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No Wonder the Nightmares
No one, even those who have the facts concerning the recent horror, can say just what is the matter with Llanada Villa; though old legends speak of unhallowed rites and conclaves of the Indians, amidst which they called forbidden shapes of shadow out of the great rounded hills, and made wild orgiastic prayers that were answered by loud crackings and rumblings from the ground below. The evening air outside was fresh as it was warm, and full of the breath of the rain. A few ghosts of sunlight drifted down. I felt a rush of gratitude, and stood silently letting the air kiss my face and hands. All around the railings of this porch vines grow, tendrils dancing in the breeze, fine tiny leaves moving like so many little fairy wings beating against the screen. Flowers glimmering in the dark, white and delicate and beautiful. Looking out into the night, my ghoul-haunted mansion reawakened a sense of foreboding evil. It retained its mystic aura of the early colonials, and showed evidence of having been used for sinister purposes by colonial sorcerers and alchemists. In reality, I was more horrified than astonished; my home was developed with occult symbols to be used in certain conjurations. And there is an arrangement—a three-dimensional pattern. A maze of utterly baffling intricacy used in the construction to connect the hallways with the rooms. The unimagined space was alive with motion and music, and having no semblance to anything on Earth. And as I stood there looking in terror, the wind blew out both the candles in that ancient peaked garret, leaving me in a savage and impenetrable darkness with chaos and pandemonium before me, and the demon madness of Llanada Villa which chilled me to the very core. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
Rushing airy presence could be heard faintly at certain hours from stated rooms. Then too, the servants are mortally afraid of the numerous apparitions which grow vocal on warm nights, lying in wait for fresh souls to consume. They time their eerie cries in unison with the sufferer’s fear. If these demons can catch the soul, they instantly flutter away chittering in evil laughter. Deposits of skulls and bones found on my estate sustain the popular belief that it was once an ancient burial-place. Many ethnologists persist in believing the remains Caucasian. Prior to purchasing and building my estate, the eighteen-room farmhouse had always been feared because the owner’s reputation for black magic, and the unexplained death by violence of his wife. After midnight, one can still hear the rhythmical screaming of shrill note bursting into a kind of pandaemoniac cachinnation which fills all the countryside, and it is not until dawn that they finally quiet down. The spirits walk unseen and foul in lonely places in the mansion, where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. Their seal is engraven in the basement. One night, I awoke during a wild thunderstorm, and the boards in the corridor outside my chamber were creaking loudly. Lightning leapt in through the large window, and loud cracking peals of thunder burst overheard. However, it was the creaking that bothered me—it sounded like people walking up and down. When I finally got up my courage, I opened the door and peered out. Nobody was there. The door to Daisy’s bedroom was shut, and she was probably asleep. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
Timidly, I crept down the front staircase and peered into the shadowy drawing room. As my eyes got used to the dark, I saw something that froze my blood: Someone was sitting in one of the arm chairs. I clenched my teeth and closed my eye. I could hear my heart hammering. Then I opened my eyes again, and a blue flash of lightning lit the room. The dark shape was gone. For a long time I stood in the doorway, staring into darkness. Then I made my way to a table and found a box of matches to light a lamp. The smoky yellowish glow showed that the room was empty. Anyone who tried to leave the room would have had to brush past me. Also, there would have been the sound of footsteps. You can imagine how all this crazy stuff strained my temper—and my imagination. I opened the window—I waited a few minutes first—and standing there getting some fresh air and trying to figure out what could be behind it. After my fear died down, I made my way up the stairs and climbed into bed falling into an exhausted slumber. It was getting late in the morning. Light touched the dark skies with gray. A loose, crystal-smelling wind swept down from the mountains, an autumn chill of wetness. Down from the mountains and into Llanada Villa, where it set the trees hissing. And it even came into the mansion, because the bell in the belfry was ringing and there was no one to ring the bell. The farms in the yard stopped their talk and listened to the enchanting music. It came another wind then, mountain-scattered and fast: it billowed dresses, set damp hair moving; it pushed over pewter vases, and smashed roses and hydrangeas to swirling dust against the emerald green lawns. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
I felt a wave of fright as tangible as a draught of a tomb’s cold clamminess. An entity stretched like titan phantasms beyond all sphere of force and matter, space and time. From every corner of my home, I could hear sepulchral voices of intruding horror. The hellish ancient nightmare fastened itself to my soul. The vague evil was threatening this estate, which gave me a growing amazement which passed slowly through caried degrees of alarm to a state of really acute spiritual fear. Deep and terrible growls continued. What had come had indeed completed its entrance; for the growling and the screaming was now fast fading into a mixed low growling and moaning, proceeding unmistakably from within the walls. The mansion was full of frightful spirits which I knew too well, and three servants rushed across the hall to from whence a low whining came. For a second, nobody dared to turn on the light, then Hans summoned up his courage and pushed the button. One of the three—it is not certain which—shrieked aloud at what sprawled before them among the disordered tables and overturned chairs. I wholly lost consciousness for an instant, though I did not stumble or fall. Kunst lay half-bent on his side in a pool of blood and tarry sickness. He was not quite dead, but twitched silently and spasmodically while his chest heaved. “Quickly, get him out of my sight.” I shouted. “This man needs medical attention immediately!” “Yes, Mrs. Winchester,” my servants replied. Blood tricked along the parquet floors, and left a curious discolouration behing. Bits of shoe-leather and fragments of apparel were scattered about the room. Whatever attacked this man seemed to follow the symmetries of some cosmic geometry unknown to Earth or the solar system. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
It was now sunset, with a great wrinkled sheet of purple and rose stretching half across the sky and the first stars appearing above in the dark horizon. Outside the window there was a gathering crowd and the sound of a panic-struck whirring and fluttering. A cry rose from the crowd. “No one is to be admitted until the medical examiner arrives!” I shouted. Meanwhile frightful changes were taking place on the floor. Desiccated flesh was tight over his skull. Filthy strands of hair were matted over his scalp, tattered lips were drawn away from broken yellow teeth, and, sunken in their sockets, eyes that should be dead were bright with hideous life. I screamed again, desperate with fear. His cadaverous face fell away, and the sight of his caved-in forehead and unblinking eyes from between which thick blood had been oozing would awaken me from my nightmares on countless nights. I was almost convulsed with fright as I stumbled into the kitchen. Shivering afresh with fight, I was aware that there had been unseen things around Llanada Villa—living things—things that were not human. The next day all the countryside was in a panic; and cowed, uncommunicative groups came and went where the fiendish thing had occurred. Darkness fell upon a stricken countryside. Servants banded together and watched the mansion, but it was futile, an ineffective gesture against the vengeful spirits. Still, these bold souls held steadfast. At 3am, the ghouls screamed with such unusual persistence that many could not sleep. It was horrible, yet hardly a surprise. This was nothing more than the spiritually poignant phase of the unravelling horror of my family and fortune being haunted, and I might be the next victim. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
Happy Sarah L. Winchester Day!
“I have not received authorization to visit The Winchester Mansion. However, I have investigated secretly (and quite illegally) for a short time one night and was nearly caught. Came across reference to the place in collection of seventeenth century letters and papers in one of Mrs. Winchester’s libraries where she keeps the rare and forbidden books of old days. Writer denouncing the family as a brood of sorcerers and witches, references to alchemical activities and other less savory rumors—and describes underground stone chambers, pre-Columbian artifacts, et cetera, which are put to ‘foul usage and diabolic praktise.'”
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Make America Safe Again
Many people in the United States of America recognize communism as an overwhelming threat to values, which have been central to their own lives and families. Values shape what men and women see as important in life, how priorities are to be established, and how they create their own places within a given historical context. It is the intensity of commit to a set of values that provides sources of meaning in what otherwise would be a drab and mundane World. This intensity ranges along a continuum from the vigor and fervor of true believer to only qualified confidence in their own beliefs and commitments. To some, values are at the center of self-identities. There are several criteria that form the core values of American families. Americans have drawn upon the values of individualism, the pursuit of happiness, freedom, and equality, which are noteworthy in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution in shaping their historical destiny. The rights and privilege prominently emphasized in the Constitution were designed to place limits on what our government could or could not do. The equality of opportunity is formally inscribed on the Statue of Liberty and also a prominent part of the value system of America. The core values of American life are deeply embedded in historical experiences and traditions. All modern nations are required to create and maintain their society as a moral community. It is through deployment of many aspects of their core values that they are able to achieve this purpose. The values that are drawn upon in this process do not endure very long without modifications. Each generation finds it necessary to take the data from the past and rework it to fit the need of their time. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
Other core values were selected as a result of the extensiveness with which they are held in the general population and for the direction in which society is moving. For example, the importance of intimate relationships is primarily emphasized in individual hopes and aspirations for having a “good marriage.” Other prominent values include consumerism, materialism, and technology. These beliefs and values are clearly evident in lifestyles that continue to be accentuated with the passing of time. No claims are made for the exclusiveness of the values selected. Americans hold the view that the ultimate social reality resides with the individual personally, rather than with the community, the family, or the broader society. Accordingly, the essential feature of social life is that social groups are made up of interacting individuals. We belong to social groups because it is practical and expedient to do so. If it is no longer in our best interests to belong to a particular group, we have a right to disaffiliate. The prominent place of the individual is evident in the right of and freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. The norm calling for recognizing the dignity and worth of each individual is advocated to offset stereotypes based on race, gender, and national origin. Ideas about individualism hold that individuals are unique, have special talents and abilities, and if they work hard enough, they can be successful in life. However, freedom is conditional and dependent upon the options that have been made available to us. How we make choices among options is shaped by our social condition of desires and preferences. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
In the subsequent creation of a civil society, certain basic rights or entitlements grew out of what it means to be human or to be a citizen of the state. The personal freedom accorded to the individual included freedom of speech, freedom of press, and the rights of assembly. The major advantages of political democracy were seen as deriving from permitting citizens to become engaged in civic participation on a widespread basis. The developments during childhood consist of an enormous amount of social learning in order for the child to find his or her place within the complexity of the modern World. Learning to belong requires an awareness of the rules that regulate social conduct. The child must learn that there is a time and place, both for talking and remaining silent; that certain rights of others must be respected; that activities are structured in some prearranged sequence and that performances are evaluated and rewarded or punished accordingly. Belonging and membership reflect the qualities of family bonds, friendship ties, love, career commitments, and other cohesive relationships that offer support for one’s identity. If these relationships are rewarding, then one may proceed with a relatively high degree of confidence in developing personal goals, and plans for the future. However, if one views significant others as being indifferent and unsupportive, experiences of loneliness are likely to follow and the feeling develops that one must rely exclusively on personal resources in times of trouble. “Communism,” its original manifesto stated, “does not propose to ‘capture’ the bourgeois state, but to conquer and destroy it.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
The major problem confronting the people of the United States of America and free peoples everywhere in the first quarter of the 21st century is the threat to peace and freedom presented by the militant aggressiveness of international communism. As society moves away from traditional ideas such as family units, private property, basic human rights, and freedom, the road to a communist regime is already being paved like the crack of doom. Communism pours the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life. American has never witnessed anything like this before. Such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out. Communists are lawless, they are teaching kids to question their gender, and they have a strong hatred for America and traditional America values. It is America that have saved the World. Underneath their skin, communism and liberalism are blood brothers. Sadism to many observers seemed less of a puzzle than masochism. That one wished to hurt others or to dominate them seemed, though not necessarily “good,” quite natural. Mr. Hobbes assumed as a “general inclination of all mankind” the existence of “a perpetual and restless desire of power after power that ceaseth only in Death.” For him the wish for power has no diabolical quality but is a perfectly rational result of man’s desire for pleasure and security. From Mr. Hobbes to Mr. Hitler, who explains the wish for domination as the logical result of the biologically conditioned struggle for survival of the fittest, the lust for power has been explained as a part of human nature which does not warrant any explanation beyond the obvious. Masochistic strivings, however, tendencies directed against one’s own self, seem to be a riddle. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
How should one understand the fact that people not only want to belittle and weaken and hurt themselves, but even enjoy doing so? Does not the phenomenon of masochism contradict our whole picture of the human psyche as directed toward pleasure and self-preservation? How can one explain that some people are attracted by and tend to incur what we all seem to go to such length to avoid: pain and suffering? There is a phenomenon, however, which proves that suffering and weakness can be the aim of human striving: the masochistic perversion. Here we find that people quite consciously want to suffer in one way or another and enjoy it. In the masochistic perversion, a person feels sexual excitement when experiencing pain inflicted upon one by another person. However, this is not the only form of masochistic perversion. Frequently it is not the actual suffering of pain that is sought for, but the excitement and satisfaction aroused by being physically bound, made helpless and weak. Often all that is wanted in the masochistic perversion is to be made weak “morally,” by being treated or spoken to like a little child, or by being scolded or humiliated in different ways. In the sadistic perversion, we find the satisfaction derived from corresponding devices, that is, from hurting other persons physically, from tying them with ropes or chains, or from humiliating them by action or words. The masochistic perversion with it conscious and intentional enjoyment of pain or humiliation caught the eye of psychologist and writers earlier than the masochistic character (or moral masochism). #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
More and more, however, one recognized how closely the masochistic tendencies of the kind we described first are akin to the sexual perversion, and that both types of masochism are essentially one and the same phenomenon. Certain psychologists assumed that since there are people who want to submit and to suffer, there must be an “instinct: which has this very aim. Sociologists, like Dr. Vierkand, came to the same conclusion. The first one to attempt a more thorough theoretical explanation was Dr. Freud. He originally thought that sado-masochism was essentially a sexual phenomenon. Observing sado-masochistic practices in little children, he assumed that sado-masochism was a “partial drive” which regularly appears in the development of the sexual instinct. He believed that sado-masochism tendencies in adults are due to a fixation of a person’s psychosexual development on an early level or to a later regression to it. Later on, Dr. Freud became increasingly aware of the importance of those phenomena which he called moral masochism, a tendency to suffer not physically, but mentally. He stressed also the fact that masochistic and sadistic tendencies were always to be found together in spite of their seeming contradiction. However, he changed his theoretical explanation of masochistic phenomena. Assuming that there is a biologically given tendency to destroy which can be directed either against others or against oneself, Dr. Freud suggested that masochism is essentially the product of this so-called death-instinct. If directed against one’s own person, he further suggested that this death-instinct, which we cannot observe directly, amalgamates itself with the sexual instinct and in the amalgamation appears as masochism, and as sadism if directed against others. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Dr. Freud assumed that this very mixture with the sexual instinct protect humans from the dangerous effect the unmixed death-instinct would have. According to Dr. Freud, if one fails to amalgamate destructiveness with pleasures of the flesh, then humans have only the choice of either destroying themselves or destroying others. This theory is basically different from Dr. Freud’s original assumption about sado-masochism. There, sadomasochism was essentially a sexual phenomenon, but in the newer theory it is essentially a nonsexual phenomenon, the sexual factor in it being only due to the amalgamation of the death-instinct with the sexual instinct. One of the more extreme forms of pathological thinking, is paranoid thinking. The case of an individual suffering from paranoic delusions is clear to the psychiatrist and to most laymen as well. The man or woman who tells us that everybody is “after him,” or “after her,” this is one’s colleagues, one’s friends, and even one’s spouse are conspiring to murder one is typically recognized by most as being insane, but this is not always the case. On what basis is this considered insanity? Quite obviously not because the accusations one makes are logically impossible. It could be that one’s enemies, one’s acquaintances, even one’s family have united to destroy one; in fact such things have happened. We can not truthfully answer the unfortunate patient and say that what one assumes is not possible. We can only argue that it is very unlikely; that it is unlikely due to the infrequency of such events in general and the character of one’s spouse and friends in particular. (However, character is very important, as there are people who are around a lot of seedy people, whom they cannot trust, and this is not always by choice.) #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Yet we shall not convince the patient. For one, reality is based on logical possibility not on probability. This attitude is exactly the basis of one’s illness. One’s contact with reality rests on the small basis of its compatibility with the laws of logical thinking, and does not require the examination of realistic probability. It does not require it because the paranoic is not capable of making this examination. As with every psychotic patient, one’s contact with reality is exceedingly thin and brittle. Reality, for one, is mainly what exists within oneself, one’s own emotions, fears, and desires. The World outside is the mirror or the symbolic representation of one’s inner World. However, in contract to the schizophrenic person, many paranoid persons have preserved one aspect of the sane thinking: the requirement of logical possibility. They have merely relinquished the other, the other, the aspect of realistic probability. If only possibility is required as a condition for truth, it is easy to achieve certainty. If, on the other hand, probability is required, there are relatively few thins to be certain of. This is indeed what makes paranoid thinking so “attractive” in spite of the suffering it causes. It saves man from doubt. It guarantees a sense of certainty, which transcends most insights to which sane thinking can lead. It is easy for people to recognize paranoid thinking in the individual case of a paranoid psychotic. However, to recognize paranoid thinking when it is shred by millions of other people and approved by the authorities who lead them, is more difficult. A case in point is the conventional thinking about Russia. Most Americans today think about Russia in a paranoid fashion; namely, they ask what is possible rather than what is probable. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Indeed, it is possible that President Putin wants to conquer us by force. It is possible that he makes peace proposals in order to make us unaware of the danger. It is also possible that his whole argument with the Chinese Communists about coexistence is nothing but a trick to make us believe that he wants peace in order to al the better surprise us. If we think only of possibilities, then indeed there is no chance for realistic and sensile political action. Sane thinking means not only to think of possibilities, which in fact are always relatively easy to recognize, but to think also of probabilities. That means to examine the realistic situations, and to predict to some extent an opponent’s probable action by means of an analysis of all the factors and motivations that influence one’s behaviour. To make this point perfectly clear, I want to state that my emphasis on sane versus paranoid thinking does not imply judgment that the Russians might not have all the sinister and deceptive plans just mentioned. Instead, it insists that we must conduct a thorough and dispassionate examination of the facts and that logical possibilities as such proves nothing and means little. Another pathological mechanism which threatens realistic and effective political thinking is that of projection. Everyone is familiar with this mechanism in its cruder forms when it appears in individual cases. Everybody knows the hostile and destructive person who accused everybody else of being hostile and pictures oneself and being innocent and victimized. There are thousands of marriages that continue to exist on the basis of this projective mechanism. Each of the partners accuses the other of what in reality is one’s own problem, and hence succeeds in being entirely occupied with the problem of one’s partner instead of facing one’s own. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Again what is easily seen in individual cases is not seen when the same projective mechanism is shared by millions and supported by their leaders. For example, during the First World War, the peoples in the allied countries believed that the Germans were vile Huns, killing innocent babies and that they were the true personification of all evil to the extent that even the music of Mr. Bach and Mr. Beethoven became part of the Devil’s territory. On the other hand the accusers of the Huns were fighting only for the noblest purposes, for freedom, for peace, for democracy, and so on. The Germans, strangely enough, believed exactly the same things about the allies. What is the result? The enemy appears as the embodiment of all evil because all evil that I feel in my self is projected on to him or her. Logically, after this has happened, I consider myself as the embodiment of all good since the evil has been transferred to the other side. The result is indignation and hatred against the enemy and uncritical, narcissistic self-glorification. This can create a mood of common mania and shared passion of hate. Nevertheless, it is pathological thinking, dangerous when it leads to war and deadly when war means destruction. Our attitudes toward communism, the Soviet Union, and Communist China are, to a considerable extent demonstrations of projective thinking. Indeed, the Stalinist terror system was inhuman, cruel, and revolting, although no more so than the terror in a number of countries that we call free—no more so, for instance than was the terror of Mr. Trujillo or Mr. Batista. #RandlphHarris 10 of 18
