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It is the Supper-Struggle that Most Basically Determines the Future!
Somehow I cannot believe that there are any heights that cannot be scaled by a human who know the secrets of making dreams come true. Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. Christianity, a mere two thousand and twenty two years old, is one of the World’s youngest religions. Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism are millennia older and, by the time of Christ’s birth, already counted millions of Asian devotees. Each of these different faiths extols celibacy as one of the highest expressions of Earthly existence, a crucial element in the lifelong endeavour to extinguish human passions and the longing for possessions. Each views pleasures of the flesh as an element in relationships, and for certain stages of life, Hinduism prescribes and Buddhism tolerates marriage. All three religions teach, however, that longing for pleasures of the flesh implies possessiveness of another person, in itself a condition to be avoided. Above all, celibacy is an essential condition to end the suffering of continuous rebirth, and to achieve moksa or nirvana, the spiritual liberation that is the believer’s ultimate goal. In each of the three belief systems, celibacy is a crucial means to an all-important end. In Hinduism, with its spiritual-centered understanding of human physiology and spiritual development, celibacy has a crucial physical as well as spiritual dimension. Hindus regard the life force as a powerful and enriching substance that should be conserved. This precept provides men with enormous impetus to abstain from wasteful pleasures of the flesh. Instead of squander the life force by indulging in uncontrolled pleasures of the flesh, they can store it as creative energy that will add to their intellectual vigour, physical stamina, and moral worth. The life force is such a powerful elixir, it even keeps men more youthful. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Mainstream Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism all share the negative and suspicious assessment of women that later characterized much of Christian thought. Women are depicted as seductive temptresses, voraciously interested in pleasure of the flesh, and morally weak. Their lustful nature makes celibacy an even greater challenge for men, who also have to overcome their own wayward impulses. Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism all required their maidens to remain virginal, but as in Christianity, celibacy can sometimes empower women and not just guarantee their marriageability. This is particularly true of nuns. In this context, their voluntary commitment to celibacy allows them, too, to aspire to moksa or nirvana. At the same time, it frees them from the burdens of marriage and motherhood and may provide opportunities for learning, scholarship, and public service otherwise prohibited to woman. In the case of the Brahma Kumaris, a renegade Hindu sect, celibacy completely inverts the status of woman. Its doctrines analyzes and explains the perceived low status of women in terms of the great evil of pleasures of the flesh, and it preaches celibacy as the only way to rectify this great evil. In this sect, celibacy is paramount and women are hoisted to heights unheard of in the Hindu religion. Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism are ancient religious philosophies that provide metaphysical explanations of the World that in most ways differ entirely from those of Christianity and the traditions in which it is rooted. Over the centuries, Hinduism and Buddhism have embraced billions of believers, Jainism millions. Their doctrines are sophisticated and sectarian, and infinitely complex. As they move through time and place, they continue to modify and vary. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
The following overview, therefore, is limited to the simplest sketch of each religion, glimpsed through the lens of celibacy. Nonetheless, it reveals just how integrally celibacy is located at the core of each of these creeds, and hence in the moral heart of so many human lives. In general, Hinduism aspires to purge human existence of its afflictions, the root of which is the perpetual cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. At the core of these afflictions is the physical body, an entity at the mercy of nature and simultaneously an illusion that conceals both human immortality and latent divinity. How then to bpresent in every individual? Hinduism’s answer is to follow the asramas, the four stages of life that characterize ideal existence and in three of which celibacy is paramount. This is because individuals will experience cyclical rebirths until they achieve moksa, the spiritual liberation that is the ultimate goals of Hindu life. Rebirths are determined, in part, by karma, the goodness or badness of actions in previous lives, a kind of spiritual justice system that leads to continuous rebirth. To Hindus, these rebirths are not miracles of eternal life, as they might be to Christians, but rather the terrible price exacted for wrongful deeds committed earlier. The way to end this relentless cycle of rebirths is to obliterate Earthly longings and desires, including karma or pleasures of the flesh, and cultivate higher knowledge. Modest phrases encompassing lifetimes of travail, but the rout to liberation, though rigorous, is at least clearly defined as a series of four life stages: brahmacharya or student, grihastha or household, vanaprastha or forest dweller, and sannyasi or total renouncer or religious mendicant. Each asrama evokes “toil and suffering,” steps in the gradual process of purification from “Earthly taint.” At the last step, the pilgrim is deserving of one’s spiritual home. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Gurus typically train boys, in mind and body, for a virtuous adulthood of good habits and excellent character, formed through devotion to self-discipline, sacred knowledge, and complete chastity. This commitment to abstaining from pleasures of the flesh is so total that the very word brahmacharya has become synonymous with celibacy. It means a lifestyle of intense self-control, in which the rational mind reduces all the carnal appetites to nothingness. Only thus purified can a man attain the state of selflessness and sufficient stores of the life force necessary for the realization of truth. In the past, is a young man lapsed and indulged in pleasures of the flesh, he was subjected to severe penances. Manu, the Hindu lawgiver, decreed a humiliating year of wearing a donkey’s skin, begging food from seven houses, admitting at each how he had sinned, eating only a single meal each day but bathing three times. The chaste brahmacharin absorbs a wide range of knowledge during his apprenticeship: the sacred Vedic texts and rituals, his social and religious duties and responsibilities as a member of his caste, and proper codes for behaviour. Together, this education sets him on the path that will reveal the Supreme Being, the ultimate goal of Hinduism. His celibacy is an essential instrument of learning and, in conjunction with his other austerities, helps him achieve control over all his senses. Subduing passion for pleasures of the flesh focuses the brahmacharin’s attention on his studies and duties, and on drawing closer to the Supreme Being. However, abstaining is not enough. The urge for pleasures of the flesh must not merely be comminated but sublimated, transformed into energy and redirected into Godliness. Celibacy is as much mental as physical. It is also an essential means to Hinduism’s most important end: moksa, the ultimate liberation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Celibate energy has a tangible physical dimension: semen. In no other religion is the power of this life force as pronounced as in Hinduism and related religious traditions. Semen is a vital