anointed to be king over the people. And he began to reign, and the people began to prosper; and they became exceedingly rich. And it came to pass that Jared died, and his brother also. #RandolphHarris 24 of 27
“And it came to pass that Orihah did walk humbly before the Lord, and did remember how great things the Lord had done for his father, and also taught his own people how great things the Lord had done for their fathers,” reports Ether 6.1-30. Winter is not just a single day. It takes time. Pay attention to its different stages, and adjust your prayers accordingly. As the cold time begins, I turn toward it with courage, knowing I do not face it alone. All the Holy Ones are with me; we will face it together. The leaves may fall, the grass may die, but the Land Spirits live, and to them I pray. Though some may sleep, others awake to face the cold, to bless the Earth with the gifts only they can give. Spirit of rock and tree, Spirits of running and still water, Spirits of Earth and sky: to the ones who now go to sleep, farewell until the warm time. To those who now awake, once again I greet you, as the Earth once again enters Winter. Cry the Winter rains to prepare the way, to mourn the darkness now enfolding. Cry the Winter rains to prepare the way, to wash pure the World as it lies here waiting. Cry the Winter rains, sky overarching, but soon the sorrows’ tears will turn to joy. Light will return to the covered Earth. #RandolphHarris 25 of 27
Cry, rain spirits, as this time demands. The sickle of reaping is low in the sky in the period just before down. The Sun’s halo soon will hide it, but it will be there, at the back of my mind, at the bottom my heart, poised to perform its acts of loving mercy. Waning Moon, passes over me, and pass on by. Please grant me your wisdom, but withhold your power. Sing joyously unto God our strength; sing along unto the God of Jacob. Take up the melody, and sound the timbrel, the sweet harp with the psaltery. Blow the Shofar at the New Moon, at the full Moon for our festival. For it is a statute for Israel, an ordinance of the God of Jacob, when God made a testimony for Joseph, when Her went forth against the land of Egypt. I hear a mysterious voice: “I, the Lord, removed the burden from your shoulder; your hands were freed from the heavy hod. O Israel, you called, and I delivered you; I answered you in the thunder; I tested you are the waters of Meribah, saying: ‘Hear, O My people, and I will admonish you; O America, if you would only Hearken unto Me! There shall be no strange god in your midst; nor shall you worship any foreign god. I am the Lord your God, Who brought you up out of the land of Egypt; open you mouth, and I will grant you of My bounty.’ #RandolphHarris 26 of 27
“But my people hearkened not to My Voice; and American would not obey. So I let them go after the stubbornness of their heart. Let them walk in their own evil counsels! Oh that My people would hearken unto Me, that America would walk in My ways! I would soon subdue their enemies, and place My hand upon their adversaries. The enemies of the Lord would cringe before Him, and their doom would be everlasting. However, you would I feed with the fat of wheat; and with the honey out of the rock would I satisfy you.” So the two brothers and their murdered man rode past fair Florence, to where Arno’s stream gurgles through straitened banks, and still doth fan itself with dancing bulrush, and the bream keeps head against the freshest. Sick and wan the brothers’ faces in the ford did seem, Lorenzo’s flush with love. They passed the water into a forest quiet for the slaughter. There was Lorenzo slain and buried in, there in that forest did his great love cease; ah! when a soul doth thus its freedom win, it aches in loneliness—is ill at peace as the break-covert blood-hounds od such sin: They dipped their swords in the water, and did tease their horses homeward, with convulsed spur, each richer by his being a murderer. #RandolphHarris 27 of 27
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 