I do not mention non-communist cruelty or callousness as being extenuating factors in judging the Stalin regime, because obviously cruelties and inhumanities do not cancel out each other. I mention them to show that the indignation of many people against Mr. Stalin is not as genuine as they believe it to be. If it were, they would feel just as indignant about other cases of cruelty and callousness, whether the perpetrators happen to be their political enemies or not. However, more than that the Stalin regime has gone. Russia is not a conservative police regime, which is by no means a desirable thing if one cherishes freedom and individuality, but which also should not arose the kind of deep human indignation that the Stalinist system merited. It is fortunate that the Russian regime has changed from cruel terrorism to the methods of a conservative police state, but the conflict in Ukraine is causing friction and even dividing families of mixed ethnicities. It also shows lack of sincerity in those lovers of freedom who are most vocal in their hatred of the Soviet Union that they seem hardly to be aware of the considerable change that has occurred. Many still continue to believe that communism is the epitome of evil, and that we, the free World, including our allies, are the personification of all that is good. The result is the narcissistic and unrealistic picture of the West as the fighter for good, for freedom, and for humanity, and of communism as the enemy of all that is human and decent. The Communist Chinese, especially in their way of looking at the West, follow the same mechanism. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
If projection is mixed with paranoid thinking, as is the cause during a war and also in the “cold war,” we have, indeed, a dangerously explosive psychological mixture, which prevents sane and anticipatory thinking. The difference between the various answers is the difference between mental health and mental sickness, between suffering and joy, between stagnation and growth, between life and death, between good and evil. All answer that can be qualified as good have in common that they are consistent with the very nature of life, which is continuous birth and growth. All answers that can be qualified as bad have in common that they conflict with the nature of life, that they are conducive to stagnation, and eventually to death. Indeed, at the moment man or woman is born, life ask one’s a question, the question of human existence. One must answer this question at every moment of one’s life. One must answer it, not one’s mind, or one’s body, but he or she, the real person, one’s feet, one’s hands, one’s eyes, one’s stomach, one’s mind, one’s feeling, one’s real—not an imagined or abstracted—person. There are only a limited number of answers to the question of existence. We find these answers in the history of religion, from the most primitive to the highest. We find them also in the variety of characters, from the fullest sanity to the deepest psychosis. Each individual represents in oneself the whole of humanity and its evolution. We find individuals who represent human beings on the most primitive level of history, and others who represent humankind as it will be thousands of years from now. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
The answer to life that correspond to the reality of human existence is conducive to mental health. What is generally understood by mental health, however, is negative, rather than positive; the absence of sickness, rather than the presence of well-being. Actually there is even very little discussion in the psychiatric and psychological literature of what constitutes well-being. Well-being is the ability to be creative, to be aware, and to respond; to be independent and fully active, and by this very fact to be one with the World. To be concerned with being, not with having; to experience joy in the very act of living, and to consider living creatively as the only meaning of life. Well-being is not an assumption in the mind of a person. It is expressed in one’s whole body, in the way one walks, talks, in the tonus of one’s muscle. Certainly, anyone who wants to achieve this aim must struggle against many basic trends of modern culture. One, the idea of a split between intellect and affect, an idea which has been prevalent from Mr. Descartes to Dr. Freud. In this whole development (to which there are, of course, exceptions) the assumption is made that only the intellect is rational and that affect, by its very nature, is irrational. Dr. Freud has made this assumption very explicitly by saying that love by its very nature is neurotic, infantile, irrational. His aim was actually to help humans succeed in dominating irrational affect by intellect; or, to put it into his own words, “Where there was Id, there shall be Ego.” Yet this dogma of the split between affect and thought does not correspond to the reality of human existence, and is destructive of human growth. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
We cannot understand human beings fully nor achieve the aim of well-being unless we overcome the idea of this split, restore to man and woman his and her original unity, and recognize that the split between affect and thought, body and mind, is nothing but a product of our own thought and does not correspond to the reality of man or woman. The other obstacle to the achievement of well-being, deeply rooted in the spirit of modern society, is the fact of man’s dethronement from his supreme place. The nineteenth century said “God is dead”; the twentieth century could say “Man is dead”; and the twenty first century could say, “Man is a parasite peculiar to Earth, which tolerates his presence for a little while. He exists nowhere else in the cosmos, and he does not exist here for long. A while, a few chessboard wars, which he fights himself—You begin to understand.” Means have been transformed into ends, the production and consumption of things has become the aim of life, to which living is subordinated. We produce things that act like men and men that act like things. Man has transformed himself into a thing and worships the products of his own hands; he is alienated from himself and has regressed to idolatry, even though he uses God’s name. Mr. Emerson already saw that “things are in the saddle and ride mankind.” Today many of us see it. The achievement of well-being is possible only under one condition: if we put man back into the saddle. Good faith: This means willingness to be bound by an agreement into which one has voluntarily entered. However, this in turn is necessarily conditional on the good faith of the other parties to the agreement. It seems to be not only an explicit principle of law but a feature of the way in which conscience develops that a person does not feel morally bound—does not disapprove one’s own actions—if one violates an agreement extracted by another party through force or fraud. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
This does not apply to inherited loyalties, until they move into the area of deliberate and self-conscious choice. In the agreements made in actual life, threats are often used which come close to the use of force, bargaining occurs parties of unequal power, and biased misrepresentations are made which approach willful deception. The perfectly free and equal agreement is therefore an ideal, but one very useful as a standard for judging the quality of agreements, particularly for predicting their durability as a basis for planning. Good faith must be manifest in the process of discussion itself, in the consistent maintenance of the conditions of genuine discussion. Filibustering, willful postponement of decision by calling for more facts and study, frustration of parliamentary procedure, and persistent arguments ad hominem which impugn the good faith of others—these tactics soon dissipate the mutual trust without a minimum of which discussion cannot long continue. In industrial relations, where bargaining in good faith is required by law, the government defines good faith as the willingness to continue to talk. This seems to imply very little, but over time it has come to accomplish a lot. As trust in the good faith of others increases, discussion is facilitated by the greater ease with which clashes of interests can be confronted and dealt with in a matter-of-fact manner. Although these five preconditions for genuine discussion may occur, they offer no guarantee that the discussion which follows will produce agreement and a binding commitment. Discussion may break down through the clash of vital interest which appear to be irreconcilable. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Or a decision may be necessary due to the force of events, before there can be thorough discussion, so that some are forced into compliance by others. In some instances, through timidity or lack of interest, one party will submit to the proposal of another without discussion. Contrary to the naïve notion that deciding means only to take a vote, the many whose interests are only slightly affected may willingly defer to the few to whom the outcome is vital. In those cases where discussion is not completed before decision and action must be taken, or where passive compliance takes the place of vigorous participation and agreement, it would be wrong to speak of a breakdown of the discussion. No doubt many discussions fall short in one way or another of the model described above, and this is only one of the imperfections to be expected. Rarely, for example, does a discussion end in unanimity, except in the proximate sense the marginalized groups consent to majority rule as long as their vital interests are not too severely transgressed. It is not defensible to insist that genuine discussion can only occur within the confines of some fixed rules of etiquette, any more than within fixed rules of grammar—although some etiquette and some grammar are indispensable. Attempts to mange discussion through the imposition of rules from without usually have the opposite effect from the improvement intended; any deliberative body almost by definition must be the custodian of its own rules of discussion. That discussion can and does improve is evident in many examples. It has done so, however, only where it has been pursued as a value by participants who have retained their sovereign equality and the other minimum conditioned noted above. To set up an independent power to compel arbitration as a means of guaranteeing agreement in discussion is to destroy discussion and the whole principle of moral commitments to voluntary agreements. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
The history of World religions manifests the Spiritual Presence in as an anticipation of the New Being. Spirit Christology elucidates the unique presence of the Spirit in Jesus who is the Christ. However, our concern here is with the Spiritual Community, with those who receive the New Being At first the regenerated human is but a “babe in Christ,” manifesting many of the characteristics of the natural human in jealousy, strife, et cetera, until one apprehends the need of a fuller reception of the Holy Spirit to dwell in one’s regenerated spirit—making it God’s sanctuary. The unregenerate human is wholly dominated by soul and body. The regenerate human has one’s spirit quickened, and indwelt by the Holy Spirit, yet may be governed by soul and body because one’s spirit is compressed and bound. The spiritual human has one’s spirit liberated from bondage to the soul to be the organ of the Holy Spirit in mind and body. It is then that, by the Holy Spirit’s power, one’s volition is brought into harmony with God in all His laws and purposes, and the whole outer human into self-control. This it is written, “The fruit of the Spirit…is self-control” reports Galatians 5.23. It is not only love, joy, peace, longsuffering, and gentleness, manifested through the channel of the soul—the personality—but in a true dominion over the “World” of oneself the fruit is: every thought brought into captivity, in the same obedience to the will of the Father as was manifested in Christ; His spirit “ruled” also from the chamber of the will, so that one is of a “cool spirit” and well as what is in one’s mind; and one’s body so obedient to the helm of the will that it is a disciplined and alert instrument for God to energize and empower—an instrument to be handled intelligently as a vehicle for service, and not any longer master of the man, or the mere tool of the ultimate negative and unruly desires. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
If we recall that all ambiguities of life are rooted in the separation and interplay of essential and existential elements of being, it would seem that, once a transcendent reunion of these elements is achieved by the Spiritual Presence, there is always New Being in History. Ambiguity seems banished; in fact, rendered impossible. However, such is not the case, for existence cannot be denied, and the conditions of existence postulate ambiguity. We reconcile unambiguous life with de facto existential ambiguity by point out the fragmentary character of the unambiguous life produced by the Spirit. It is fragmentary because subject to time and space. It is incomplete in the sense that it is anticipatory. Thus, the No of the existential condition is maintained, not by injecting ambiguity into unambiguous life, but by show the anticipatory and hence fragmentary nature of our reception of and participation in the New Being. The possession of unambiguous life integrally, id est, beyond time and space, is the problem of eschatology. And God said: Let the Earth put forth grass, herb yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit after its kind. And it was so…and God saw it was good. When a tree is wantonly cut down, its voice rings from one end of the Earth to the other. When you besiege a city, do not destroy the trees thereof; you may eat them but you must not cut them down. A humans’ life is sustained by trees. Just as others planted for you, plant for the sake of your children. If you had a sapling in your hand and were told that the Messiah had come, first plant the sapling, then go out to greet him. And pleasure be sure to donate to the Sacramento Fire Department, as they are not receiving all of their resources. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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Warning to Our Patrons: This Establishment is Purported to be Haunted
Whispers in the distance as a pale, vaporous moon lights the mansion. Shadows are deep. Then from across the hall came the sound of a shrill scream. A chair scraped and feet hit the floor of the corridor, walking away toward the sound of the scream. A door opened and closed. The room was illuminated only by the two ornate tabletop candelabra, their candles white, dripping wax. My floating thoughts were being drawn unwillingly from their free-roaming hinterland towards consciousness. There is in my heart, a dragging sorrow that seems to coagulate the blood, so that movement in my veins is slothful, wearisome, somehow making all effort to exist a ponderous affair. However, the whispering, almost sibilant, voice dispels much of that inner lassitude. “Sarah…” it calls again. I walk to the door and stand as if fearing to touch it. The voice said, “Come,” and I pulled the door open the rest of the way and went outside, past the desk and the empty chair that had been just outside the door of my chamber. With my heart beating wildly, I crept downstairs. After I made it around the corner, I was in front of the main hall. There was an empty desk. I walked past it and to the front door. It was bolted. I threw the bolt open and twist the handle, the metal’s coldness leaping along my arm like iced energy released from a brumal host. The shock is mild against the damp chill of my own body. I pull the door open and the darkness beyond is more dense; it seems to sell into the foyer, a waxing shadow. An illusion. I shrink away, reluctant to make contact with this fresh darkness. My vision adjusts, and the inkiness dissipates as if weakened by its own sudden growth. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
That fall on the stairs: I remember thinking that it had opened a crack in my mind, just enough to let in glimpses of a world beyond—a World I never wanted to see. As I advanced again, timorously rather than cautiously, passing through the doorway to stand shivering on the veranda, the stars were bright diamonds in the sky. Was one of them my star of destiny? Outside, the torches flicked with the burn of pitch and there were screams and glass shattering and the lusty voices sang. Walking through the wet grass, the droplets glittering like emeralds in the moonlight. The shape of a body showed in the wet grass, where he had lain facedown under a fallen tree. The footprints were sharp in the grass, and his feet had left dark, wet blotches where he had climbed the rock. He had lain there for a long time. Long enough it was for time to have lost its means. I turned back to look at my house, just before the trees grew so thick as to obstruct my view. I saw light on the glass of one of the Observational Tower’s thick windows. However, it was no more than a hint of moonlight. Its light fell upon his upturned face, on his sunken, brilliant eyes and the puffy blue of jowls on which the beard had started to grow, then stopped. The moonlight shone down on the World of trees and rocks of which he was a part, and gave it life. The night was warm. In the valley, the rain had long been gone. Flowers were pushing up through the moist Earth; frogs were Panpiping in every low spot. All through the warm night, squadrons of birds were passing across the face of the moon. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
Time passed, but whether it was minutes or hours, or whether there were still such things as minutes and hours, I could not have said. Time had no meaning for me in this new, strange World. Time passed, because the moon was higher and its light stronger and warmer on my flesh, but I did not sense it passage. I wondered how long my butler had been sprawled out on the law, dead? I moved close to a great evergreen tree whose limbs reached high above the tops of the other trees around it, and felt the quick chill as its shadow fell across me. A few minutes later I was sitting in the drawing room. I went along the corridor. It was as though I was being led through the almost-darkness, although I felt no physical touch upon me; I saw no physical presence beside me. But I walked confidently, although quietly on tiptoe, knowing I was not walk into anything nor stumble. The hallways echoed with the sounds of footsteps, and the voices of uncountable spirits could be heard engaged in unintelligible chatter or quietly chanting or singing hymns that droned on into the night. As the door to the kitchen swung open, I turned to see who was there. To my amazement, nobody was there. I stared for the door, but it swung shut before I could reach it. At the edge of my field of vision something moved. It drifted noiselessly through the mansion, like a puff of luminous cloud. It settled on the gasolier above my head, and I twisted my neck back and stared up at it. I could feel it warmth. Petrified with terror, I suddenly froze. In the silence there came a slight sound from the window—the shutter must have rattled in the night-wind. I had a curious desire to look out of that window at the glittering roofs and spires of Llanada Villa. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
What I did succeed in doing was tiptoeing to the fifth floor, then I grew bold enough to climb the last creaking staircase to the top of the Observational Tower. There in the narrow hall, outside the bolted door with the covered keyhole, I often heard sounds which filled me with an indefinable dread—the dread of vague wonder and brooding mystery. It was not that the sounds were hideous, for they were not; but that they held vibrations suggesting nothing on this globe of Earth, and at certain intervals they assumed a symphonic quality which I could hardly conceive as produced by one player. It must have been the apparitions from the Underworld beneath the kitchen floor, with its endless tunnels stretching away into the dark. I listened at the door and heard the shrieking viol swell into a chaotic babel of sound; a pandemonium which would have led me to doubt my own shaking sanity had there not come from behind that barred portal a piteous proof that the horror was real—the awful, inarticulate cry which only a mute can utter, and which rises only in moments of the most terrible fear or anguish. I knocked repeatedly at the door, but received no response. Afterward, I waited in the black hallway, shivering with cold and fear, till I heard the poor musician’s feeble effort to raise from the floor by the assistance of a chair. I renewed my rapping. I heard someone stumble to the window and close both shutter and sash, then stumble to the door, which he falteringly unfastened to admit me. As the door opened, I walked into the room, but there was no one inside. Shaking pathetically, I sat on the floor for some time inactive. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
Black vapor lay close over the room like a carpet. It was dense and impenetrable, dull, and lifeless. The chill had come on me again, numbing my nerves, dulling my labouring brain. As the black mist closed over me, all feeling went from my hands. Cold—terrible, numbing cold—ate its way like acid into my flesh and bones. The mist was draining the warmth—the life—out of me, through my hands and arms—sucking me dry. I swayed to my feet, then collapsed onto the floor. I lay there helpless for a long time. Little by little the moonlight revived me. Little by little the numbness went out of my muscles, and I could move my legs and grip things with my fingers. I pulled my legs under me and got to my feet, learning against the wall for support. I stared at the stairs. The black fog that lay on the stairs was deadly, draining the life-force out of whatever touched it. It was death! Something rattled in the shadow of the observational tower. Its black runways ribbed the glowing floor of the tower on every side. It made a wall of cold about the place where I was. The sun rose, bringing a scathing golden light that shrived my pallid flesh, allowing me to make my way down the stairs. Llanada Villa was full of life. It was alive with growing things, and the white mist that rose from them and clothed them filled it in the brim with a broth of light through which demons and apparitions cut sharp black lines of cold. There was another night, and I stood in the bright light of the shrinking moon, staring at that speck of golden light. There was something I should know about it—something that was hidden in that other World I had been in. There was something that drew me to it—an invisible thread, stretched across space through the white night, binding me to it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
Sometimes, visitors and staff get the impression that the spirits occupying The Winchester Mystery House are oblivious to the fact tht their time has passed. Spectral sounds have resonated throughout the historic mansion on occasion. Footsteps walking around the building have been heard after the mansion is closed. Some have told of the sound of harp music emanating from the vacant front parlor after closing hours. At times, the reverberations have been so intense that they have set off the electronic alarm system. In 2010, a tour guide apparently caught a glimpse of the spirits responsible for the strange sounds. Once quiet evening, while walking through the front hall after hours, he was surprised by the sound of music. When he walked into the large front drawing room, he was astonished to see a group of people dressed in nineteenth-century attire moving about and talking. The tour guide left the room and walked to one of the offices to ask another staff member about the costume party across the hall. The staff member, who was unaware of any parties scheduled in the mansion at that hour, accompanied the young man back to the drawing room. The room was deathly quiet. Dust covering the tables and furniture indicated that no one had used the room for quite a while.