fluid, the essence of life. In some of the writings in the Upanishads, a set of sacred Hindu text, for instance, the loss of seed is lamented as a kind of death. Seed is the creative force, and it is calculated that to produce one mere drop, sixty drops of blood are required. By retaining their seed, ascetic men generate tapas, the inner heat or energy that Shina used to destroy Kama and the energy that imparts aspects of Godliness to celibate mortals. Given its power, a brahmacharin who discharges seed risks at best serious waste, at worst dangerous loss. Instead, the precious fluid should be retained as an internal resource. One who treasures one’s seed and channels its power upward may attain personal and spiritual power and also sustain high levels of physical and mental agility, all invaluable to a student’s success. A man who is unchaste loses stamina, becomes emasculated and cowardly…incapable of any great effort. A man should be controlled, friendly, and mentally composed; he should always be a giver and a nontaker, compassionate to all living beings. He should spend his time meditating on God and, say the sacred texts, “lives identified with the eternal Self and beholds nothing else.” Ultimately, that oneness will allow him, at last, to escae the cycle of rebirth. Classical Hinduism, like Christianity practiced mostly in the breach, nonetheless forms the Worldview of countless millions of men and women about the meaning and nature of divine and human existence. Celibacy’s crucial role in the metaphysical scheme of things is central to Hinduism, for two reasons: first to conserve the precious life force in the seed, then transform it into creative energy, and second, as the only way to renounce and transcend Earthly desires, to achieve moksa or liberation, the longed-for closeness or oneness with the Supreme Being. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Christian theologians in the 19th century were troubled by the claim made famous by Immanuel Kant that theological ethics was necessarily heteronomous because the person is bound by a foreign will, the will of God. If this is the case, then moral norms are relative to the will of God and have no grounding reality; the defining feature of morality is unquestioned obedience. In order to counter this challenge, the idea of theonomy was introduced into a Christian version of morality. This concept was also to provide the means to avoid moralism and relativism. The moral law is simply the law of our essential nature. It is, then, neither something we impose on ourselves (autonomy) nor something imposed on us by a foreign will or power (heteronomy). The Christian message is that true freedom is theonomous; the moral law of God is nothing else than our true being. What does this mean? This particular set of ethics revolves around three arguments needed to counter moralism and relativism. First, the moral act aims at actualization of self; that is, at constituting the person as a centered self. For the ethical problem this means that the moral act is always a victory over disintegrating forces and that its aim is the actualization of man as a centered and therefore free person. The experience of the imperative to actualize the self is found in conscience, “the silent voice,” of our essential nature judging out actual lives. The moral law is nothing else than our essential nature formulated in terms of an imperative. To act on this law is to act out of freedom, since it is to act according to our essential being. Second, this law is not a matter of psychology or social custom, but is the will of God. That is to demonstrate the religious source of morality. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
The “Will of God” for us is precisely our essential being with all of its potentialities, our created nature declared as “very good” by God, as, in terms of the Creation myth, He “saw everything that he made.” For us the “Will of God” is manifest in our essential being; and only because of this can we accept the moral imperative as valid. It is not a strange law that demands our obedience, but the “silent voice” of our nature as man, and as man with an individual character. The moral law articulates what we most essentially are—centered persons in relation to God as the ground and power of being—as an imperative for how to live amid the ambiguities of actual life. The will of God is nothing else than the good of essential being. This means that morality does not depend on any concrete religion; it is religious in its very essence. The fact is, however, that our actual being is not our true being. Our lives are marked by fragmentation. The voice of man’s essential being is silenced, step by step; and his disintegrating self, his depersonalization, shows the nature of the anti-moral act and, by contrast, the nature of the moral act. Because of our estrangement from our essential being, we encounter the moral law as an imperative action. This estrangement is heard in the testimony of conscience against the self. Graceless moralism is born of the fact that fallen creatures hear the demand to actualize their essential nature in conscience as a heteronomous law demanding obedience. How then is this ethical problem—the conflict between self-integration and disintegration—to be answered beyond moralism? The answer is found in love, agape, as the ultimate principle of morality. Agape, points to the transcendent source of the content of the moral imperative and unifies our actual nature with our essential being. Agape overcomes the estrangement of fallen existence from the goodness of created, essential being. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
This love, agape, also draw within itself justice, as the acknowledgement of the other person as a person, and the power to act. In this way, agape is an answer to graceless moralism, while at the same time an agapistic ethics avoids the peril of moral relativism. These ethic principals stress the demand for the actualization of life against disintegrating forces. This is conceived in terms of the reunification in agape of actual life with essential being. By acting on the moral law in obedience to our essential nature, a higher mode of being is actualized, that is, the person as a centered self. In this way, the essential connection between morality and religion is asserted so that moralism and relativism are avoided. Suicidal acts may be connected to recent events or current conditions in a person’s life. Although such factors may not be the basic motivation for the suicide, they can precipitate it. Common triggering factors include stressful event, mood and thought changes, alcohol and other drug use, mental disorders, and modeling. People may also attempt suicide in response to long-term rather than recent stress. Three long-term stressors are particularly common—serious illness, an abusive environment, and occupational stress. People whose illnesses cause them great pain or severe disability may try to commit suicide, believing that death is unavoidable and imminent. They may also believe that the suffering and problems caused by their illnesses are more than they can endure. One study found that 37 percent of subject who died by suicide had been in poor physical health; other studies tell a similar story. Illness-linked suicides have become more common, and controversial, in recent years. Medical progress is partly responsible. Although physicians can now keep seriously ill people alive much longer, they often faith to extend the quality and comfort of the patients’ lives. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Victims of an abusive or repressive environment from which they have little or no hope of escape sometimes commit suicide. For example, prisoners of war, inmates of concentration camps, abused spouses, abused children, and prison inmate have tried to end their lives. Like those who have serious illnesses, these people may have felt that they could endure no more suffering and believed that there was no hope for improvement in their condition. Some jobs create feelings of tension or dissatisfaction that may precipitate suicide attempts. Research has found particularly high suicide rates among psychiatrists and psychologist, physicians, nurses, dentists, lawyers, farmers, and unskilled labourers. Such correlations do not necessarily mean that occupational pressures directly case suicidal actions. Perhaps unskilled workers are responding to financial insecurity rather than job stress when they attempt suicide. Similarly, rather than reacting to the emotional strain of their work, suicidal psychiatrists and psychologist may have long-standing emotional problems that stimulated their career interest in the first place. Clinicians once believed that married women who held jobs outside the home had higher suicide rate than other women, perhaps because of conflicts between the demands of their families and their jobs. However, recent studies call these notions into question and some even suggest that work outside the home may be linked to lower suicide rates among women, just as it is among men. One who wants power must be prepared to live flexibly between respecting rules and violating rules. Never must one break rules so flagrantly as to be flung out of their hierarchy; for the outcast will remain powerless. Since power can be gained only within the hierarchy, it is imperative that one remain in good standing with that part of the structure above one. Yet never must one observe the rules so respectfully as to miss the chance to seize unmerited advancement, to climb over, and perhaps dislodge, someone above one on the ladder. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
Commitment to a social cause conveys license to an individual to reach for power with a ruthlessness forbidden to purely personal interest. And the greater one’s individual sacrifice in the service of that cause, the greater the license. The progression is the function of a constant will to power acting on an accelerating progression of technological means. The spread of Christianity does not war with this process, but serves it; for Christianity, by way of the morality it fosters, supports the solidarity of the masses and thereby the increased power of the state. State power contends with individual power. The hunger for power by the collective, with the aim of ruthless conquest, leads it to demand of the individual a morality of self-sacrifice, a willingness to die for the state, whereas the hunger for power in an individual leads one to ignore, insofar as one can do so safely, the morality required of one by the collective. The state exercises enormous power; the individual, even the very powerful individual, relatively little. It comes about, therefore, that those individuals who are gifted and able, and who in the pursuit of power are not much burdened by loyalty to shared beliefs, who indeed are skilled at the professing and representing these beliefs while at same time violating them in pursuit of personal aggrandizement…those people strive for and achieve leadership and come thereby to be in the position of controlling and directing the enormous power of the state. And just as the individual in one’s quest of personal power is likely not to announce one’s aim as such, perhaps not even to oneself, but rather to advance it euphemistically (“I want to work with people”; I am interested in research”; “I seek a career in public service”), so those who determine the actions of the state likewise disguise the nature of those acts. They speak of securing national safety, of serving national interest, of supporting democracy in third World countries, of ensuring civil rights, of preserving our democratic heritage; but under cover of these revered principles and these professed purposes the state acts to enlarge its power. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
What prevents the achievement in reality of peaceful social arrangements throughout the World is not chance, not fate, not unenlightenment, not individual error or wrongdoing, but the unlimited will to power of sovereign states. What makes for the inherent absurdity of great collective events, such as wars and revolutions, is that the will to power nations, and the actions to which it leads them, and the consequences of these actions, bear no relation to any reasonable goal of human conscience. So the individual of goodwill, with one’s ideals of peace, freedom, justice, equality—or even, more modestly, of simple common sense—is confronted with something with which one cannot come to terms, an unfathomable and unyielding absurdity. Next, what happens to the verbally bright who have no zeal for a serviceable profession and who have no particular scientific or artistic bent? For the most part they make up the tribes or salesmanship, entertainment, business management, promotion, and advertising. Here of course there is no question of utility or honour to begin with, so an ingenuous boy will not look here for a manly career. Nevertheless, though we can pass by the sufferings of these well-paid callings, much publicized by their own writers, they are important to our theme because of the model they present to the growing boy. Consider the men and women in TV advertisements, demonstrating the product and singing the jingle. They are clowns and mannequins, in grimace, speech, and action. And again, what I want to call attention to in this advertising is not the economic problem of synthetic demand, and not the cultural problem of Popular Culture, but the human problem that these are human beings working as clowns; that the writers and designers of it are human beings thinking like idiots; and the broadcasters and underwriters know and abet what goes on. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Alternately, they are liars, confidence men, smooth talkers, obsequious, insolent, et cetera, et cetera. The popular-cultural content of the advertisements is somewhat neutralized by Mad magazine, the bible of the twelve-year-old who can read. However, far more influential and hard to counteract is the fact that the workmen and the patrons of this enterprise are human beings. (Highly approved, too.) They are not good models for a boy looking for a manly job that is useful and necessary, requiring human energy and capacity, and that can be done with honour and dignity. They are a good sign that not many such jobs will be available. The popular estimation is rather different. Consider the following: As one possible assistant, I suggested to the Senate subcommittee that they alert celebrities and leaders in the field of sports, movies, theater and television to the help they can offer by getting close to these [delinquent] kids. By giving them motivating heroes that they know and can talk to, instead of the misguided image of trouble-making buddies, they could assist greatly in guiding these normal aspirations for same and status into wholesome progressive channels. Or again: when a mass cross-section of Oklahoma high school juniors and seniors was asked which living person they would like to be, the boys named Drake, Tom Brady, and President Trump; the girls chose Paris Hilton, Beyonce, and Jennifer Lopez. In the American economy, the brute facts are that to keep the economy expanding, it is necessary to give money away to increase spending, production, and profits; and that this money must not be used for useful public goods in taxes, but must be plowed back as business expenses, even though there is a shameful shortage of schools, housing, et cetera. Yet when the TV people at first tried simply to give the money away for nothing, there was a great Calvinistic outcry that this was demoralizing (we may gamble on the horses only to improve the breed). #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