For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
For the Sake of All Our Souls
There was a strange melody echoing throughout Llanada Villa. I had known it, somehow, when I had awakened this morning. I knew it more surely now, staring out of the library windows into the early afternoon sunlight slanting down among the mansion to cast a pattern of light and shadow. I knew that soon, perhaps even today, something important was going to happen. Whether good or bad I did not know, but I darkly suspected. And with reason; there are few good things that may unexpectedly happen to a person, things, that is, of lasting importance. Disaster can strike from innumerable directions, in amazingly diverse ways. A voice said, “Hey, Mrs. Winchester,” and I turned away from the widow, slowly. That in itself was strange for it was not my manner to move slowly. However, this time something made me turn slowly from the window. Something upstairs moaned and scrabbled and I heard the screech of rent timber. As I walked across the room, there was a heavy scrape from above as something at the top of the house took its first step down to me. Puffs of plaster dust were shaken out of the library’s ceiling around its wooden supports. I walked over to the window, and stood looking out. The sun had moved hardly at all. Yet the shadow pattern inside was different. I strode from the window over to the desk and banged my fist down. That is when I heard a loud bestial roar of something surprised, maybe even hurt. There were more noises from above. The entire house seemed to screech and shudder. It shifted. Floors buckled and walls bellowed inward and outward with shock and repercussion. Noise came in savage and frenetic squalls and faded abruptly. Drafts erupted and rippled and were gone. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
The music, though, had entirely ceased. Its absence was unnerving in the house, in the fine, falling precipitation of dust. There was a rumble and a roar from a landing above. It was a cry of primeval triumph. Then something sauntered and crashed downwards. I thought I heard music again. Demonic mutterings of thunder, and Charonian shadows athwart the walls. The thud of hooves was imperious down the stairs. A great physical faintness had overwhelmed me. My arms, my legs, lay like dead things. My heart was fluttering weakly. The curtain billowed in the breeze, though I was sure I had closed the casement. And then suddenly I threw back my head and screamed! For a dark universe crashed and shuddered in pain and rage above my head. I made my way into the corridor. There were many doors in the gloom of its considerable length. However, there was light under only one of them. It was pale in a narrow strip and softly inviting. I needed to get my bearings and could not do so in the darkness. The door opened on to a parlor lit by opaque globes of glass suspended from the ceiling by electrical wires, the wires covered by black fabric woven into plaits. It was now night, because outside the narrow windows all was dark. Cold perspiration broke out on my forehead due to the abysmal horrors of my mansion. It was acutely uncanny, even when frightful and uncanny things were common to heard the rumble of a thunderstorm gathering over Llanada Villa. This sound naturally stirred me. I walked up a flight of stairs, my footsteps echoing loudly in the stillness, and into a long, panelled room, much lighter than the one below. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
And where were my servants? The house seemed deathly quiet. Moonlight blazed over the dark bulk of the house, silvering the slates and spilling along hallways like pooled water. Shadows were threatening to overwhelm the house. However, my eye was drawn, most of all, to the mesmerizing orange glow coming from the fourth floor. I stood motionless for several seconds, or so it seemed. Torrential rain fell causing the light to dim. The extreme, almost nocturnal darkness of the sky caused me to stumble sadly, but I was guided by the frequent flashes of lighting. I felt suddenly too weak in spirit to go further. It was getting chilly. The stormy vigil caused me to reflect on my ghastly night. My mind turned to that odd question which had kept recurring since the deaths of my husband and daughter. Why had not the demons taken their victims in natural order? With what manner of far-reaching tentacles did it prey? In the midst of these reflections, as if dramatically arranged to intensify them, there fell near by a terrific bolt of lightning followed by the sound of sliding Earth. At the same time the wolfish wind rose to demonic crescendos of ululation. I was sure that the Observational Tower had been struck again. As I went to inspect the damage, the rain howled deafeningly so. Clutching at the edge of the table, I stood there swaying. The events of the past few hours rose before me in all their horror now, and I could see the black significance of every detail. As I entered the Observational Tower, it was cloaked in gloom, and a narrow corridor stretched before me. The floor was littered with rubble and fallen masonry; the ceiling interlaced with a thousand cobwebs. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Feeling the strange tendrils of a cancerous horror whose roots reaching into illimitable pasts and fathomless abysms of the night that broods beyond time, I stumbled forward, my eyes quickly accustoming themselves to the half-light from the almost opaque windows. At the end of the corridor a second door barred my passage. I thrust it open—and stood swaying there on the sill staring inward. From the skylights, a sprinkling of stars was visible for some of the clouds had cleared. Beyond was a small room, barely ten feet square, with low-raftered ceiling. And by the light of the open door, I saw side by side in the center of the floor—two white wood coffins. How long I stood there leaning weakly against the stone all I do not know. There was an odor of an ancient grave drifting out the chamber. In one of the coffins lie my butler. Dieter Hulsmann, was dead. And on what remained of his chewed and gouged head, there was no longer a face. Once again, the thunderstorm starting brewing. I believed that my mind was partly unhinged by the evens, and I was in fear of opening the other coffin. That shock had done something to my brain, and I could think only of the quest for a horror now grown to a cataclysmic stature in my imagination. The scenes of this night would alone have been enough to unnerve any ordinary person. Baleful primal shadows of unholy size, and grotesqueness leered above me like the pillars of some hellish nightmare; thunder, hushing the clawing wind, admitted but little rain. Beyond the coffins in the background, illumined by faint flashes of filtered lightning, rose spirits. History had led me to build this mansion. History, indeed, was all I had after everything else ended in mocking Satanism. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
I now believed that the lurking fear was no material thing, but ghosts that rode the midnight lightening. There came a seeming echo of howling, shrill, faint, and eerie. I walked unresistingly to the window sill. Behind e was the blackness of an unknown chamber. I was afraid, but hid my fear. As I raised my glance, I saw glistening in the distance two demonic reflections, two reflections glowing with a baneful and unmistakable effulgence, and provoking maddeningly nebulous memories. I stopped automatically, though lacking the brain to retreat. The eyes approached, yet of the thing that bore them I could distinguish only a claw. But what a claw! Then far overheard I heard a faint crashing. It was the wild thunder of the mountain, raised to hysteric fury, and those eyes still stared with vacuous viciousness. I ran, staggering. I blundered through the hallway and to the elevator. As I took the elevator down nine stories, I breathed deeply, fished out my handkerchief and mopped my face. My hand was quivering like a grass stalk in a breeze, as I experienced virtual convulsions of fright. As I came back to the main house, I stood looking up at the tower. It was a peaceful, Arcadian scene, but I knew there was something sinister lurking about. Everything seemed to me tainted with a loathsome contagion, and inspired by a noxious alliance with distorted hidden powers. Through the precipitous abysses of my haunted mansion, I stumbled upon a passageway and with great determination, I was eager to reach the innermost secret of the fear, which I had once more come to deem definite, material, and organic. The moon no longer shone through the skylights and a bone chilling breeze blew out my candle and left me in stark blackness. Every second I was consumed with a mixture of fear and curiosity. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
The apparition came abruptly, a demon, scurrying from pits remote and unimaginable, a hellish panting stifled grunting, and burst through the wall—a loathsome night spawned flood or organic corruption more devastatingly hideous than the blackest conjurations of mortal madness and morbidity. God knows how many there were—there must have been hundreds. These demons were deformed, dwarfed, hairy devils. In spite of my daze of fright and disgust, I did not run. These ghoulish beasts where what was lurking in the walls of my home. They were the embodiment of all the snarling chaos and grinning fear that lurk in the darkness. I am afraid I am not mad—I hoped at first that I might be, but I was not. I am not now. Llanada Villa is perplexing. It also produced a music which enchanted me for hours with strains I have never heard before; strains which must have been of its own devising. To describe their exact nature is impossible for this music was immortal. They were a kind of fugue, with recurrent passages of the most captivating quality. Those haunting notes I had remembered, and had often hummed and whistled inaccurately to myself. Voices drifted down out of the darkness like gossip from another World. But to me in the night another voice was clearer, louder, more insistent—now like the striking of crystal cymbals, now like an elfin chuckling, always a breathless, never-ending whisper. I stood in the full moonlight, my face turned up to receive it, drinking in its brightness. It tingled in me like a draft from the things I had forgotten, in another World. It dissolved the dull ache of cold that was in my body and mind, that stiffened my swollen limbs, and lay like an icy nugget behind my eyes. It soaked into me, and into the World about me, so that every corner of my mansion shone with pale light, white and vaporous, as far as I could see. It was a strange World. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
At Midnight, on the night of December 5th 1889, Mrs. Winchester and her niece Daisy made themselves comfortable on a third floor landing outside one of the haunted rooms and settled down for a all-night vigil. At 1am they heard the sound of bare feet running across the floor, then knocking sounds as if someone was rapping with their knuckles on the bare boards. Other noises followed in quick succession—a hallow cough and a rustling—suggesting that a presence was making itself known. By 3am, Mrs. Winchester assumed that the show was over and was planning to retire to bed leaving Daisy on the landing, but before she could do so Mrs. Winchester saw a sight that was to haunt her for the rest of her life. A closet door swung open and the figure of her husband, attired in a Navy suit, with his head inclining downwards, and one had pressed upon the chest as if in pain, strode slowly towards her. The specter advanced toward Mrs. Winchester, and passed right through her. Mrs. Winchester recollected nothing for several hours afterwards.
For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
At this Point the Play Starts Again
A man’s family can be responsible for his success or his failure. Instead of tearing someone down, you should build them up. If you want something done, go to the busy man or woman, he or she will make time. I like those antique TV shows such as “Father Knows Best,” “The Bachelor Father,” “Dennis the Menace” and “Hazel” because they show you what America and family life should be like, and they take my mind off of problems. Although some victims have a lot to be disappointed about, but so many people are unreasonably hard on America. However, if you do not like America so much and everything is so bad, then flee to those other countries you hold with so much regard. We will not miss you. No one ever stops to think about the hardships America has to face. It is always, “What can America do for me?” or “What can I get out of America?” but you ever stop to think how hard it is to accommodate millions of pilgrims pouring into towns that are already has post terrorism and postwar tribulations? America endures to many challenges because of the miracles it produces, which causes sudden flows of masses of cure-seekers. The variety of complaints that people bring to America and which they hope to be healed are enormous: headaches, asthma, and sciatica; calcification of the spine, various cancers, and neurofibromatosis (which cases tumors to grow on nerves); thyroid, sexual infections, COVID, circulation, intestinal, liver, heart, and middle-ear trouble; brain diseases, sinusitis and arthritis. Some have sustained injuries to their larynxes, dislocated their hips, and endured tremors and various forms of paralysis. Others had cerebral palsy, scoliosis, angina, epilepsy, sleeplessness, tuberculosis, and ulcers. Additionally, native Americans’ have been damages by years of war, followed by shortages of medical care and adequate housing. What is more, occupiers, in many American cities, have been committed to the idea that, for justice’s sake, the American standard of living should remain very limited. This is causing many people to work 16 hours a day or two or three jobs, something American medical officials perceive has contributed to an “alarming decline” of people’s health. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
The health of women, in American as in other parts of the World, has been especially imperiled after 911 and the wars. The consequences of rape, sometimes on multiple occasions, are several, among them unwanted pregnancy and rampant venereal disease. Women carry these burdens alongside many others. Since so many men are dead or remain in captivity, or come home unable to work, they are the ones who begin the process of clearing away the rubble left behind in their homes and communities. They take care of the children, procure shelter, trade wedding rings and other valuable objects to pay the mortgage and car notes, or for education expenses. Many men and women come home from war with disabilities. In August of 2022, 5 million or 27 percent of all veterans had a service-connected disability. Many of them are amputees, have sustained brain injuries, or have become blind. Many veterans struggle with poverty, unemployment, suicidal thoughts, homelessness, and understanding the new normal in their personal and professional relationships. Once they are done serving their country, their next journey is to overcome the wounds of war, deal with the battles at home, both personal and professional, and still find the courage, strength and wisdom to help restore America that that “shinning city on a hill.” However, it is important to keep in mind that not all veterans are wounded when they come home. Instead, it is important to realize that because of their service in the war, they are ready to meet tremendous challenges, and that they have many skills and talents and the discipline to excel. These veterans can and will have a beneficial impact on their communities and industries. Yet, it is important that we show support also to the ones who need our help. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Therefore, do not be so hard on the United States of America, she is going through a lot. Unlike China, some Americans are more interested in getting rich, and that is why they go into politics. They feel that America has already made it so it is okay to use the country to get rich and then sell her out. However, China understands that China is number one priority and if your country fails, you fail as a people. So the goal is not self-preservation, but preservation of the country, and making your family proud. The first mechanism of escape from freedom is the tendency to give up the independence of one’s own individual self and to fuse one’s self with somebody or something outside of oneself in order to acquire the strength which the individual self is lacking. Or, to seek for new, “secondary bonds” as a substitute for the primary bonds which have been lost. The more distinct forms of this mechanism are to be found in the striving for submission and domination, or, in the masochistic and sadistic strivings as they exist in varying degrees in normal and neurotic persons respectively. These tendencies are an escape from an unbearable aloneness. The most frequent forms in which masochistic strivings appear are feelings of inferiority, powerlessness, individual insignificance. The analysis of persons who are obsessed by these feelings show that, while they consciously complain about these feelings and want to get ride of them, unconsciously some power within themselves drives them to feel inferior or insignificant. Their feelings are more than realizations of actual shortcomings and weaknesses (although they are usually rationalized as though they were); these persons show a tendency to belittle themselves, to make themselves weak, and not to master things. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Quite regularly these people show a marked dependence on powers outside of themselves, on other people, or institutions, or nature. They tend not to assert themselves, not to do what they want, but to submit to the factual or alleged orders of these outsider forces. Often they are quite incapable of experiencing the feeling “I want” or “I am.” Life, as a whole, is felt by them as something overwhelmingly powerful, which they cannot master or control. In the more extreme cases—and there are many—one finds besides these tendencies to belittle oneself and to submit to outside forces a tendency to hurt oneself and to make oneself suffer. This tendency can assume various forms. We find that there are people who indulge in self-accusation and self-criticism which even their worst enemies would scarcely bring against them. There are others, such as certain compulsive neurotics, who tend to torture themselves with compulsory sites and thoughts. As if it were a gift from the gods, in a certain type of neurotic personality, we find a tendency to become physically ill, and to wait, consciously or unconsciously, for an illness. Often they incur accidents which would not have happened had there not been at work an unconscious tendency to incur them. These tendencies directed against themselves are often revealed in still less overt or dramatic forms. For instance, there are persons who are incapable of answering questions in an examination when the answers are very well known to them at the time of the examination and even afterwards. There are others who say things which antagonize those whom they love or on whom they are dependent, although actually they feel friendly toward them and did not intend to say those things. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
With such people, it almost seems as if they were following advice given them by an enemy to behave in such a way as to be most detrimental to themselves. The masochistic trends are often felt as plainly pathological or irrational. More frequently they are rationalized. Masochistic dependency is conceived as love or loyalty, inferiority feelings as an adequate expression of actual shortcomings, and one’s suffering as being entirely due to unchangeable circumstances. Besdies these masochistic trends, the very opposite of them, namely, sadistic tendencies, are regularly to be found in the same kind of characters. They vary in strength, are more or less conscious, yet they are never missing. We find three kinds of sadistic tendencies, more or less closely knit together. One is to make other dependent on oneself and to have absolute and unrestricted power over them, so as to make of them nothing but instruments, “clay in the potter’s hand.” Another consists of the impulse not only rule over others in this absolute fashion, but to exploit them, to use them, to steal from them, to disembowel them, and, so to speak, to incorporate anything eatable in them. This desire can refer to material things as well as to immaterial ones, such as the emotional or intellectual qualities a person has to offer. A third kind of sadistic tendency is the wish to make others suffer or to see them suffer. This suffering can be physical, but more often it is mental suffering. Its aim is to hurt actively, to humiliate, embarrass others, or to see them in embarrassing and humiliating situations. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Sadistic tendencies for obvious reasons are usually less conscious and more rationalized than the socially more rationalized than the socially more harmless masochistic trends. Often they are entirely covered up by reaction formations of overgoodness or overconcern for others. Some of the most frequent rationalizations are the following: “I rule over you because I know what is best for you, and in your own interest you should follow me without opposition.” Or, “I am so wonderful and unique, that I have a right to expect that other people become dependent on me.” Another rationalization which often covers the exploiting tendencies is: “I have done so much for you, and now I am entitled to take from you what I want.” The most frequent rationalization in two forms: “I have been hurt by others and my eish to hurt them is nothing but retaliation,” or “By striking first I am defending myself or my friends against the danger of being hurt.” There is one factor in the relationship of the sadistic person to the object of his or her sadism which is often neglected and therefore deserves especial emphasis here: his or her dependence on the object of his or her sadism. While the masochistic person’s dependence is obvious, our expectation with regard to the sadistic person is just the reverse: he or she seems so strong and domineering, and the object of his or her sadism so weak and submissive, that it is difficult to think of the strong one as being dependent on the one over whom he or she rules. And yet close analysis shows that this is true. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
The sadist needs the person over whom he or she riles, he or she needs one very badly, since his or her own feelings of strength is rooted in the fact that he or she is the master over someone. This dependence may be entirely unconscious. Thus, for example, a man may treat his wife very sadistically and tell her repeatedly that she can leave the house any day and that he would be only too glad if she did. Often she will be so crushed that she will not dare to make an attempt to leave, and therefore they both will continue to believe that what he says is true. However, if she musters up enough courage to declare that she will leave him, something quite unexpected to both of them may happen: he will become desperate, break down, and beg her not to leave him; he will say he cannot live without her, and will declare how much he loves her and so on. Usually, being afraid of asserting herself anyhow, she will be probe to believe him, change her decision and stay. At this point, the play starts again. He resumes his old behaviour, she finds it increasingly difficult to stay with him, explodes again, he breaks down again, she stays, and so on any on many times. There are thousands upon thousands of marriages and other personal relationships in which is cycle is repeated again and again, and the magic circle is never broken through. Did he lie when he said he loved her so much that he could not live without her? As far as love is concerned, it all depends on what one means by love. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
As far as his assertion goes that he could not live without her, it is—of course not taking it literally—perfectly true. He cannot live without her—or at least without someone else whom he feels to be the helpless instrument in his hands. While in such a case feelings of love appear only when the relationship threatens to be dissolved, in other cases the sadistic person quite manifestly “loves” those over whom he feels power. Whether it is his wife, his child, an assistant, a waiter, or a beggar on the street, there is a feeling of “love” and even gratitude for those objects of his domination. He may think that he wishes to dominate their lives because he loves them so much. He actually “loves” them because he dominates them. He bribes them with material things, with praise, assurances of love, the display of wit and brilliance, or by showing concern. He may give them everything—everything except one thing: the right to be free and independent. This constellation is often to be found particularly in the relationship of parents and children. There, the attitude of domination—and ownership—is often covered by what seems to be the “natural” concern or feeling of protectiveness for a child. The child is put into a golden cage, it can have everything provided it does not want to leave the cage. The result of this is often a profound fear of love on the part of the child when he or she grows up, as “love” to him or her implies being caught and blocked in his or her own quest for freedom. Reason is a faculty which must be practiced in order to develop, and it is indivisible. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
The faculty for objectivity refers to the knowledge of nature as well as to the knowledge of man or woman, of society, and of oneself. If one lives in illusions about one sector of life, one’s capacity for reason is restricted or damaged, and thus the use of reason is inhibited with regard to all other sectors. Reason in this respect is like love. Just as love is an orientation which refers to all objects and incompatible with the restriction to one object, so is reason a human faculty which must embrace the whole of the World with which man is confronted. The need for frame of orientation exists on two levels; the first and the more fundamental need is to have some frame of orientation, regardless of whether it is true or false. Unless man has such a subjectively satisfactory frame of orientation, he cannot live sanely. On the second level, the need is to be touched with reality by reason, to grasp the World objectively. However, the necessity to develop his reason is not as immediate as that to develop some frame of orientation, since what is at stake for man in the latter case is his happiness and serenity, and not his sanity. If we study the function of rationalization, this becomes clear. However unreasonable or immoral an action may be, man and woman have an insuperable urge to rationalize it, that is, to prove to himself or herself and to others that his or her action is determined by intelligence, common sense, or at least conventional morality. He or she has little difficult in acting irrationally, but it is almost impossible for him or her to give his or her action the appearance of reasonable motivation. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
If man or woman were only a disembodies intellect, his or her aim would be achieved by a comprehensive thoughts system. However, since he or she is an entity endowed with a body as well as a mind, he or she has to react to the dichotomy of his or her existence not only in thinking but in the total process of living, in his or her feelings and actions. Hence any satisfying system of orientation contains not only intellectual elements but elements of feeling and sensing which are expressed in the relationship to an object of devotion. The answers given to man or woman’s need for a system of orientation and an object of devotion differ widely both in content and in form. There are primitive systems such as animism and totemism in which natural objects or ancestors represent answers to man and woman’s quest for meaning. There are nontheistic systems, such as Buddhism, which are usually called religions although in their original form there is no concept of God. There are purely philosophical systems, such as Stoicism, and there are the monotheistic religious systems that give an answer to man or woman’s quest for meaning in reference to the concept of God. However, whatever their contents, they all respond to man or woman’s need to have not only some thought system but also an object of devotion that gives meaning to his or her existence and to his or her position in the World. Only the analysis of the various forms of religion can show which answers are better and which are worse solutions to man or woman’s quest for meaning and devotion, “better” or “worse” always considered form the standpoint of man or woman’s nature and his or her development. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
The various needs of man and woman as they result from the conditions of his or her existence, have to be satisfied in some way or other least man or woman should become insane. However, there are several ways in which each of these needs can be satisfied; the difference between these ways is the difference in their appropriateness for the development of man or woman. The need to be related can be satisfied by submission or by domination; but only in love is another human need fulfilled—that of independence and integrity of the self. The need for transcendence can be satisfied either by creativeness or by destructiveness causes suffering for oneself and others. The need for rootedness can be satisfied regressively by fixation in nature and mother, or progressively by full birth in which new solidarity and oneness is achieved. Here again only in the latter cases are individuality and integrity preserved. A frame of orientation may be irrational or rational; yet only the rational one can serve as a basis for the growth and development of the total personality. Eventually, the sense of identity can be based on primary ties with nature and clan, on adjustment to a group, or, on the other hand, on the full, creative development of the person. Again, only in the latter case can man achieve a sense of joy and strength. In a way, this is simply to say that there must be willingness to discuss. There must be some points on which each party must be willing to make concession, accept half-measures, and consider alternatives. If one party takes an intransigent, all-or-nothing attitude, discussion is impossible, because there is nothing to discuss. The only alternatives for the other are capitulation or warfare. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Now, this is not to say that each party must be prepared for possible concession on every point. This would be to say that there should be no fixed points of reference, no given identities or directions to guide discussion. All would be chaos and indecision unless some tentative hierarchy of values was established. The existence of some vital interest must be assumed; indeed, more than that, each party must mutually accept and respect the scared previous commitments, the bias, the past history, and the unique outlook of the other parties, if its own are to be equally accepted and respected. If anyone professing an experimental philosophy were to carry it to the extreme of demanding that ever value of every participant be at stake in every discussion, he or she would be doing a severe disservice to his or her own philosophy. The most general problem of a discussion is to compose the vital interest which clash, through negotiating modifications of the less vital. Determined insistence on certain vital interests does not make discussion impossible, as long as their relationship to the vital interests of other parties may be freely talked about. The kind of dogmatism which forbids discussion is that which declares there can be no even tentative distinction among ends, and no part without the whole. The highly comprehensive and closed systems of thought of various religious and political sects are of this character. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Policy commitments for limited periods of time, followed by reconsideration of policy, can win mutual compromises which indefinitely long commitments cannot. Another way of saying this is that an experimental attitude makes agreement on action possible, where agreement on principles would be impossible. Especially in a cosmopolitan society, it becomes necessary and desirable to base action upon proximate rather than ultimate arguments. An example of the experimental attitude carried to its ultimate form is furnished in simple play. Here no serious purpose at all must be alleged to justify engaging in the exploration of new possibilities and values. Play lies at the extreme pole from the grim seriousness which demands cosmic justification for the slightest deviation from traditional routine; the experimental attitude, lying somewhere in between, tends only to diminish the intransigence of ultimate commitments without attacking them. The idea that Russian is a conservative and not a revolutionary state, and the idea that the democratic socialist development of the underdeveloped countries need not be fought but should be welcomed by the United States of America—conflict with the assumptions most people make about these questions. They conflict not only intellectually, but also emotionally; they sound like heresies, nonsense, or subversion, accord to the respective attitudes of the readers. The understanding of one’s own society and culture, just as the understanding of oneself, is the task of reason. However, the obstacles reason has to overcome in the understanding of one’s own society are no less than the formidable obstacles that, as Dr. Freud has sown, lack the road to understanding oneself. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
These obstacles (Dr. Freud called them “resistance”) lie by no means in the realm of intellectual shortcomings or lack of information. They lie in emotional factors which blunt or deform our instruments of thought to such an extent that they can become useless for the purpose of uncovering reality. Most people in any given society are unaware of the existence this deformation. They see distortion only when it is a deviation from the attitude of the majority, but are convinced that majority opinions are sound and “sane.” Yet this is not so. Just as there is a folie a deux, there is insanity of millions, and consensus in error does not transform error into truth. To later generations, years after the outbreak of mass insanity, the insane character of such thinking, even though it was shared by almost everybody may be clear; thus some of the more extreme psychic reactions to the Black Death in the Middle Ages, the witch hunting at the time of the Counter Reformation, the religious hatred in England in the seventeenth century, the hatred against the Huns during the First World War, appear to be pathological manifestations many years later. However, usually there is little awareness of the pathological thinking about politics and foreign affairs, snice it is of vital importance that we have an unspoiled instrument with which to understand. Thus in should be in the life of the believer, granted the essential union of his or her will with the will of God, and the energizing power of the Holy Spirit, by his or her own deliberate choice of harmony with that holy will the believe is actively to use his or her will in ruling oneself in spirit, soul, and body. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
God dwelling in His spirit cooperates with one through one’s exercised power of choice. For deliverance from the power of conduct disorder and from psychopathological offenders in their workings, it is important to have a clear understanding of God’s purpose in redemption. God created man with dominion over him or herself. This dominion was to be exercised by Adam’s acts of will, even as it was by his Creator. However, man dell, and in his fall he yielded his will to the rule of the ultimate negative who from that time, by the agency of his or her evil spirits, has ruled the World through the enslaved will of fallen humans. Christ, the Second Adam, came, and, taking the place of man, chose obedience to the Father’s will, and never for one moment diverged from His perfect cooperation with that will. In the wilderness He refused to exercise His divine power at the will of the ultimate negative, and even while suffering in Gethsemane His will never wavered in the choice of the Father’s will. As a man He willed the will of God right through, becoming obedient even unto death, thus regaining for regenerated man not only reconciliation with God but liberty from the ultimate negative’s thralldom, and the restoration of man’s renewed and sanctified will to its place of free action, deliberately and intelligently exercised in harmony with the will of God. Jesus as the Christ worked out for man upon Calvary’s cross salvation of spirit, soul and body from the dominion of conduct disorder and the ultimate negative; but that full salvation is worked out in the believer through the central action of the will, as he or she deliberately chooses the will of God for each department of his or her tripartite nature. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
The will of man united to the will of God—and thus having the energizing power of God working with His volition (That is, one’s power of choice, or one’s willing consent)—is to rule one’s “own spirit”; thoughts or mind inclusive of all the soul-powers; and body. And when, by the appropriation of God’s freeing power from slavery to conduct disorder and psychopathological offenders, the believer regains free action of one’s will so that one gladly and spontaneously wills the will of God, and as a renewed human takes dominion over spirit, soul and body, one regains in life through Jesus as the Christ. However, the natural man or woman does not reach this stage of renewal and liberation of one’s will without first knowing the regeneration of one’s own will without first knowing the regeneration of one’s own human spirit. God is not in fallen man or woman until the moment of his or her new birth. One must be “begotten of God.” They very fact of such a begetting being necessary declares the non-existence of divine life in one previously. It is essential to understand, however, that after this begetting the regenerated man or woman does not, as a rule, immediately become a spiritual man or woman, id est, a man or woman wholly dominated by and walking after the spirit. The multiple dimensions of life are all found in man and woman, but the dimension of spirit is proper to him or her. After airing the etymological and semantic problems connected with the word, it is clear that the spirit is the union of the power of being with meaning, the actualization of power and meaning in unity. Spirit is the power that perceives meaning, and the participation in meaning that imparts power. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Within the spiritual dimension the functions of life are operative: self-integration appears as morality, or the constitution of the personal self; self-creativity is seen as culture; and self-transcendence is religion, although, strictly speaking, religion is not a separate function, but a quality of the others. However, even in the dimension of spirit the law of life is inexorable: morality, culture, and religion are subject to ambiguity. The life of every creature is an ambiguous mixture of essential and existential elements, but creation yearns for an unambiguous fulfilment of its essential potentialities. This arises the quest for unambiguous life. Three symbols represent the perfect life: the Spirit of God, the Kingdom of God, and Eternal Life. It is the self-transcendent character of life that makes the quest possible, but under no dimension does it reach that toward which it moves, the unconditional. Therefore, the answer to this quest is the experience or revelation and salvation; they constitute religion above religion, although they become religion when they are received. The hope for unambiguous life pulsates in all the regions of the World, and somehow they receive the answer which sustains them. The quest never ceases. However, if expressed in the terms of a concrete religion, both quest and answer become matters of ambiguity. It is an age-old experience of all religions that the quest for something transcending them is answered in the shaking and transforming experience of revelation and salvation; but that under the conditions of existence even the absolutely great—the divine self-manifestation—becomes not only great but also small, not only divine but demonic. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
The answers to the quest for unambiguous life is the divine Spirit (capital “S”). It invades the human spirit (small “s”) and dwells there, a phenomenon termed “the Spiritual Presence.” However, this presence is not a static condition. Under the divine impulse, the human spirit is driven beyond itself to the ultimate, the unconditional. It transcends itself by this ex-stasis, the ecstasy be being grasped by the Spirit. In the ecstatic state created by the Spiritual Presence, the essential and existential elements of being are unambiguously untied. More exactly, they are reunited, since the union occurs only after existential estrangement has been overcome. This effect of the Spiritual Presence is called the transcendent union of unambiguous life. According to which facet is considered, it is faith or love, faith as the state of being grasped by the transcendent unity of unambiguous life, love as the state of being taken into that transcendent unity. In faith one is grasped by God; by love one adheres to Him. However, faith and love are one and the same state, participation in the transcendent unity of unambiguous life. The Spiritual Presence, elevating man and woman through faith and love to the transcendent unity of unambiguous life, creates the New Being above the gap between essence and existence and consequently above the ambiguities of life. The Spiritual Presence, however, is manifest, not abstractly, but within historical humankind, not in isolated individuals, but in communities. This brings us to the church as the Spiritual Community. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Comfort ye, comfort ye, My people, saith you God. Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O America; put on thy beautiful garments, O America. Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places of America. For the Lord hath comforted His people; He hath redeemed America. Hear the word of the Lord, O ye nations, and declare it in the isles afar off: “He that scattered American doth gather him, and keep him, as a shepherd doth his flock.” For the Lord hath ransomed Jacob; He hath redeemed him from the hand of him that is stronger than he. They shall come and sing in the height of America, and shall flow unto the goodness of the Lord, and their soul shall be as a watered garden, and they shall not pine any more; for I will turn their mourning into joy, and will comfort them, and make them rejoice from their sorrow. Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears; for thy work shall be rewarded, and they shall come back from the land of the enemy. And there is hope for thy future, and thy children shall return to their own border. Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, desolation nor destruction within thy borders. Thy people shall be all righteous, they shall inherit the land forever. Arie, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. The Lord will arise and have compassion upon America, for it is time to be gracious to her. I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one Nation, Under God, Indivisible with Liberty and Justice for All. The Lord will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness shall be found therein, Thanksgiving and the voice of melody. I love you, just the way you are and for what you are, America. I do not have to wish, I already have everything I want. Also, be sure to donate to the Sacramento Fire Depart, they are not receiving all of their resources. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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Do You Believe in Ghosts?