So they hit on the notion of a real contest with prizes. However, then, of course, they could not resist making the show itself profitable, and competitive in the (also rigged) ratings with other shows, so the experts in the entertainment-commodity manufactured phony contests. And to cap the climax of fraudulence, the hero of the phony contests proceeded to persuade himself, so he says, that his behaviour was educational! The behaviour of the networks was correspondingly typical. These business organizations claim the loyalty of their employees, but at the first breath of trouble they were ruthless and disloyal to their employees. They want to maximize profits and yet be absolutely safe from any risk. Consider their claim that they knew nothing about the fraud of the rigged Quiz shows. However, if they watched the shows that they were broadcasting, they could not possible, as professionals, not have known the facts, for there were obvious type-casting, acting, plot, et cetera. If they are not professionals, they are incompetent. However, if they do not watch what they broadcast, then they are utterly irresponsible and on what grounds do they have the franchises to the channels. We may offer them the choice: that they are liars or incompetent or irresponsible. The later direction of the investigation seems to me more important, the inquiry into the bribed disk-jockeying; for this deals directly with our crucial economic problem of synthesized demand, made taste, debauching the public and preventing the emergence and formation of natural taste. In such circumstances there cannot possibly be an American culture; we are doomed to nausea and barbarism. And then these baboons have the effrontery to declare that they give the people what the people demand and that they are not responsible for the level of the movies, the music, the plays, the books! #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Finally, in leafing through the Occupational Outlook Handbook, we notice that the armed forces employ a large number. Here our young man can become involved in a World-wide demented enterprise, with personnel and activities corresponding. Thus, on the simple criteria of unquestioned utility, employing human capacities, and honours, there are not enough worthy jobs in our economy for average boys and adolescents to grow up toward. There are of course thousands of jobs that are worthy and self-justifying, and thousands that can be made so by stubborn integrity, especially if one can work as an independent. Extraordinary intelligence or special talent, also, can often carve out a place for itself—conversely, their usual corruption and waste are all the more sickening. However, by and large our economic society is not geared for the cultivation of its young or the attainment of important goals that they can work toward. This is evident from the usual kind of vocational guidance, which consists of measuring the boy and finding some place in the economy where he can be fitted; chopping him down to make him fit; or neglecting him if they cannot find his slot. Personnel directors do not much try to scrutinize the economy in order to find some activity that is a real opportunity for the boy, and then to create an opportunity if they cannot find one. To do this would be an horrendous task: if we wanted to do it, I am not sure it could be done. However, if we mean to speak seriously about the troubles of the young men, the question is whether anything less makes sense. Surely by now, however, many readers are objecting that this entire argument is pointless because people in fact do not thin of their jobs in this way at all. Nobody asks if a job is useful or honourable (within the limits of business ethics). #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
A man gets a job that pays well, or well enough, that has prestige, and good conditions, or at least tolerable conditions. I agree with these objections as to the fact. (I hope we are wrong.) However, the question is what it means to grow up into such a fact as: “during my productive years, I will spend eight hours a day doing what is no good.” Why is this happening? Why is this new civilizational tide rushing in to collide with the old? No body even knows. Even today, 350 long years after the fact, historians cannot pin down the “cause” of the industrial revolution. As we have seen, each academic guild or philosophical school has its own preferred explanation. The technological determinists point to the steam engine, the ecologists to the destruction of Britain’s forests, the economist to fluctuating in the price of wool. Others emphasize religious or cultural changes, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and so on. In today’s World, too, we can identify many mutually casual forces. Experts point to the rising demand for exhaustible supplies of petroleum, the mushrooming growth of World population, or the escalated threat of global pollution as key forces for structural change on a planetary scale. Others point to the incredible advances in science and technology since the end of World War II and to the social and political changes railing in their wake. Still others emphasize the awakening of the non-industrial World and the ensuing political upheavals that threaten our life lines of inexpensive energy and raw materials. One can cite striking value changes—the revolution involving pleasures of the flesh, the youth upheaval of the 2020, the swiftly shifting attitudes toward work. One might single out the arms race which has greatly accelerated certain types of technological change. Alternatively, one might look for the cause of Fourth Wave in cultural epistemological change of our time—perhaps as profound as those wrought by the Reformation and Enlightenment combined. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
We could, in short, find scores, even hundreds of streams of change feeding into the grand confluence all of them interrelated in mutually causal ways. We could find amazing beneficial feedback loops in the social system, vastly accelerating and amplifying certain changes, as well as negative loops that suppress other changes. We could find, in this period of turbulence, analogies to the grand “leap” described by scientists like Ilya Prigogine, by which a simpler structure, in part by chance, suddenly breaks through to a wholly new level of complexity and diversity. What we cannot find is “the” cause of the Fourth Wave in the sense of a single independent variable or link that pulls the chain. Indeed, to ask what “the” cause is may be the wrong way of phrasing the question or even the wrong question altogether. “What is the cause of the Fourth Wave?” may be a Third Wave question. To say this is not to discount causation but to recognize its complexity. Nor does it suggest historical inevitability. Third Wave civilization may be shattered and unworkable, but it does not mean that the Third Wave civilization pictured here must necessarily take form. Any number of forces could radically change the outlook. War, economic collapse, ecological catastrophe come immediately to mind. While no one can stop the latest historical wave of change, necessity and chance are both at work. This, however, does not mean we cannot influence its course. If what I have said about beneficial feedback is correct, often a little “kick” to the system can bring about large-scale changes. The decisions we take today, as individuals, groups, or governments, can deflect, divert, or channel the racing currents of change. Each people will react differently to the challenges posed by the super-struggle that pits advocates of the Third Wave against those of the Fourth. Russians will respond one way, Americans another, Japanese, Germans, French, or Norwegians in still other ways, and countries are likely to grow more different from one another rather than more alike. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Within counties the same is true. Little changes can trigger large consequences—in corporations, schools, churches, hospitals, and neighbourhoods. And this is why despite everything, people—even individual—still count. This is especially true because the changes that lie ahead are the consequences of conflict, not automatic progression. Thus in every one of the technologically advanced nations, backward regions struggle to complete their industrialization. They attempt to protect their Third Wave factories and the jobs based on them. This places them in frontal conflict with regions that are already far advanced in building the technological base for Fourth Wave operations. Such battles tear society apart, but they also open many opportunities for effective political and social actions. The super-struggle now being waged in every community between the people of the Third Wave and the people of the Fourth Wave does not mean that other struggles lose their importance. Class conflict, racial conflict, the conflict of young and the established culture against the imperialism of the middle-aged, the conflict among regions, genders, religions—all these continue. Some, indeed, will be sharpened. However, all of them are shaped by and subordinated to, the super-struggle. It is the super-struggle that most basically determines the future. Meanwhile, two things cut through everything as the Fourth Wave thunders in our ears. One is the shift toward a higher level of diversity in society—the de-massification of mass society. The second is acceleration—the faster pace at which historical change occurs. Together these place tremendous strains on individuals and institutions alike, intensifying the super-struggle as it rages about us. Accustomed to coping with low diversity and slow change, individuals and institutions suddenly find themselves trying to cope with high diversity and high-speed change. The cross-pressures threaten to overload their decisional competence. The result is future shock. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
We are left with only one options. We must be willing to reshape ourselves and our institutions to deal with the new realities. For that is the price of admission to a workable and decently humane future. To make the necessary changes, however, we must take a totally fresh and imaginative look at two blazing issues. Both are crucial to our survival, yet all but ignored in public discussion: the future of personality and the politics of the future. To which we now turn…It is questionable whether humanity has learned enough from its ordeal in the last war and the present crisis. Since its return to a more spiritual outlook is foreordained, it may have to be accomplished at the price of a Third World War. The Mind back of things had not allowed the discovery of the atom bomb to be made just at this particular time without sufficient reason for doing so. Humanity is being prepared for the next fated move in its inner life. And that is a lessening of selfish materialism, an increasing of spiritual co-operation. The instrument used is a physical one though the net result will include a psychological one. Only if the fear generated by the unprecedented danger of this discovery attains such a tremendous magnitude that it overwhelms all other base emotions, it is likely to lead to the unshakeable determination to make the fresh moral start that is needed. The method of persuasion has changed radically. Where the spiritual teachers have failed to bring home their lessons to humanity, the atomic bomb may do so. It has forced these alternatives upon us: either the nations of the World must change their moral attitude towards each other or they must annihilate each other. The atom bomb leaves no alternatives between self-reform and self-annihilation. Humanity’s situation is critical urgent and grave. For human attitudes must be changed, and changed quickly. Yet human feelings are unprepared unwilling and unready to make this change. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Where the inner attitude of goodwill is lacking, there no real success can be achieves in the estrangement of war. We were told the possession of nuclear bombs would act as a deterrent against aggression. However, it could only be a temporary one. For arms races usually end in collisions, which themselves end in war. Where are the purified characters, the ennobled minds, which have come out of the past two World wars? They exist, of course, but only as individual. In the mass, more people were brutalized, most lost their faith in ideals and ethics than kept it. A Third World War could produce only still greater and graver deterioration. This is why the cause of peace must be helped—now, while there is yet time. No nuclear war can be a righteous war. Its support can only be contrary to Christian ethics and its consequence to human welfare. It is evil, and nothing, no cause and no situation, can make it good. They must recognize the fact that the only way t stop wars is the change of heart and mind from the state which breeds them. It will be a war not merely for the triumph of one empire against another, but in reality a desperate struggle for the survival of true civilization, which would necessarily include the survival after the war. It is astonishing that the terrifying peril into which the manufacture of atomic bombs had plunged the fate of humankind, brings from most people little more response than apathy. If a nuclear war—so far unknown—should happen in our time and leave as its aftermath most of humankind dead and much of the planet devastated, nobody should complain about a result. Everybody had years of warning but its deterrent effect was too small against immense stupidity, indifference, cruelty, short-sightedness, and wishful thinking. Neither the memory of past agonies (in two World Wars) nor the imaginary picture of coming ones would then have been strong enough to teach us the dreadful lesson. If humans of goodwill try to find it, there is always a formula less costly than war. World War is not at any time a rigid preordained fatal inevitability, but only a probability. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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We Are Endangered, Our Way of Life is Threatened, We Must Avenge Our Loss!
One thing I know: kindness is more important than wisdom. To know others is to know wisdom, to know oneself—enlightenment. “Peace!” was the watchword of the World into which baby George Baker was born in 1879, in Rockville, Maryland USA. The founder of the USA’s most successful twentieth-century Christian celibate communities was the son of former slaves whose struggling family needed even the tiny wages he earned as a part-time child labourer. George also attended school long enough to become an avid reader and a lifelong devotee of his teachers’ dogma of punctuality, cleanliness, temperance, and hard work. Rockville’s Jerusalem Methodist Church was George’s other transformative experience. Its African America lay preachers inspired him and its tightly knit community embraced him, protecting him against those who sneered at his slight stature: a mere five foot two when fully grown. When he was a teenager, George’s mother died, at 480 pounds “the largest woman in the county, is not the state,” the local newspaper noted. Soon after Nancy Baker’s death, George left home for Baltimore. In a permanent break with his past, he renounced all family ties and set out alone in pursuit of his personal truths. Baltimore taught the newcomer about urban-style brute labour, poverty, unionism, and racism as destructive as the lynch mods of rural Maryland. However, God had not abandoned the wicked city. George took refuge in its storefront churches, where he molded his oratorical powers and deepened his religious commitment. Gradually he developed a theology that combined African-American spirituality with current beliefs about the power is optimistic thinking, achieving oneness with God, embracing celibacy, and obliterating not merely racism but race itself, a construct he came to believe did not exist. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