The garden was thickening and closing up in the darkness. There was thunder in the air, and lurking fear, half hidden, rearing up before me. Llanada Villa, with its dark wings, cupolas, towers and façade oddly resembled a colossal dragon, crouched and ready to spring. My estate bore an aspect more than usually sinister as viewed it by night. It was not a wholesome landscape after dark. Even if they were ignorant of the terror that stalked here, I believe anyone would notice its morbidity. The ancient lightning-scarred trees seemed surreal, large, and twisted, and the other vegetation unnaturally thick and feverish. Fear had lurked on the estate for as long as I could remember. The psychic power which had been leading me had now become a reality. The surroundings under the moonlight blended harmoniously with my mood. I felt a shiver run through me. It was with a suddenness that brought me electrified to my feet. For over a century, the curse of the Winchester Fortune had been the subject of stories incredibly wild and monstrously hideous; stories of apparitions that come back from the dead of their own accord. Silent, colossal, creeping death which stalked inside of Llanada Villa where it welled up a consciousness of terror. With whimpering insistence, the people told tales of demons which sized lone servants after dark, either carrying them off or leaving them in a frightful state of gnawed dismemberment; while others whispered of blood-trails toward my mansion. It was also said that Llanada Villa was ghoulishly haunted and it had a voice—its voice was thunder. Thunder that could even creep up on a clear summer’s day. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Through the haze of exhaustion, it occurred to me that I felt lost and knew only that I was wandering away from the utter unknown. I went for a midnight stroll through the miles of hallways within my home to relieve myself of the terrible events of the past. A strange nervousness had slowly seized me. An impression stole upon me that there was something prowling about. Thin shadows were moving across the rooms and had attracted my gaze. These must be the souls, not of the good, but of the evil, which are compelled to wander about my home in payment of the penalty of their former evil way of life. For a moment, I thought I saw a curious cloud formation racing low and directly above me, a cloud black and impenetrable with two wing-like ends strangely in the shape of a monstrous flying bat. There were no lights lit in the house. And in the unremitting rain outside, there was no moonlight. There was a noise from some remote floor above, a dry chuckle like the scrape of lazy chains. The voice above tightened and broke with a roar. These ghosts were the players of a diabolical game. Serving a playful master. I descended stairs. A corridor followed. The bellowing fury above me faded slightly. However, that was no comfort. The corridor was catacomb-like. I felt more deeply entombed with every step. The pitiful throughs of the ghosts of natives shrieked and whined of the unnamable horror which had descended upon them. Death was indeed there. The disordered corridor was covered with blood and human debris bespeaking too vividly the ravages of demon teeth and talons; yet no visible trail led away from the carnage. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
Haunted by these apocalyptic visions of such cryptic deaths, horribly mangled bodies, chewed, and clawed in the catacombs of my home, it was certainly clearly that something demonic had been unleashed, for I have never heard of any rifle capable of creating carnage in such a hideous fashion. This curse was vastly different than the memory of endless prairies shimmering in the bright sun; of the breath of the evergreen forest in summer; of the crooning of ice-armored pines at the touch of the winds of winter; of cataracts roaring between hoary mountain masses; of all the innumerable sights and sounds of the wilderness; of its immensity and mystery; and of the silence that brood in its still depths. The death that had come had left no trace save destruction itself. However, a phantasmal chaos had suddenly caused my nerves to jump on edge, as I heard hideous shrieks beyond anything in my former experience or imagination. In the shrieking the inmost soul of human fear and agony clawed hopelessly and insanely at the veil of the living. Then came the devastating stoke of lightning which shook the whole mansion, lit the darkest corridors, and reverberated throughout my soul. There was something preternaturally about this experience. While the glare from beyond the window caught my eyes, a shadowy figure appeared before me. He had old sunken skin around the eyes and coarsely textured about his complexion. His shoulders were bunched under the black vanity of the silk embroidered robe he wore. His neck was a wattle of flesh. The eyes themselves were only partially focused, as though mostly lost to some wild and sly avenue of speculation. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
As I passed by the apparition, his eyes followed me. This man was smugly and completely given over to evil. I had become lost in the forgotten turns of my mansion’s maze. Grief shuddered through me. I felt the grip of comforting fingers on my shoulder. I stared at the stain on the table. I sighed and my breath faltered. From far above, I heard the beast’s cavorting laughter. Tears blurred my eyes. There was blood everywhere. “Marvellous!” said a voice. There were two figures by the parlor. They were attired in evening wear and white silk mufflers and top hats. The glass of a monocle glittered above the spoiled grin of one of them. Even from forty feet distant, they smelled of cigars and brilliantine. And they stank of dead meat, sour wine, and feral rot. The figures began to fade. They had receded from sight almost entirely when one of the apparitions said, “You’ve angered Chief Little Fawn. And Chief Little Fawn will settle with you shortly.” I looked at my own soft, unaccustomed hands. And a voice that caused the skin on my head to crawl icily called down all the way from the top of the stairs to reach me where I stood. “My name is Chief Little Fawn.” There was a pause. “Are you coming up to fight? Or am I coming down for you?” My house was warming with the baleful threat of the thing above. In was becoming harder to breath. Demonic mutterings of thunder, and shadows thwarted me. As I shivered and contemplated my next move, I knew that I had pried out one of Earth’s supreme horrors. A fall of rain was drumming the mansion, and the heavy blanket of clouds glowed with a soft radiance where the moon was trying to break through. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Then the blue moonlight returned, illuminating the mansion. A large white hound leaped from the wall and ran towards me, before it slinked across the room and disappeared. Startled, I had no idea which direction to turn. A click, and a dazzling white light enveloped the entire floor. For a brief second, I saw a woman outlined there against the wall. “Fool!” she cried hoarsely. “Blundering fool! What have you done?” Her eyes were glaring at me, smouldering with hatred. I gazed at her curiously as she stood erect, head thrown back, body apparently taut as wire, and a slow shudder crept down my spine. Then without warning, she gathered up her dress and floated down the path towards the door to nowhere. A moment later she disappeared somewhere in the shadows. I stood there, staring after her in a daze. Suddenly, there rose a low animal snarl. And before I could move, a huge gray shape came hurtling through the hallway, bounding in great leaps toward me. Its face was contorted in diabolic fury, and its jaws were dripping slaver. Even in that moment of terror as I stood frozen before it, the sight of those black nostrils and those black hyalescent eyes emblazoned itself on my mind, never to be forgotten. Then with a lunge it was upon me. I had only time to run. I could feel those teeth trying to clamp down on my heels. The beast coughed and faded into a black mist and vanished. Endless hours I spent confined to my room suffering the tortures of the damned. When twilight came, I had vaguely wished some clouds would gather, for an odd timidity about the deep skyey voids above had crept into my soul. That I am still alive and sane, is a marvel I cannot fathom. I cannot fathom it, for these ghouls were a blasphemous abnormality from hell’s nethermost craters; abominations which no mind could fully grasp. There I lay, alone, in my accursed mansion, shivering, and terrified. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
The Winchester Mystery House seems to be drenched with the powerful emotions of spiritual energy. Of all the anomalous phenomenon which is reported, ghosts and ghostly sightings are by far the most common. One need not venture off to a distant loch, travel deep into a jungle wilderness, spend the night in a graveyard staring at the stars to have an extraordinary, life-changing, mind-blowing encounter. In The Winchester Mystery House, a ghost can appear to anyone, at anytime, for any reason. People from all walks of life have had a ghostly encounter in this beautiful but bizarre mansion. Be it an apparition that appears in a hallway or upon the step, mindless and unaware of your presence; or the giggles of children who once played nearby many, many years ago. Ghost, of course, have walked by our side since time immemorial. Ghosts arrived on stage by the Upper Paleolithic, perhaps around 50,000 BC. The simple conception that something recognizable of a dead person might at some time return to human society is neither fanciful nor surprising. Its roots originate at that developmental horizon where burial with goods became the norm for the first time. Ghost have waited in the winds from the beginning and have fluttered persistently as part of human cultural, religious, or philosophical baggage ever since. Practically speaking, as a result, they are inexpungible. Dying without a grave, accidently or otherwise, was a terrible fate. It was a weapon in warfare and judgement, for no quietus was attainable. Hammurapi of Babylon, in the eighteenth-century BC, threatens that the soldiers of any other king who does not follow his laws should be thrown on the plain in heaps and his troops denied burial. Other laws show that executed criminals were similarly treated. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Crucially, burial is not compelling of itself in our search for ghosts, for there were always many reasons for rapid burial of the dead; it was understood before thought it self what happened to corpses, diseased or otherwise, and there was the question of say, respect for the dead, or predators. Archaeologically speaking, burial as such carries no implication necessarily different from waste disposal. The gradual establishing of deliberate burial in early ancestor communities, however, must have led to significant consequences. Shared ritual tied with mourning would come to teach that individual life itself was finite. With the development of abstract thought and the sharing of language and experience, the great lesson would come to be explicitly, rather than instinctively, understood: all that lives must die, passing though nature to eternity. For Babylonian men and women, accordingly, ghosts were an unpredictable reality. Everyone knew that ghosts must be unhappy: those responsible could list all the reasons. Omens, spells and rituals were available that could help the experienced diviner or exorcist in assessing his or her case as well as dealing with it. It is easy to imagine that deceased members of extended or extending families who had long inhabited the same place would not only feel close to their descendants but also tied to the rooms and passages where they had spent so much of their lives. Most ghosts, probably, were of the local and family type, but what must have been especially frightening was the idea that a dangerous ghost might be unconnected with anyone at in in one’s personal World—a killer bent on random street murder—or a ghost fastened on his or her victim through mistaken identity. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
The ancient Egyptians were so preoccupied with the prospect of an afterlife that their entire civilization was founded on the cult of the dead. Many believe that the pyramids may have been built not only as tombs for their pharaohs, who were venerated as living descendants of the Gods, but also as the means of initiation into the mysteries of life and death. As with the pyramids, the structural shape of The Winchester Mystery House is believed to have both a mystical significance and a practical purpose, focusing the Earth’s magnetic energies to a specific point and to such effect that the initiate would be unable to resist the force drawing their etheric body out of its physical home. According to some sources, a Boston medium consulted by Mrs. Winchester explained that her family and her fortune were being haunted by spirits. Supposedly their untimely deaths of her daughter and husband were caused by these spirits, and it was implied that Mrs. Winchester might be the next victim. However, the medium also claimed that there was an alternative. Mrs. Winchester was instructed to move west and appease the spirits by building a great house for them. As long as construction of the house never ceased, Mrs. Winchester could rest assured that her life was not in danger. Building such a house was even supposed to bring her eternal life. Earth energies are stronger near the water which suggests one explanation of why Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester chose the Santa Clara Valley to build her beautiful estate and vibrant gardens.
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May America Previl?
One of the most important things to do is to live in the moment. This does not mean that you forget where you come from or do not plan for the future, it simply means living righteously and enjoying the present, without focusing on past atrocities. No one can right the past, but we can create a better future. The best way to capture the moment is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake and enjoy the life we are having. However. Lapses in awareness are frequently caused by an eddy of dissatisfaction with what we are seeing our felling in that moment, out of which springs a desire for something to be different, for things to change. Fear is as nonsubstaintal as your shadow, but it is. The shadow also exists—nonsubstantial, negative, but not nonexistential—and sometimes the shadow can have a great impact on you. People are more afraid of fear than of anything else, because the very existence of fear shakes your foundations. The infant still feeling one with mother, cannot yet say “I,” nor has he any need for it. Only after he has conceived of the outer World as being separate and different from himself does he come to the awareness of himself as a distinct being, and one of the last words he learns to use is “I,” in reference to himself. In the development of the human race the degree to which man is aware of himself as a separate self depends on the extent to which he has emerged from the clan and the extent to which the process of individuation has developed. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
The member of a primitive clan might express his sense of identity in the in the formula “I am we”; he cannot yet conceive of himself as an “individual,” existing apart from his group. It should always be kept in mind that, in addition to sorrow and mourning, part of the psychological response to separation is great anger at the mother-figure for leaving. Thus mourning, along with his attachment and love become subjects of anxiety. In the medieval World, the individual was identified with his social role in the feudal hierarchy. The peasant was not a man who happened to be a peasant, the feudal lord not a man who happened to be a feudal lord. He was a peasant or a lord, and this sense of his unalterable station was an essential part of his sense of identity. When the feudal system broke down, this sense of identity was shaken and the acute questions “Who am I”—or, more precisely, “How do I know what I am?”—arose. This was the question that was raised, in a philosophical form, by Rene Descartes. He answered the quest for identity by saying, “I doubt, hence I think; I think, hence I am.” This answer put all the emphasis on the experience of “I” as the subject of my thinking activity, and failed to see that the “I” is experienced also in the process of feeling and creative action. The development of Western culture went in the direction of creating the basis for the full experience of individuality. By making the individual free politically and economically, by teaching him to think for himself and freeing him from an authoritarian pressure, one hoped to enable him to feel “I” in the sense that he was the center and active subject of his powers and experienced himself as such. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
However, only a minority achieved the new experience of “I.” For the majority, individualism was not much more than a façade behind which was hidden the failure to acquire an individual sense of identity. Many substitutes for a truly individual sense of identity were sought for and found. Nation, religion, class, and occupation serve to furnish a sense of identity. “I am an American.” “I am a Protestant.” “I am a businessman.” These are the formulae that help a man experience a sense of identity after the original clan identity has been acquired. These different identifications are, in contemporary society, usually employed together. If blended with older feudal remnants, they are in a broad sense status identifications, and they are more efficient, as in European countries. In the United States of America, where so little is left of feudal relics and where there is so much social mobility, these status identifications are naturally less efficient, and the sense of identity is shifted more and more to the experience of conformity. Inasmuch as I am not different, inasmuch as I am like the others and recognized by them as “a regular fellow,” I can sense myself as “I.” I am “as you desire me”—as Mr. Pirandello put it in the title of one of his plays. Instead of the preindividualistic clan identity, a new herd identity develops in which the sense of identity rests on the sense of an unquestionable belonging to the crowd. That is uniformity and conformity are often not recognized as such, and are covered by the illusion of individuality, does not alter the facts. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
The problem of the sense of identity is not, as it usually understood, merely a philosophical problem, or a problem concerning only our mind and thought. The need to feel a sense of identity stems from the very condition of human existence, and it is the source of the most intense strivings. Since I cannot remain sane without the sense of “I,” I am driven to do almost anything to acquire this sense. Behind the intense passion for status and conformity is this very need, and it is sometimes even stronger than the need for physical survival. What could be more obvious than the fact that people are willing to risk their lives, to give up their love, to surrender their freedom, to sacrifice their own thoughts for the sake of being one of the herd, of conforming, and thus of acquiring a sense of identity, event though it is an illusory one. The fact that man has reason and imagination leads to the necessity not only for having a sense of his own identity but also for orienting himself in the World intellectually. This need can be compared with the process of physical orientation that develops in the first years of life and that is completed when the child can walk by himself, touch and handle things, knowing what they are. However, when the ability to talk and to speak has been acquired, only the first step in the direction of orientation has been taken. Man finds himself surrounded by many puzzling phenomena and, having reason, he has to make sense of them, has to put them in some context which he can understand and which permit him to deal with them in his thoughts. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
The further his reason develops, the more adequate becomes his system of orientation, that is, the more it approximates reality. However, even if man’s frame of orientation is utterly illusory, it satisfies his need for some picture which is meaningful to him. Whether he believes in the power of a totem animal, in a rain god, or in the superiority and destiny of his race, his need for some frame of orientation is satisfied. Quite obviously, the picture of the World that he has depends on the development of his reason and of his knowledge. Although biologically the brain capacity of the human race has remained the same for thousands of generations, it takes a long evolutionary process to arrive at objectivity, that is, to acquire the faculty to see the World, nature, other persons, and oneself as they are and not distorted by desires and fears. The more man develops this objectivity, the more he is in touch with reality, the more he matures, the better can he create a human World in which he is at home. Reason is man’s faculty for grasping the World by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man’s ability to manipulate the World with the help of thought. Reason is man’s instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man’s instrument for manipulating the World more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs also to the animal part of man. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
There is a dialectical sense in which the existence of opinion necessarily presupposes difference of opinion. Without dissent, there would be nothing to discuss. There might be facts to ascertain, or indoctrination to preform upon recruits, but if all concerned are quite contented with current ways, and no one sees a better alternative, there is no problem of what is to be done. Dissent is possible only when the public has come to feel that there is a problem, and that something should be done, and when one or more definite proposals are then put forward. Even discussion over whether there is a problem or something should be done is academic until some plan of action is suggested. Those who are against action must have something to be against, just as those who want action must have at least one notion which they favour. Moreover, dissent over alternative lines of action (inaction being usually a synonym for traditional procedure) must be supposed by clashes of interest least it be merely academic and lead to no resolution. It is only an apparent contradiction to insist that discussion is conditional both on values held in common and on clashes of interest. Because of the values held in common each party can advance his proposal not as a mere assertion of interest but as a right which out to be binding upon the other. It is the justification of interests as rights which makes a discussion. Enemies of government by discussion exaggerate the ideological nature of a group’s moral justification of its position, but the wisest friends of government by discussion do not altogether deny the basis of group interest for each partisan’s view. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