George Baker’s intense religiosity led to a mystical experience in which he spoke in tongues and reached a new level of being. Afterward, he began to call himself the Messenger. By 1907, the Messenger believed he was the son of God and tht his destiny was to spread God’s word to the unenlightened and unredeemed. Once again, the God of celibacy had chosen as His representative one of the reviled, this time a man from a people recently delivered from slavery, still ground down by hatred and fear, habit and history, the might of unmajestic law and the forces of repressive order. The Messenger’s antiracist mission sent him south, to destroy Jim Crowism—“if it costs me my life,” he declared. It well could have—lynching, often accompanied by castration, was a common enough fate for unlucky or unwise Black men. Ignoring these dangers, the Messenger traveled to Georgia. There, the electrifying itinerant preacher exhorted his audiences to follow a loving God who had created a World where gender and race were meaningless labels. How were his listeners to experience this World, to defy the illusory existence of gender and race? Through the power of thought, the Messenger taught, for thought, clarified through celibacy, could overcome the terrible obstacles that race and gender created. This was a unique and stern message gently told: transform society by conquering your own most basic urges. In challenging the notion of race, the Messenger struck at the very foundations of American social structure. Here was a Black preacher, handsome and adored by his congregations, so scrupulous in his personal chastity that no undercover investigator or dissident follower would ever find a particle of evidence to suggest even a single lapse. The actual practice of and primacy of celibacy in the Messenger’s teachings strongly suggested that he was an honest man. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
The Messenger’s devotees found his strictures against pleasures of the flesh unusual and exacting. However, to overburdened women, celibacy had the same enormous appeal Mother Ann Lee had encountered generations earlier. Before long, many wives attempted to break off pleasures of the flesh relations. Several even left their homes and moved in with the celibate Messenger. Suddenly, through celibacy, the Messenger had liberated the women in his impoverished commune. Most of these women were exhausted from lifetimes of drudgery, prolapsed uteruses from too frequent childbearing, and subservience to their “so-called males”—for the Messenger, remember, taught the gender, like race, did not exist. Frustrated husbands and African-American religious leaders banded together against the diminutive but handsome preacher. He had cast spells, they charged, and cause their wives and mothers to lose their minds. “If something was not done, the whole community would be crazed.” The police were brought in and the Messenger’s Black male accusers backed them up. Their combined strength overpowered the phalanx of enraged women protecting the Messenger and he was thrown into jail. The Messenger flourished. Visitors swarmed to his cell and converted en masse, even Caucasian men who seemed to be as wild over him as the African Americans. In segregated, small-town Georgia, this was a near miracle and strong testimony to the Messenger’s sincerity and charisma. Afterward, the Messenger led his mainly female followers throughout the South on a punishing, five-years trek of proselytizing. Finally, in 1917, with the handful of faithful who continued to travel with him, he settled down in Brooklyn. He also married the most devoted woman in his entourage, tall, stately Penniniah, who lived with him in obviously contented celibacy until her death. #RandolphHarri 3 of 23
Why would this virgin bachelor who preached the sanctity of celibacy get married? Of course, skeptics questioned whether the marriage was, indeed celibate, but all evidence indicates it was. It seems likely that, from the Messenger’s perspective, Mother Penniniah fended off seductive women attracted to the larger-than-life (figuratively if not literally) leader. She also lent credibility to her husband’s mission and, with the power of her own religious fervor, attracted many new disciples to the former bachelor’s movement. About this time, the Messenger adopted a new name, the Reverend Major Jealous Divine, implying religious and military authority, the jealousy of the biblical God, and his own divinity. His flock shortened this to Father Divine and chanted, “God is here on Earth today. Father Divine is his name.” Penniniah, of course, became Mother Divine. Soon after, Father Divine scraped together $700 plus a mortgage and purchased a Sayville, Long Island, property to house his commune. To maintain it, he established the Busy Bee employment agency, which furnished his neighbours with trustworthy hired help made up of his own people. In this commune, everyone worked with evenings and Sundays devoted to religious services. Even Father Divine tended chickens and gardened on top of his onerous pastoral duties. The difference between the new and the old way of life, however, was through his savvy management, Father Divine provided the Busy Bees with lodgings in a fine home, generous quantities of food, security from all want. On their own, as they well knew, they could never have achieved this. Like the old Shaker communes, Father Divine’s household was rigidly structured and monitored to ensure strict celibacy, devout religious observance, hard work, and shared prosperity. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
Smoking, swearing, drugs, and alcohol were banned. The house was “heaven” and Father Divine was “God.” His followers were “angels” who addressed each other as “brother” and “sister.” Each angel had a single room—surely a luxury for most—with men and women separated except when religion or business required their collaboration. As in Shaker communities, with their vitriolic, self-righteous lyrics, language in Heaven was also regulated. However, Father Divine forbade his angels to use negative words and banned (rather than trumpeted) hell, Devil,and even hello, which he believed was a corruption of hell. He originated today’s wide spread greeting “Peace!” and the mantra “It is wonderful,” which dispelled negative ideas and conjured up optimistic thoughts that would lead, one day, to a peaceful World. Like the Shakers, Father Divine welcomed parents and their children, though he believed the latter were products of the sin of pleasures of the flesh that drained the body of “spiritual energy.” Also like the Shakers, he required his disciples to renounce Earthly kinships, including marriage, and substitute fraternal kinships with his other angels. Like Mother Ann, Father Divine devised mechanism to enforce celibacy by providing acceptable outlets for sublimating pleasures of the flesh. Not surprisingly, given Nancy Baker’s fatal obesity, her son was so obsessed with food that he used it as a took of ministry. The tasty fare at his bulging tables consoled, nursed, and converted, and his “Holy Communion banquets,” modeled on the Last Supper, were legendary. Decades earlier, he had inaugurated them in the South as potlucks. Later, they nourished overworked, underpaid Africa-Americans who packed into his dining room in such numbers that he had to host multiple sittings rather than turn anyone away. On the weekends, Father Divine often spent twelve hours daily hosting them. The banquets also plumped up his angels and ensured that at least one of their Earthly appetites was sated. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