To insist, however, that justifications set forth in advocacy or defense of an action program are derived in some direct way from the interest of a group is to reduce discussion to a mere war of words, which it is not. Moreover, it willfully and knowingly overlooks the variety of justifications which may be asserted for any one group of interest, the often incoherent and contradictory diversity among the interests of a group, and, above all, the unformed, inchoate nature of any group’s interests. Often it assumes that a group’s interest is either an objective fact visible to all, or at least visible to some observers with special access to truth. This is never the case. A group, or even an individual, is often as divided within itself as to what it wants as the community of which it is a part. It may wish to justify its formulation of what it wants as much to itself as to the public. The integration of personality and the integration of the community are aspects of the same unceasing process. Some professed friends of government by discussion, however, presume that there is an objective public interest, usually implicitly represented and defined by themselves. There is no pre-existing public interest, any more than there is a pre-existing group interest. It is the public interest which is to be determined by discussion; the definition of the public interest is the product of discussion; it is the determinant only in the sense of being the end sought. Those who insist that they represent the public good in any sense except in demanding that agreement be reached are like the prophets whom make discussion impossible through dogmatically proclaiming “God says…” #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
When it comes to good and services, one consists of keeping track of any history of individual traders’ deviation and selling this information for a fee. This person (or organization) providing this service is called an information intermediary, or Info for shot. Another service is to deter cheating by the trader with whom a customer is currently matched, by threatening to inflict some dire punishment in response to such behaviour. This person providing this service is called an enforcement intermediary, or Enfo for short. If a customer of Info gets cheated, Info finds this out without incurrent any further cost. This may be because he provides his service by accompanying his customer (physically or metaphorically) to the trade. If a buyer or borrower defaults, credit-rating agencies, too, are likely to be told by their customer firms or lenders. A customer who has been cheated probably actually gets a little satisfaction from complaining, but even if he incurs a small cost by complaining, a contract like that in Milgrom, North, and Weingast will enable Infor to induce the customer to report the other party’s current cheating. In addition, Info can detect at a further cost any occurrences where someone who is not his customer gets cheated. At the start of each period, Info chooses his fee F and invites traders to become his customers. More precisely, the contact that Inform offers to each trader has the following form. Pay me F now. When your match is revealed, I will tell you what I know of that player’s history. If he has a history of cheating, of if he is not my customer, you should play Deviate; this will not count against you in the future. Otherwise you should play Comply. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
Each trader decides whether to accept this offer. Then the pairings are revealed. Info tells his customers their partner’s history of behaviour, but Info’s truthfulness is not automatically guaranteed. Each trader can also observe whether his current partner is Info’s customer. Based on this information, each decides whether to play this period’s game; in the case I am considering the answer is yes. Info may double cross a customer by conspiring, for a separate fee, with the person on the other side of the deal and mislead the customer into choosing Comply while the other plays Deviate. And Infor may extort money from a trader with a clean history by threatening to asset that he has cheated in the past. After all the pairwise games for this period are played, Info keeps a record of any cheating of his customers, and decides whether to carry out an extra cost any additional detection activities. Infor merely tells a customer either “I know your match has cheated in the past” or “As far as I know, your match has not cheated in the past.” If Info says the latter and the other trader cheats this time, the customer has no recourse and Info will not inflict any punishment on the cheater. If Info lies about the other party’s history (and extracts an additional fee from the other party for allowing him to cheat in this way, the customer equally has no recourse; we have to find conditions under which the equilibrium is proof against such double crossing by Info. Similarly, we have to check whether Info has any incentive to extract extortion payments by threatening falsely to assert a history of cheating by someone who in reality has a clean record. Since customers’ contracts with Info cannot be externally enforced, Info cannot credibly enter into long-run contracts with large up-front fees to control customers’ cheating. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
The phenomena which we observe in the neurotic person are in principle not different from those we find in the normal. They are only more accentuated, clear-cut, and frequently more accessible to the awareness of the neurotic person than they are in the normal who is not aware of any problem which warrants study. The term normal or health can be defined in two ways. Firstly, if he is able to fulfill the social role he is to take in that given society, from the standpoint of a functioning society, one can call a person normal or healthy. More concretely, this means that he is able to work in the fashion which is required in that particular society, and furthermore that he is able to participate in the reproduction of society, that is, that he can raise a family. Secondly, from the standpoint of the individual, we look upon health or normalcy as the optimum of growth and happiness of the individual. If the structure of a given society were such that it offered the optimum possibility for individual happiness, both viewpoints would coincide. However, this is not the case in most societies we know, including our own. Although they differ in the degree to which they promote the aims of individual growth, there is a discrepancy between the aims of the smooth functioning of society and of the full development of the individual. This fact makes it imperative to differentiate sharply between the two concepts of health. The one is governed by social necessities, the other by values and norms concerning the aim of individual existence. Unfortunately, this differentiation is often neglected. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Most psychiatrist take the structure of their own society so much for granted that to them the person who is not well adapted assumes the stigmas of being less valuable. On the other hand, the well-adapted person is supposed to be the more valuable person in terms of a scale of human values. If we differentiate the two concepts of normal and neurotic, we come to the following conclusion: the person who is normal in terms of being well adapted only at the expense of having given up his self in order to become more or less the person he believes he is expected to be. All genuine individuality and spontaneity may have been lost. On the other hand, the neurotic person can be characterized as somebody who was not ready to surrender completely in the battle for his self. To be sure, his attempt to save his individual self was not successful, and instead of expressing his self productively he sought salvation through neurotic symptoms and by withdrawing into a phantasy life. Nevertheless, from the standpoint of human values, he is less crippled than the kind of normal person who has lost his individuality altogether. Needless to say there are persons who are not neurotic and yet have not drowned their individuality in the process of adaptation. However, if we think of neurotic in terms of social efficiency, the stigma attached to the neurotic person seems to us to be unfounded and justified. As for a whole society, if its members did not function socially, the term neurotic cannot be applied in this latter sense, since a society could not exist. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
From a standpoint of human values, however, a society could be called neurotic in the sense that its members are crippled in the growth of their personality. Since the term neurotic is so often used to denote lack of social functioning, we would prefer not to speak of society in terms of its being neurotic, but rather in terms of its being adverse to human happiness and self-realization. Once the primary bond which gave security to the individual are served, once the individual faces the World outside of himself as a completely separate entity, two courses are open to him since he has to overcome the unbearable state of powerlessness and aloneness. By one course he can progress to “positive freedom”; he can relate himself spontaneously to the World in love and work, in the genuine expression of his emotional, sensuous, and intellectual capacities; he can thus become one again with man, nature, and himself, without giving up the independence and integrity of his individual self. The other course open to him is to fall back, to give up his freedom, and to try to overcome his aloneness by eliminating the gap that has arisen between his individual self and the World. This second course never reunites him with the World in the way he was related to it before he merged as an “individual,” for the fact of his separateness cannot be reversed; if it were prolonged, it is an escape from an unbearable situation which would make life impossible. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
This course of escape, therefore, is characterized by its compulsive character, like every escape from threatless complete surrender of individuality and the integrity of the self. This it is not a solution which leads to happiness and positive freedom; it is, in principle, a solution which is to be found in all neurotic phenomena. It assuages an unbearable anxiety and makes life possible by avoiding panic; yet it does not solve the underlying problem and is paid for by a kind of life that often consists only of automatic or compulsive activities. Some of these mechanisms of escape are of relatively small social import; they are to be found in any marked degree only in individuals with severe mental and emotional disturbances. It may be said that the Holy Spirit dwelling in the regenerate human spirit energizes and works through the faculties of the soul and the members of the body only in and with the active cooperation of the WILL of the believer. In other words, God, though in the spirit of man, does not use the man’s hand apart from the “I will use my hand” of the man himself. Life is a mixture of essence and existence, of actualized potentiality and existential distortions, of being and estrangement. Since the process of actualization is ontological, life is a universal concept applicable to all real beings, organic and inorganic, stars and rocks, animals and men. Life can be considered from the viewpoints of its two constitutive factors, essence and existence. Essentially, life exhibits a unity amid diversity described as the multidimensional unity of life. Existentially, life is ambiguous. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
The metaphor “dimension” should replace “level” in depicting the diversity of life, for levels so divide life into watertight compartments that its essential unity is destroyed. A plurality of dimensions reflects the difference in life, but, because dimensions can meet in a point without excluding one another, they accurately express the essential unity of life. Since life is the gradual actualization of potentialities, some dimensions are called “realms.” In this sense one speaks of the vegetable realm or the animal realm or the historical realm. In all of them, all dimensions are potentially present, and some of them are actualized. However, in man all dimensions, especially the spiritual and historical, are actual; in him is found the fullness of the essential multidimensional unity of life. Life as the actualization of potential being is a process, a movement out and away from a center and then back toward it. Thus, the life-process is made up of three basic functions. The circular movement of self-integration I the actualization of the ontological polarity of individualization and participation. Secondly, the horizontal direction of life is self-creativity, which is the actualization of the dynamics-form polarity. Thirdly, the vertical movement toward the ultimate and infinite is self-transcendence which actualizes the polarity of freedom-destiny. Although these functions of life in themselves are unified and harmonized, they are subject to the disruptions that follow upon existential estrangement. When separation becomes actual, their negative effects come into play, and ambiguity sets in. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
To the degree in which this disruption is real, self-integration is countered by disintegration, self-creation is countered by destruction, self-transcendence is countered by profanization. In the life process these positive and negative elements are inseparably entwined, for life is neither essential nor existential but ambiguous. China, borrowing Communist ideology and economic and social methods from Soviet Russia, has become the first colonial country to make spectacular economic gains, beginning to transform herself into one of the great World powers and trying by example, persuasion, and economic help to become the leader of the colonial revolution in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. While after 1923 the Soviet Union had definitely given up the hope for a workers’ revolution in the West and, in fact, sought to contain all Western revolutionary movements since then, she had hoped for support from the nationalist revolutions in the East. Now, however, having herself become one of the “have” states, she feels threated by the growing onslaught of the underdeveloped countries under China’s leadership, and seeks an understanding with the United States of America, without, however, turning this understanding into an alliance against China. Any description of the basic trends of Western history in the last four hundred and eighty years would be lacking in an essential element unless it took account of a profound spiritual chance. While the influence of Christian theological thinking was waning from the seventeenth century onward, the same spiritual reality which was expressed earlier in the concepts of this theology found now a new expression in philosophical, historical, and political formulations. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
The philosophers of the eighteenth century were, as Carl Becker has pointed out, no less men of faith than were the theologian of the thirteenth century. They just expressed their experience in a different conceptual framework. With the explosive growth of wealth and technical capacities in the nineteenth century, there occurred a fundamental change in man’s attitude. Not only, as Mr. Nietzsche put it, “God was dead,” but the humanism that was common to the theologians of the thirteenth, and to the philosophers of the eighteenth centuries, slowly died too; the formulae and ideologies, both of religion and of humanism, continued to be used, but the authentic experience became increasingly thinner, to the point of unreality. It was as if man had become drunk with his own power, and had transformed material production, once a means to the end of a more dignified life, into an end in itself. Large-scale enterprise, state intervention, emphasis on control of—rather than ownership of—property in the means of production, are characteristic of all industrial systems today. The Wester capitalist system, while it has many features of nineteenth-century capitalism, has incorporated enough of the new features to constitute a very different system from the former. The three forms of socialism current today, have broken much more drastically with the continuity of the former economic stage, show the new trends in different degrees and emphasis: a) Khrushchevism, a system of complete centralized planning and state ownership of industry and agriculture. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
B ) Chinese communism, especially since 1958, a system of total mobilization of its most important capital asset, 1.4 billion people, and the complete manipulation of their currency, physical and emotional energy and thoughts without regard to their individuality; c ) humanistic socialism, which aims at the blending of a necessary minimum of centralization, state intervention, and bureaucracy with the possible maximum of decentralization, individualism, and freedom. This third type of socialism is represented by various forms from Scandinavia to Yugoslavia, Burma, and India. It makes sense because without some form of communism, the people hold all the natural resources which they can sell as they please, while the government only takes in tax revenue. However, as LCDs (less developed countries) are now rising, the American government needs to take some control of production of goods and services to ensure it does not lose its role as World power. If the corporations and the people in the United States of America can no longer afford to own farms, make cars, and produce, poultry, dairy, wood, steel, and other raw materials, they will have to important everything, which send wealth out of the United States of America to other nations. Therefore, the government has two choices. They can make laws that allow them to compete with private firms, or subsidize American farms, automakers, and other companies that produce goods and services so they remain affordable and are purchased by Americans as well as other nations. It would also be wise to offer huge tax incentives to people who purchase American cars. If a person, for example, could get a $5,000 tax credit on any American car, they would not only be popular because of style, but also because there is more incentive to purchase one. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Russian under control of President Vladimir Putin’s leadership, is a conservative, state-controlled, industrial managerialism, not a revolutionary system; she is interested in law and order and anxious to defend herself against the onslaught of the revolution of the “have-not” nations. For the reason Mr. Putin seeks an understanding with the United States of America, the ending of USA involvement with Ukraine. He neither needs nor wants another war. Mr. Putin cannot, however, give up his Communist-revolutionary ideology, nor can he turn against China, without undermining his own system. Hence he has to maneuver carefully to preserve his ideological hold on the Russian people and to defend himself against both his opponents within Russian and against China and her potential allies outside. If he fails in his attempt to end the United States of America’s involvement with Ukraine, he (or his successor) will be forced into a close alliance with China and into a policy which would leave little hope for peace. The development of the former colonial peoples will not follow the capitalist development, because for psychological, social, and economic reasons this system is neither feasible nor attractive to them. The question is not whether they will join the communist or the capitalist systems. The real alternative is whether they will accept the Chinese or Russian form of communism, thus becoming closely allied with either of these two countries, or whether they will adopt one of the various forms of democratic, decentralized socialism and become allied with the neutral bloc. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
The United States of America is, therefore, confronted with the following alternative: either a continued fight against communism together with the continuation of the arms race—hence the probability of nuclear war—or a political understanding on the basis of the status quo with Russia, and the support of neutral democratic-socialist regimes in the colonial World. It is a fact that two systems represented By Russia-China and by the United States of America—Western Europe are competing with each other in the World today and the race is only heating up and getting more intense. Any attempt of either one to defeat the other system through the use of military power will not only fail, but will lead to the destruction of both—or the World. There is only one way in which the United States of America can compete with communism: that is by demonstrating that it is possible to raise the standard of living in America and influence LCDs to follow this method, without using forces of coercive regimentation. However, many people are not convinced that America is heading in the right direction because their leaders are displaying a lack of competence, a lack of law and order, a loss of family values, and it even seems to some that hardworking Americans, who believe in the capitalist dream, are given less consideration than people who enter America illegally. While there are over 5 million homeless people (many are not counted as homeless because they are subletting, living with family, or not on a rental lease where they are being housed) in America, people entering the country without passing background checks and without documents are put up in hotel rooms and given cash assistance. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
You will hear critics say that there are so many people homeless in America because they are mentally ill and that there is a shortage of houses. However, let us be real, many of you know people who are mentally ill and should have been fired who are gainfully employed. It is so bad that several of their coworkers display the same level of dysfunction. Furthermore, there are currently sixteen million homes currently sitting vacant across the United States of America. In fact, in every state across the country, any homes remain empty while hundreds of thousands of Americans face homelessness. The existence of a multicentered World depends on the acceptance of the present status quo by all powers and on effective universal disarmament. The tension and suspicious of the nuclear arms race do not permit a political understanding; the unsettled political situation does not permit disarmament. If peace is to be preserved, both disarmament and political understanding are necessary. If and when the economy improves and the arms race ends, only then will massive economic assistance—food, capital and technical assistance—to the LCDs be possible. Also, efforts to education LCDs about family planning and birth control should also be a goal. Because when there is food on the table, and people do not have to work for it, they usually continue to have babies. Some babies are even born starving because people have no idea about birth control and family planning nor access to it. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
Also, in conquering poverty and achieving wealth, the United States of America, like the rest of the West (and Russia), has accepted a spiritual of materialism under which production and consumption have become ends in themselves, rather than means to a more human, creative life. These and other institutional, secondary goals and values have become indistinguishable to most people from the primary aims of life. Quite aside from all dangers from without, our inner emptiness and deep-rooted lack of hope will eventually lead to the fall of Western civilization, unless a genuine renaissance of the Western spirit takes the place of the present complacency, resignation, and confusion. This renaissance must be precisely what the Renaissance of the fifteenth-seventeenth centuries was—an invigorating re-establishment of contact with the humanistic principles and aspirations of Western culture. What we are witnessing today is truly a World revolution in rapid advance, a revolution which began in the West four hundred and eighty years ago. It has led to a new system of production which at first made Europe and America the leaders of the World. It made the working masses in Europe beneficiaries of the system; and hence the revolution of the masses in Europe (with the exception of Russia) and in North America was peaceful. Now a new stage of the World revolution is developing, the revolution of the LCDs in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. If the great industrial powers accept the historical trend and take the adequate anticipatory steps, will this revolution occur peacefully? Many think World War III is on the verge of breaking out, and that leaves little hope for peace and the survival of democracy. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
I pledge Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one Nation, under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all. The American, even though they are being driven from the land, will never surrender their love for it. The American literally transplanted Heaven into his very consciousness. He imagines that he continues to live in the land of his dreams. He might be living in the cold north or in the sunny south, yet he prays for rain or for dew when it is the season in America. He celebrated Thanksgiving, the blending of two cultures and sharing of food and traditions. He celebrated Columbus Day, the founding of America. He celebrated Christmas, the birth of the Saviour. He celebrated Earth Day, when the trees were beginning to blossom. And he proudly celebrated Independence Day. In whatever clime he lived, he and she were always believed that they were in their ancient home. We must not forget the many sacrifices and contributions that woman have made for America also. Without women, we would not be able to continue the human race. The Americans mourned for their ancient land as they have for the dead, and they believe it will rise again and experience the resurrection of the dead. If I forget thee, O America, let my right hand forget its cunning; let my tongue cleave to my mouth, if I remember thee not, if I set not America above my chiefest joy. Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for unto thee I will give it. And be sure to donate to the Sacramento Fire Department, they are not receiving all of their resources. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
MAGNOLIA STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH
Rancho Cordova, CA | low $600s
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We See things with Different Eyes
My heart was full of music as I wandered the hours away by the bank of a brook, on my estate, watching the sun on the face of the chuckling water. A bird came to circle me, flew unafraid through the aura of gladness about me. The delicate tip of a wing brushed my wrist with the touch of the first secret kiss from my hands. The singing the filled me was part of the nature of laughing, the running of water, the sound of the wind in the reed by the edge of the stream. And as I spake, into my face there came light, as reflected from a silver flame; my long brown hair swelled ampler, in display full golden; in my eyes a brighter day dawned blue and full of love. This was a World without hatred. As it grew dark, I went home. Then retiring to my rooms, I sat down by the light of one lamp and devoured what I could of my century’s thinking, and at last I lay flat upon the bed, staring at the ceiling, overwhelmed by the vigor of the return to the classical, by the passionate enthusiasm for the old Greek and Roman poets, and by the faith in sensuality which this age seemed to hold. I enjoyed the beauty of the old handwritten codexes. Of course, this is why, even after the printing press was still established, my libraries boasted of handwritten books. While waiting for the servants to return from their hunt, I went to the library to catching up on a little reading. However, when the party failed to return by midnight, I began to fear the worst. I stumbled out of my quarters; my mouth was very dry, and my heart was thumping painfully. I descended the stairs. And while sitting alone at a table, from the corner of my eye, I saw the curtain twitch at an upper window. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Suddenly, men where shouting, canvas flapping, wheels rumbling, and I could hear horses neighing and pawing frantically. Overjoyed to hear them, I leapt to my feet just as the doors opened and the party entered. And although there was no wind at that hour of the night, one did arise not long afterward, but there was absolutely none then. Even the dry tips of the lingering hedge-mustard, grey and blighted, and the fringe on the roof of the standing democrat-wagon were unstirred. And yet amid that tense, godless clam the high bare boughs of all the trees in the yard were moving. They were twitching morbidly and spasmodically, clawing in convulsive and epileptic madness at the moonlit clouds; scratching impotently in the noxious air as if jerked by some alien and bodiless line of linkage with subterrene horrors writhing and struggling below the black roots. Not a man breathed for several seconds. Then a cloud of darker depth passed over the moon, and the silhouette of clutching branches faded out momentarily. At this there was a general cry; muffled with awe, but husky and almost identical from every throat. For the terror had not faded with the silhouette, and in a fearsome instant of deeper darkness, I saw wriggling at that treetop height a thousand tiny points of faint and unhallowed radiance, tipping each bough like the fire of St. Elmo or the flames that came down on the apostles’ heads at Pentecost. It was a monstrous constellation of unnatural light, like a glutted swarm of corpse-fed fireflies dancing hellish sarabands over an accursed marsh; and its colour was a nameless intrusion. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
All the while the shaft of phosphorescence from the well was getting bright and brighter, brining to my mind a sense of doom and abnormality which far outraced any image my conscious mind could form. It was no longer shining out, it was pouring out; and as the shapeless stream of unplaceable colour left the well it seemed to flow directly into the sky. The shivering men walked to the front door. However, to my consternation they made no sound and passed straight through the furniture and walls. That is when I noticed the growing luminosity of the trees. With the moments the shining of the trees increased, while their restless branches seemed to strain more and more toward verticality. The wood of the well-sweep was shining now. The phosphorescence had begun to pervade the entire mansion. It glowed on the broad-planked floor and the carpet, and shimmered over the sashes of the stained-glass windows. It ran up and down the exposed corner-post, coruscated about the shelf and mantel, and infected the very doors and the furniture. Each minute saw it strengthened. I walked and stumbled as in a dream. All of Llanada Villa was shining with the hideous unknown blend of colour; trees, buildings, and even such grass and herbage as had not been wholly changed to lethal grey brittleness. The boughs were all straining skyward, tipped with tongues of foul light. Then without warning the hideous thing shot vertically up toward the sky like a meteor, leaving behind no trail and disappearing through a round and curiously regular hole in the clouds before I could grasp or cry out. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
I could not forget that sight, as I stared blankly at the stars of Cygnus, Deneb twinkling above the other, where the unknown colour had melted into the Milky Way. However, my gaze was the next moment called swiftly to Earth by the crackling in the valley. It was just that. Only a wooden ripping and crackling, as so many others in the valley vowed. Yet the outcome was the same, for in one feverish, kaleidoscopic instant there burst up from Llanada Villa a gleamingly eruptive cataclysm of unnatural sparks and substance; blurring the glace of the few who saw it, and sending forth to the zenith a bombarding cloudburst of such coloured and fantastic fragments as our Universe must needs disown. Through quickly re-closing vapours, I flowed the great morbidity that had vanished, and in another second they had vanished too. Behind and below was only a darkness to which I dared not return, and all about was a mounting wind which seemed to sweep down in black, frore gusts from interstellar space. It shrieked and howled, and lashed the fields and distorted the fruit orchards in a mad cosmic frenzy. Later I was to learn that the hunting party had been ambushed and killed. Now on the 16th of January, the anniversary of the hunt, the ghostly party can be seen riding toward Llanada Villa. Apart from this, a housemaid’s ghost in a blue dress haunts the mansion, gliding silently along the corridors, while the spirit of Dieter Hulsmann, my butler haunts the Observational Tower where he starved to death, after learning of the death of the housemaid, whom he was fondly in love with. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
A group called the European Mission Society accused me of using the “arts of the Devil” and of being in league with “demonic forces” with which I supposedly intended “to perplex humanity.” With this added shock, I was crushed forever with a brooding fear I dared not even mention for many years to come. And from inside of the mansion, I had seen something feebly rise, only to sink down again upon the place from which the great shapeless horror had shot into the sky. I believe there must be an older race than man, spawned from ancient seed in times before ours, perhaps on planets that have gone to dust, and so horrible to humans that when they are discovered the discoverers keep still about it—forget them again as quickly as they can. And they go back to time immemorial. I saw things—and knew things—horrible, wild things I cannot quite remember—visited unbelievable places, looked backward through my memory of creatures that have manifested in the walls of my home. Sometimes gloominess falls upon me like a material pall. What writhing souls, what terrors, what unrest, what madness roams these halls! If only I would have been spared! Something had cast an immediate spell of depression over me. The air of the room grew heavy and close. The open casement and the out-of-doors seemed to beckon me. I walked to the window, thrust the curtain aside, stood there. I am not addicted to nocturnal strolls or late meanderings before my bed; yet now, curiously enough I wanted to leave my home and walk the darkened fields. I paced the room nervously. The clock on the mantel pushed its ticks slowly through the quiet. It was a brilliant moonlight night. The great chimes of the Observational Tower were sounding midnight. Trying as I could to erase from my memory the queer experience which I just had, but I could see shadows of men lurking on the grounds. How long I sat there in the quiet, I do not know. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
And to my holy sacrifice invite, the power who reigns in deepest hell and night; I call Einodian Hecate, lovely dame, of Earthly, water, and celestial frame, sepulchral, in a saffron veil arrayed, pleased with dark ghosts that wander thru the shade. Have I not reason, beldams as you are, saucy and overbold? How did you dare to trade and traffic with Macbeth in riddles and affairs of death; and I, the mistress of your charms, the close contriver of all harms, was never called to bear my part, or show the glory of our art? And, which is worse, all you have done hath been but for a wayward son, spiteful and wrathful; who, as others do, loves for his own ends, not for you. But make amends now: get you gone, and at the pit of Acheron meet me i’ the morning: thither he will come to know his destiny: your vessels and your spells provide, your charms, and every thing beside. I am for th’ air; this night I’ll spend unto a dismal and a fatal end: great business must be wrought ere noon: upon the corner of the moon, there hangs a vaporous drop profound; I’ll catch it ere it come to ground: and that, distill’d by magic sleights, shall raise such artificial sprites, as, by the strength of their illusion, shall draw him on to his confusion: he shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear his hopes ‘bove wisdom, grace, and fear; and you all know security is mortals’ chiefest enemy. Hark! I am call’d; my little spirit see, sits in a foggy cloud, and stays for me. Come, let’s make haste; she’ll soon be back again. And we fairies, that do run by the triple Hecate’s team from the presence of the sun, following darkness like a dream. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Although The Winchester Mystery House is usually closed at 1.00am, police officers and passersby say that someone or something walks around in the mansion at night and often turns on all the lights. Numerous individuals have seen the image of a man hanging from a scaffold on the east side of the mansion. According to legend, 20 years before Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester purchased the home, an outlaw was hanged on the land. The site where the hanging allegedly took place was built over. One of the tour guides was badly shaken by something he had seen on the upper floor, but he refused to discuss it. The ghost of the outlaw haunted the mansion with dreadful shrikes. As such, a priest was brought in to exorcise the ghost, which he did with the help of a large black bible which he left in the mansion. However, years later, after the ghost had been long forgotten, the bible was taken away for repair and immediately the shrieking resumed. The bible was hastily returned, and the fearful shrieking ceased. The outlaw’s ghost still haunts the mansion, his broken neck and limp arm by his side as he stalks the lonely depths of the second floor.
For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
It Has Been Almost 100 Years Since the American Crash of 1929
The reality is the TV news media in Sacramento does not care. They are evil. People have been injured and died as a result of their wanton disregard for human life and desire to make fake news. Children have to grow up without mothers and fathers. Families have been ripped apart, all so these gorillas can put on masks and makeup and tell lies, while making themselves feel important, when they are nothing more than low down, dirty criminals. The reporters are guilty of murder. History takes twists and turns and so, too, does the writing of history. After a process of about a thousand years, lasting from the beginning of the feudalization of the Roman Empire to the late Middles Ages, a period in which the European Continent was impregnated, through Christianity, with the ideas of African, Greek, Hebrew, and Arab thinking, Europe gave birth to a new culture. Western man discovered nature as an object of intellectual speculation and aesthetic enjoyment; he created a new science, which became—within a few centuries—the basis for a technique destined to transform nature and the practical life of man in a hitherto undreamed-of way; he discovered himself as an individual, endowed with almost unlimited energies and powers. This new period engendered also a new hope for the improvement, or even, the perfection of man. The hope for man’s perfection on this Earth and for his capacity to build a “good society” is one of the most characteristic and unique features of occidental thought. It is a hope that had been held by the Old Testament prophets as well as by Greek philosophers. It has then been overshadowed—although never lost—by the transhistorical ideals of salvation and by the emphasis on man’s substantial corruption in Christian thinking; it found new expression in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century utopias and in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century philosophical and political ideas. Parallel to the blossoming of hope after the Renaissance and the Reformation went the explosive economic development of the West, the first industrial revolution. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
The organizational form it took was that of the system of capitalism, characterized by private property in the means of production, the existence of politically free wages earners, and the regulation of all economic activities by the principles of calculation and profit maximation. By 1913, industrial production increased seven times above its 1860 level, with almost all of it in Europe and North America. (Less than 10 percent of World production took place outside of these two areas.) Since the end of the First World War, mankind has entered into a new phase. The nature of the capitalistic mode of production has undergone profound changes. New Productive forces (such as the use of oil, electricity, and atomic energy) and technical discoveries have increased material productivity many times over what it had been in the middle of the nineteenth century. The new technical discoveries brought with them a new form of production. This was characterized by centralization of production in big plants, along with the dominant positions of the big corporations; managerial bureaucracies, which head these corporations but do not own them; and a mode of production in which hundreds of thousands of manual and clerical workers co-operate smoothly, supported by strong trade unions, which often share the bureaucratic character of big corporations. Centralization, bureaucratization, and manipulation are the characteristics features of the new mode of production. The earlier period of industrial development, with its need to build up a heavy industry at the expense of the satisfaction of the material needs of the workers resulted in extreme poverty for the millions of men, women, and children who worked in factories during the nineteenth century. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
As a reaction to their misery, but also as an expression of human dignity and faith, the socialist movement spread over all of Europe and threatened to overthrow the old order and to replace it with one that would work for the benefit of the broad masses of the population. The organization of labour combined with technical progress and the resulting increased productivity permitted the working class an ever-increasing share of the national product. The extreme dissatisfaction with the system that characterized the nineteenth century gave way to a spirit of co-operation within the capitalist system. A new partnership between industry and the workers, represented by trade unions and (with the exception of the United States of America) strong socialist parties took place. The trend toward violent revolutions ended in Europe after the First World War, except in the economically most backward counties among the large powers. While the gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” has been narrowing considerably within the Western industrial countries (and slowly in Soviet Russia), the gap between the “have countries” of Europe and North America and the “have-not countries” in Asia (with the exception of Japan), Africa, and Latin America is as wide as it ever was within one country, and is actually still widening. However, while at the beginning of the twentieth century the colonial peoples accepted their exploitation and poverty, the middle of the same century is witnessing the full-scale revolution of the poor countries. Precisely as the workers within capitalism in the nineteenth century refused to continue believing that their fate had been ordained by divine or social law, so now the poor nations refuse to accept their poverty. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
Less Developed Countries (LCDs) demand not only political freedom, but a standard of living approaching that of the Western World and rapid industrialization as a means to that goal. Two thirds of the human race are unwilling to accept a situation in which their standard of living is only from 10 to less than 5 percent of that of people of the richest country—the United States of America—which with 4.3 percent of the World’s population, produces about 20 percent of the World’s goods which is 20 percent less than it was in 1960. The colonial revolution was sparked by many factors, among them the weakening of Europe, militarily and economically, after the two World Wars in the first half of the twentieth century; the nationalistic and revolutionary ideology transmitted from nineteenth-century Europe and America, and the new modes of production and social organization, which rise the possibility of “catching up with the West” beyond a slogan into a realm of reality. In the philosophical thinking of the modern era, we find also that the two aspects of freedom remain interwoven as they had already been in the theological doctrines of the Reformation. Thus for Mr. Kant and Mr. Hegal, autonomy and freedom of the individual are the central postulates of their systems, and yet they make the individual subordinate to the purpose of an all-powerful state. The philosophers of the period of the French Revolution, and in the nineteenth century Mr. Feuerbach, Mr. Marx, Mr. Stirner, and Mr. Nietzsche, have again in an uncompromising way expressed the idea that the individual should not be subject to any purposes external to his own growth or happiness. The reactionary philosophers of the same century, however, explicitly postulated the subordination of the individual under spiritual and secular authority. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
The second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth show the trend for human freedom in its positive sense at its peak. Not only did the middle class participate in it, but also the working class became an active free agent, fighting for it own economic aims and at the same time for the broader aims of humanity. With the monopolistic phase of capitalism as it developed increasingly in the last decades, the respective weight of both trends for human freedom seems to have changed. Those factors which tend to weaken the individual self have gained, while those strengthening the individual have relatively lost in weight. The individual’s feeling of powerlessness and aloneness has increased, his “freedom” all traditional bonds have become more pronounced, his possibilities for individual economic achievement have narrowed down. He feels threatened by gigantic forces and the situation resembles in many ways that of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The most important factor in this development is the increasing power of monopolistic capital. The concentration of capital (not wealth) in certain sectors of our economic system restricted the possibilities for the success of individual initiative, courage, and intelligence. In those sectors in which monopolistic capital has won it victories the economic independence of many has been destroyed. For those who struggle on, especially for a large part of the middle class, the fight assumes the character of a battle against such odds that the feeling of confidence in personal initiative and courage is replaced by a feeling of powerlessness and hopelessness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