For Father Divine eating was a consuming passion. Twice weekly he weighed the angels and chided any who lost weight. This, it would appear, was difficult to do. Consider a typical, Depression-era Holy Communion banquet menu: macaroni, rice, potatoes, peas, tomatoes, turnips, baked beans, turkey and pork chops, corn bread, biscuits, Graham bread, cake, pie, peaches, tea, milk, and Postum. After these feats, the stuffed diners burst into song and prayer, witnessing and confessing, shouting and dancing and speaking in tongues. Like Mother Ann, Father Divine favoured these exhausting and emotional outpourings, which obviously served to dissipate any erotic feelings that gluttony had not obliterated. (Even though gluttony is also a sin.) Father Divine’s commune had at least a couple of scandals. After an initial period of tolerance, the neighbour’s decided they hated living close to a large, pulsating community of Black people. They went on the attack, beginning with false rumors. They only actual scandal involved “John the Revelator,” a California millionaire disciple, who lured a seventeen-year-old he christened “Virgin Mary” into the movement, seduced her, then confessed his evildoing. Father Divine immediately expelled him and separated him from the young woman. Yet despite Father Divine’s overwhelming probity, the Heavenly movement was tarred by gossipmongers skeptical about the dapper little preacher’s personal chastity. His neighbours’ hostility, coinciding with an intensive crusade in New York City, finally drove Father Divine to relocate to welcoming Harlem. There an explosion of disciples recast his sect into a movement, as new angels replicated his commune in other location and baptized his crusade the Peace Mission. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Ironically, the Peace Mission’s expansion into business, and from East to West Coast, precipitated its decline. Its mainstay continued to be less affluent Blacks, though a small number of wealthy Whites also joined. One problem was that the public vastly overestimated the movement’s membership, making Father Divine more influential than the true number of his followers warranted. In consequence, the Mission was increasingly drawn into political debates and destructive ideological battles with other Black movements that deplored Father Divine’s steadfast refusal to segregation. Yet how could he, when a fundamental part of his creed was that race did not exist? By the end of the Depression, the Peace Mission was restructured as a church. Its membership shrank and new orders were born. A flamboyant California branch sprouted the Rosebubs, young virgin females who swore eternal celibacy, wore uniforms emblazoned with Vs for virginity, and celebrated Father Divine in giddy song. The male Crusaders, though not necessarily virginal, pledged themselves to celibacy and to Father Divine’s theology. However, the Rosebuds’ subservience—they strove to be submissive, meek, and sweet; they have hearts where Christ alone is heard to speak”—and the Crusaders’ militancy clashed with Father Divine’s genderless teaching. They were celibate but far from egalitarian. By 1943, when Penniniah died, Father Divine and his churches were in free fall. In 1946, he made the situation worse by marrying Edna Rose Ritchings, aka Sweet Angel, a pretty Caucasian, twenty-one-year-old Canadian. Father Divine justified this risky adventure by claiming that the new Mother Divine was Penniniah and the Virgin Mary reincarnated, and he likened their union to “the Marriage of CHRIST to HIS Church.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Ah, Father Divine! At sixty-seven, he was suddenly seized by irresistible longings and reincarnated in the skin of the young George Baker so long ago shucked off. Yet from all accounts, this second marriage was as successful as the first, with the new Mother Divine thriving on the same celibate regimen as her predecessor. And celibate she was, for Father Divine preempted suspicion about any possible pleasures of the flesh by assigning a Black angel to monitor her and presumably be a living witness to his Heavenly wife’s intact virginity. From a larger perspective, its leader’s questionable remarriage and, in 1965, his death certainly did not help the Peace Mission. However, the root causes of its decline lay elsewhere. By then, in a new era of permissiveness with pleasures of the flesh, widely available birther control, and the civil rights movement, celibacy was a harder sell except to those who could be convinced it was a moral imperative. The Peace Mission’s communal life seemed rigorous and restrictive, even bizarre. Its insistence on severing the parent-child bond has serious psychological and judicial implications. And though he was very old, Father Divine made the tactical error, nineteen years after he married again, of anointing his untested young wife, rather than a well-groomed protégé, to head his shriveled church. Today the Peace Mission sighs on in anachronistic relics, including Mother Divine’s mansion. Another is Philadelphia’s Divine Tracy Hotel, which segregates guests in gendered floors and prohibits tobacco, alcohol, and swearing. Women, in obligatory dress and hosiery, and men, in pants and shirts, mingle together only in the lobby. In the Divine Tracy Hotel, only the most determined guests can avoid a celibate sojourn. It is an odd but fitting monument to a movement that, at one time, ushered thousands of weary and oppressed converts into similar Heavens on Earth. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
America’s Shakers and Father Divine’s angels had much in common, and he proudly acknowledged his debt to Mother Anne Lee’s theology. Most important of their shared tenets was the pleasures of the flesh were the root of human evil and therefore celibacy was essential in a righteous life. Their notion of celibacy stretched further than mere sexual negativism. It allowed them to redefine gender differences, so they effectively offered feminist lifestyles to their followers. Unlike cloisters, however, their communes included men and women, and Father Divine’s Heavens were located in the World into which most angels trooped out to work. Just as important, in America’s racially troubled society, celibacy defused the minefield of interracial pleasures of the flesh. It permitted African American Shakers to head communes and African American angels to live alongside European American ones, all under the guidance of a Black leaders who dismissed race as a meaningless designation and celebrated chaste marriage, first with an African American woman, and them with a Canadian European woman. Both Mother Less and Father Divine proselytized among people oppressed by an unfair World and offered them safe haven in a new, righteous one. They taught tht celibacy was a great moral good that required the sacrifice of all blood ties, including children, who became the responsibility of the commune rather than individual parents. The rewards for joining either sect were immediate and substantial. Women won unheard-of equality, while hard work, discipline, and obedience provided collective material comfort, security, and the camaraderie of the spiritual fraternity that replaced blood relationships. Mother Ann and father Divine adopted remarkably similar strategies to enforce celibacy. They segregated men and women, permitted them to mix only in controlled situations. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