An enormous though secret power over the whole of society is exercised by a small group, on the decisions of which depends the fate of a large part of society. The inflation of Germany, 1923, or the American crash, 1929, increased the feeling of insecurity and shattered for many the hope of getting ahead by one’s own efforts and the traditional belief in the unlimited possibilities of success. Most people have lived through difficult economic times of some sort. And everyone has at some point learned about the most significant economic downturn in modern USA history—the Great Depression of the 1930s. In keeping with our unique business cycle theory, ITR Economics is forecasting that another Great Depression will start near the beginning of the next decade. The causes of the upcoming Great Depression will be similar to its predecessor in the way it will be unforeseen and unexpected for the vast majority of people; for that reason, the emotional strain on people and the similar pain for unprepared businesses could parallel that of the 1930s. Just as many of us will never forget the influence of COVID-19 on our lives, the Great Depression of the 2030s will impact the way we think, how we spend money, who and what we trust, and what we assign importance on in our lives. Of course, the upcoming Great Depression will have a profound effect on mental health. Therefore, it is important to have the right financial mindset. You know it is coming, so plan, expect it, and do not overextend your business or finances. Start paying things off. Focus on longevity. Maybe stop buying cars every two years and get the scheduled maintenance done so you can keep it for seven years to a decade. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
The goal is to reduce expenditure. If you do not need to renovate your home, do not. If your home needs repairs, start getting them done now before it becomes a problem. Scrutinize your cost-structure heading into the depression. High fixed costs will be difficult to roll back. You can do simple things like cutback on how frequently the gardener comes out. Maybe every two weeks, instead of once a week. Regarding personal finances—and this might seem difficult: save as much money as you can between now and the next decade. Consider investing in gold and silver and getting a personal safe in your home (of course keep this private). The climb out of a depression is a time of tremendous opportunity. Look to invest or start your business after the Great Depression. You do not want to look back with regret at a missed opportunity. Oh, yeah, and when you go to replace that perfectly good mobile phone, consider, instead, investing in gold. Knowing the low point of this economic contraction will give you a competitive advantage. Preparing your business now to capitalize when that moment arrives could put you ahead of the competition coming out of the depression. While the upcoming Great Depression will be driven by very different circumstances, there are many things you can do for yourself and your business to establish advantageous positioning before, during and after the downturn. Do not allow tensions about the past to continue to bubble away. Many people will find themselves in need of spiritual consolation, sustenance, and blessing. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
Several will be wary of the machinations of evil, worried about demons, and seek protection from harm. It is possible that we will see war, epidemics and hunger. Some will view these as punishment for disobedience, sinfulness, and a lack of faith. Do not wait to fear divine judgment, dreading the possibility that God will bring about future wars to induce atonement. Repent now. Start saving money and paying down bills and make a pledge to return to church and live righteously. The believer must understand that the regaining the facile use of his faculties, and the maintenance of his mind in healthy condition after recovery from passive surrender to psychopathological offenders, will mean a steady fight with the ultimate negative—requiring the use of the weapons of warfare given in the Word of God. Weapons, for instance, such as the truth in the text “Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof,” for resisting brooding over the past, or torturing pictures of the future; “Resist the ultimate negative and it will flee from you,” when the pressure of the enemy is severe; and other “fighting” texts, which will prove truly to be the “sword of the Spirit” to thrust at the enemy in the “evil day” of his onslaught upon the escaping believer. THE STEADY ATTITUDE OR ACTION OF ONE’S WILL. In keeping the mind in normal working condition, free from the interference of the enemy, the believer should maintain the attitude of having his will steadily set: id est, “I will that my mind shall not be passive”; “I will to have full control of my faculties, and to use them”; “I will to recognize everything that comes from the enemy”—each of which declares the CHOICE of the man, rather than his determination to do these things. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
The powers of darkness are not affected by mere determination—id est, resolve—but they are rendered powerless by the act of the will definitely choosing, in the strength given by God, to stand against them. These steps to deliverance which has been given deal with THE PRACTICAL ASPECT OF THE BELIEVER’S ACTIONS. On the divine side, the victory has been won, and the ultimate negative and his psychopathological offenders have been conquered; but the actual liberation of the believer demands his active cooperation with the Holy Spirit, plus the steady exercise of his volition—choosing freedom instead of bondage. This will result in the normal use of every faculty of his being, set at liberty from the bondage of the enemy. “He that doeth the truth cometh to the light,” said the Lord (John 3.21). Evil spirits hate scrutiny, and so work under cover with deception and lies. The believer must come to the light of God for His light upon all spiritual experiences (as well as in all other departments of life) if he is to “cast off the works of darkness” (Romans 13.12) and put on the armour of God—the armor of light. In any scheme of Chrisitan theology, the church is an indispensable agent for the harmonizing of religion and culture. Society, the bearer of culture, encounters in the church the wellsprings of the Christian religion, the abiding presence and power of Christ. In Tillichian terminology, the church in its evangelizing role must “show to the people outside the Church that the symbols in which the life of the Church expresses itself are answers to the questions implied in their very existence as human beings.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
And, in its prophetic role, “the Church is the guardian who reveals dynamic structures in society and undercuts their demonic power by revealing them, even within the Church itself.” Therefore, one can say that the Church judges culture, including the Church’s own forms of life. For tis forms are created by culture, as its religious substance makes culture possible. The Church and culture are within, not alongside each other. The importance of the church is measure by the importance of the New Bing, for the Church is the historical embodiment of the New Being created by the Incarnation. Consequently, the such as the community of the New Being is the place where the new theonomy is actual. However, from there is pours into the whole of man’s cultural life and gives a Spiritual center to man’s spiritual life. Final revelation appeared in Jesus as the Christ, but it is the church which is supposed to receive it in a continuous process of reception, interpretation, and actualization. The history of the church is the locus of continuous dependent revelations. The Church is also the place where the reunion of man with man is an actual event, though the Church of God is permanently betrayed by the Christian churches. Yet, even if its organization seems always a betrayal of the New Being, the church is the Community of the New Being. The church has always been my home in spite of all criticisms, which I had to exercise at an early time upon Church doctrine and upon Church practice. It is the Spiritual Community established by the Spiritual Presence. Since the Spirit is the symbolic answer to an existential question, life ontologically is the actuality of being. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
Living is a process of continuous birth. The tragedy in the life of most of us is that we die before we are fully born. Being born, however, does not only mean to be free from the womb, the lap, the hand, et cetera, but also to be free to be active and creative. Just as the infant must breathe once the umbilical cord is cut, so man must be active and creative at every moment of birth. To the extent that man is fully born, he finds a new kind of rootedness; that lies in his creative relatedness to the World, and in the ensuing experience of solidarity with all man and will all nature. From being passively rooted in nature and in the womb, man becomes one again—but this time actively and creatively with all life. Man needs to have a sense of identity. Man can be defined as the terrestrial being that can say “I,” that can be aware of himself as a separate entity. Other terrestrial beings, being with nature and not transcending it, have no awareness of themselves, and has no need for a sense of identity. Man, being turn away form nature, being endowed with reason and imagination, needs to form a concept of himself, needs to say and to feel “I am I.” Because he is not lived, but lives, because he has lost the original unity with nature, has to make decisions, is aware of himself and his neighbour as different persons, he must be able to sense himself as the subject of his actions. If he did not find some way of satisfying his sense of identity, as with the need for relatedness, rootedness, and transcendence, this need for a sense of identity is so vital and imperative that man could not remain sane. Man’s sense of identity develops in the process of emerging from the “primary bonds” which tie him to mother nature. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11
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They Told Me this Because this Town was Full of Witch Legends
I was feeling extraordinary confusion and pain. It was not because of anything that could be seen or heard or handled, but because of something imagined. The place is not good for the imagination, and does not bring restful dreams at night. I thought I had awakened to a room full of darkness and moonlight and moving shadows, for the nearer moon was racing through the sky and everything in the mansion endued with a restless life in the dark. And something…some nameless, unthinkable thing…was coiled about my throat…something like a soft snake, wet and warm. It lay loose and light about my neck…and it was moving gently, very gently, with a soft, caressive pressure that sent little thrills of delight through every nerve and fiber of me, a perilous delight—beyond physical pleasure, deeper than joy of the mind. That warm softness was caressing the very roots of my soul with a terrible intimacy. The ecstasy of it left me weak, and yet I knew—in a flash of knowledge born of this impossible dream—that the soul should not be handled…And with that knowledge a horror broke upon me, turning the pleasure into a rapture of revulsion, hateful, horrible—but still most foully sweet. I tried to lift my hands and tear the dream-monstrosity from my throat—tried but half-heartedly; for though my soul was revolted to its very deeps, yet the delight of my body was so great that my hands all but refused the attempt. However, when at last I tried to life my arms a cold shock went over me and I found that I could not stir…my body lay stony as marble beneath the blankets, a living marble that shuddered with a dreadful delight through every ridig vein. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
The revulsion grew strong upon me as I struggled against the paralyzing dream—a struggle of soul against sluggish body—titanically, until the moving dark was streaked with blankness that clouded and closed about me at last and I sank back into the oblivion from which I had awakened. Next morning, when the bright sunlight shinning through the daisy stained-glass windows awakened me. I could feel the welcoming warmth of the sun, which reminded me of the bench by the cherry tree and the smell of its forgotten blossom. I lay for a while trying to remember. The dream had been more vivid than reality, but I could not now quite recall…only that it had been more sweet and horrible than anything else in life. I lay puzzling for a while, until a soft sound from the corner aroused me from my thoughts and I sat up to see the chambermaid entering my room. “Morning,” I said. “I have just had the devil of a dream…” I stretched and yawned, dismissing the nightmare temporarily from my mind. “What am I going to do with you, Mrs. Winchester?” she replied. “I am leaving here in a day or two and I will miss you dearly.” “Child, do not worry yourself about me,” I cried. “You have enough of your own business.” The memory of last night’s extraordinary dream was slipping from me, as such memories do, any by the time I reached the morning room, all of yesterday’s happenings were blotted out by the sharp necessities of the present. Again the intricate business of the day claimed my attention. I must have spent two hours at least idling over blueprints, watching with sleepy, colourless eyes, the towers and gables that were to be built. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
I made my rounds around the mansion, consuming many cups of tea in the course of the day and engaging in conversations with carpenters. I passed the day quite profitably, and it was not until late evening, when I returned to my office. I found myself alone when I reached the door. No matter. It was too late now to retreat or prevarication. I pushed on but, on this occasion, I found the door firmly locked. The disappointment melted away. And I felt I was floating on air. I turned away and then stood at the window, looking out over the moonlit landscape. Walking to the Venetian Dining Room, I cast a puzzled glance on the roast beef. It had been a while since I had a hot meal. However, a tiny, creeping fear was arising. From deeps of sound sleep I awoke much later. I awoke suddenly and completely, and with that inner excitement that presages something momentous. I awoke to brilliant moonlight, turning the room so bright that I could see the daisies from the window reflecting on the wall. And some warning instinct crawled coldly up my spine. There was a presentiment of something horrible stirring in my brain, inexplicably. I felt as thought soon the World would be consumed by floods, or split in two. That Planet Earth would be obliterated. That stars would collide, and parts of their bodies would fall to Earth, setting off a chain reaction to destroy the World. Traces of old ones can still be found amidst my estate, and some of them doubtless linger. The dark woods of the fruit orchards and the secrets of the strange days are one with the deep’s secrets; one with the hidden lore of Llanada Villa, and the mystery of primal Earth. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
When the nine story Observational Tower was complete and I went to survey it, they told me this place was evil. They told me this because this town was full of witch legends. I thought the evil must be something which grandmas had whispered to children through centuries. It was morning when I saw it, but shadow lurked always there. The trees grew thickly, and their trunks were big. And still there was beauty in it—an awful, shuddering beauty. The Winchester Mansion was insidious, promising, caressing, alluring, sweeter than honey; and the Observational Tower was clear and like the depths of a jewel—all beauty and terror, all horror and delight, in the infinite darkness upon which its windows opened, paned with emerald glass. It blended indistinguishably with the silence of the plush landscape—very softly, very passionately. It was then that I heard the story, and as the rambling voice scraped and whispered on I shivered again and again despite the summer day. When the spirits were done, the stars came out above me in the open. There had been no wild legends at all since the witch trials, but some believed this tower was where the devil held court beside a curious stone altar older than the Indians. There were not always haunted woods. And the sprawling ranch where I built my home was amid some of the valley’s most fertile gardens and orchards. However, something was creeping and creeping inside and waiting to be seen and felt and heard. Some of the rooms were deadly cold and during the summer guest would visibly shiver. As I climbed the winding staircase to the attic, it was very close and noisome up there, and no sound could be heard from any direction. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
In that first moment, as the door opened, I sensed something very wrong. The room was darkened, and for a while I could see nothing, and the deep stirrings of ancestral memory awoke within me—ancient memories from ancestors far away. In a graven instant—a tangled flash of conflicting sensation before oblivion closed over me. For I remembered the dream—and knew it for nightmare reality now. The very roots of my soul were tickled with unnatural delight. So I stood, rigid as marble as helplessly stony as any of Medusa’s victims in ancient legends were. And it was truly dreadful. A weakness was flooding that grew deepened, as something in my soul sank wholly into a blazing darkness that was oblivion to all else but the devouring rapture. The apparition that appeared in the room was slim, fair and sleek, and like William, he had the look of cherubic innocence on his face, but it was wholly deceptive. He had the face of a fallen angel, without Lucifer’s majesty to redeem it. I slammed the door and set my back against it, pearl handled gun in my hand, although my flesh crawled—for I knew…. commending my descent of the stairs, I heard a thud below me. I even thought a scream had been suddenly chocked off, and recalled nervously the clammy vapour which had brushed by me in that frightful room above. What presence had my cry and entry started up? Halted by some vague fear, I heard still further sounds below. Indubitably there was a sort of heavy dragging, and a most detestable sticky noise as of some fiendish unclear species of suction. With an associative sense goaded to feverish heights, I thought unaccountably of what I had seen upstairs. Good god! What devil World is this into which I had blundered? I dared move neither backward nor forward, but stood there trembling at the staircase. Every trifle of the scene burned into my brain. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
The sounds, the sense of dread expectancy, the darkness, the steepness of the narrow steps—and merciful Heaven!…the faint but unmistakable luminosity of all the woodwork in sight; steps, sides exposed laths, and beams alike! A feeble scratching on the floor downstairs now sounded distinctly. Slowly nerving myself, I finished my descent and walked boldly toward the parlor. However, I did not complete the walk, because what I sought was no longer there. It had come to meet me, and it was still alive after a fashion. Whether it had crawled or whether it had been dragged by any external force, I could not say; but the death had been at it. Everything had happened in the last half-hour had caused my face to become deathly pale. I retreated to my room like a child in disgrace, and lay awake for hours, staring into the dark, until I gave up and lit my candle and paced about the floor in a torment of spirit worse than anything I had endured in my life. My mind was so clouded with fatigue and misery. Archly, languorously, my blood pounded hot. The room wheeled and whirled about me, and forces unimaginable flickered through me. Battling the World, enslaved and yet possessor of all. There was a moment of blind fumbling in emptiness. I felt something loop gently about my ankle and a shock of repulsive pleasure went through me, and then another coil, and another, wound about my feet…that caressive pressure on my legs was all I could feel, and the voice in my brain drowned out all other sounds, and my body obeyed me reluctantly—but somehow I gave one heave of tremendous effort and swung, stumbling, out of that nest of horror. It was evening. The crooked bending skyline drank the buoyance of the sun, dragged it down, sucking greedily. And then I lay down on the clean floor, and wept. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Lights go on and off. Voices are heard, as well as footsteps. One of the tour guides enjoyed the animated conversations with the guest. However, he could hardly wait until everyone had left so that he could be begin taking notes from the old books in the library. The evening of stimulating and delightful companionship had left him feeling exhilarated, and he felt as though he could work through the night. “Of the thirteen doors in sight, only one was locked, and on this I tried various keys. The Thirteenth key proved the right one, and after some fumbling, I threw open the mahogany door. I screamed, I thought a momentary cloud eclipsed the window, and a second later I felt myself brushed as if by some hateful current of vapour. Strange colours danced before my eyes. The room contained hundreds of sleeping knights with their horses. There was a sparkling casket in which a beautiful maiden lay sleeping. However, on each side of the maiden were serpents, one holding a sword or the horn as only one of them could awaken her. Fatefully, I chose the horn and blew it.
“Suddenly, the sleeping knights came to life and attacked me. As they did, the room began to swirl and I felt myself slipping into unconsciousness. As I did, the figure in white appeared taunting me with a voice that echoed inside my head, ‘Now shame on him who sounded a horn, and the knight who sheathed a sword.’ When I regained consciousness, I was lying in the Daisy Bedroom and from that day on I was determined to find the sleeping maiden again. I spent years searching he mansion for the room in which she had lain. It became an obsession as I searched every corner of the mansion. And yet, for all my determination I never again found the room in which she lay. Visitors and other staff alike have reported seeing her tragic figure although her presence is felt more often than not. Interestingly, the maiden is said to float above the zig zag stair case and their level has changed over the years.” Caretakers have had valid experiences of some kind or other and some express the opinion that they would not go out of their way to spend the night at The Winchester Mystery House because it is so “beautiful but bizarre.”
For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Randolph Harris II International Institute 