They addressed the need to sublimate passions of pleasures of the flesh through rituals of frenzied dancing and singing, speaking in tongues, public confessions, and near-hysterical worship. They even regulated language to promote their sectarian metaphors. Above all, Mother Lee and Father Divine exemplified the celibate life they demanded of others and never succumbed to temptation. Ironically, the twice married but never bedded Father Divine faulted Mother Ann for having once had a life involving pleasures of the flesh. That she had terminated it, after divine revelation taught her that pleasures of the flesh were the root of all evil, was not sufficient. From the vantage point of his own sinlessness, the virgin Father Divine judged the long-celibate Mother Ann and found her wanting. He believed her pleasures of the flesh experience in marriage, though short-lived and unwilling, had deprived her of immortality. However, if it is not taught by their parents as being necessary, it is rare that someone would adopt celibacy and remain a virgin before having a divine revelation because everyone else teachers that pleasures of the flesh are natural, normal, and the thing to do. So it takes one to mature and establish their own values after they are socially engineered in a particular manner. Perhaps Father Divine was trying to do that very thing, stop people from engaging in pleasures of the flesh and keep their virginity and stay celibate, which is why he called out Mother Ann. Shakerism and the Peace Mission were not failed experiments, though neither outlasted its founder for more than a few decades. What has endured are their legacies of a courageous celibacy that dared to challenge society’s underpinnings of women’s inequality and racial subjugation. The illiterate immigrant women and the disempowered African American man defied their social realities and bestowed on their followers the equality and personal dignity the law denied. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
Celibacy, combined with highly structured discipline and hard work, was briefly the answer for thousands of aliened, mostly unaffluent Americans. However, what turns people from Christian morality to secular ethics is the loss of the reality of grace, the power to accept the unacceptable person, and the turn to moralistic preaching centered on religious and moral law. Yet unless principles for right action are rooted in being and thus in some religious depth to existence, one can never escape relativism. The reality of grace is the principle of morality rooted in being itself. Still, modern moral philosophers have insisted that morality is autonomous, unrelated to religion. The question of what is right and good must be determined on grounds other than appeal to God and God’s will because one can always ask whether obedience to the divine will is itself good. Yet to ask that question is to demand a standard outside of the will of God. Ethics is thus autonomous, independent of religion. Second, in reaction to nineteenth- and early twentieth-century liberal theologians, from Friedrich Schleiermacher to Albrecht Ritschl, Wilhelm Herrmann, and the Social Gospelers, who often granted the autonomy of morals, many twentieth-century theologians have attempted to reassert the distinctiveness of Christian ethics. This was done, as in the case of Karl Barth, through the revealed Word and command of God or, more recently, by appeal to the distinct practices, beliefs, and narratives of the Christian community insofar as these constitute a distinctive way of life. In making these arguments, theologians claim that the validity of Christian ethics can be established only internal to Christian beliefs or God’s commands. Once again, the connection between religion and general moral reflection seems cut. However, one can find graceless moralism, ethical relativism, and the reduction of reason to merely technical rationality. The moral aim is becoming a person within a community of persons. This aim is essentially religious. The modern philosophical attempt to sever the connection between religion and morality is foiled at the outside. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
However, by the same token, the demand that this places upon the theologian is not to establish the particularity of the Christian moral vision, but rather to show how Christian faith answers the moral aim. We must relate properly ethical thinking to systematic theology. A thought experiment. I am in the World alone. I have always been alone. Nothing and no one to protect me. Just my wits and my strength and such weapons as I find or contrive. In the driving wind the freezing rain is like arrows. I find a cave—a cave, I discover, that has been found already by a bear. If I can, I will drive him out. I do not think: This is not fair, it belongs to him. I do not wonder: Who has the greater need, he or I? I drive him out. I am hungry; a fawn comes within range of my stone/ I do not ponder contending rights, do not weigh the fawn’s life against my own; I kill. I am warm; I am full, the day is over, I lie down to sleep. I keep my club close to hand. One day I encounter another man. I cannot read his gestures or understand his strange sounds. I give him a wide berth, go on my own way. He follows. I make threatening gestures, he retreats. At night I do not sleep well. How close is he? What does he intend? The next day, at my bidding, he comes closer. I kill him. For the solitary savage, should ever a creature have existed, there is no guilt, no right and no wrong. Years pass. Millennia. Now I live in a community. There are thirty or forty of us. We hunt together, sit around the fire together, are frightened as one by the evil spirits of the forest. Withing this group I do not kill, do not steal, do not deceive. I am no longer free, I live within limits, I have become moral. Another group moves into our territory. They are fishing in our streams, killing our game. One of our men is found with an arrow in his back. We lament, we wail, we rage. Our chief calls a council. We are endangered, he tells us; our way of life is threatened; we must avenge our loss. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
We beat our drums to drive away our fear, paint horizontal stripes of red and white on our bodies. At midnight we set forth. In silence and stealth we approach the sleeping camp. We drink strong spirits. Two boys with torches set fire to the straw huts. As the occupants rush out, silhouetted by the flames, we let loose our arrows, our spears. When our enemies are in blind panic, we fall upon them, club them to death. And totally destroy the village and everyone in it and violate their ways of life. On the march home we are content, relaxed, fulfilled. We sing, we laugh, we are triumphant. The members of the group have become moral, they live within limits, while the group itself there is no good and no evil. Morality is conservative, aims to preserve what is valuable in life. Meaning, therefore, must be antecedent to morality. For meaning establishes value. If life is without meaning, there is nothing worth preserving: All is equal, anything goes. What binds us together in a community is shared beliefs. Vital yet unnoticed, like the air we breathe, they constitute the meaning of life, tell us how to interpret our experience, determine what we experience. With them we grasp the World, make sense of what happens to us, find our place, arrange our lives into know patterns. We feel at home; we know how to live. They constitute our scheme of things. However, something is left over. Something of bereavement or pain or mystery is unaccounted for, experience of which we cannot make sense, with which we cannot come to terms. This is the margin of terror. If we are loyal to the received wisdom, we look away, pretend it does not exist, is of no importance, a deviation, a neurosis perhaps; experience is falsified, but the scheme of things is not impugned. The received wisdom spreads it sheltering umbrellas. If one is loyal to deviant experience, to the pain and the mystery, one is apostate to the common faith and hence estranged from those who live by it, which is pretty much everybody. Once finds oneself alone in a desert where one’s specialness is scant comfort. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
Nothing stays. The World would fling us away, spins like a carousel. Do you know? Do you feel it, this losing of grip? The received interpretations no longer work, do not fit, do not take hold. We cannot grasp the World. Some people do not hear the screaming; the old fictions still work. Some hear it keenly: The chalk has worn down, the fingernail drags across an endless blackboard, the sky is empty. In times of peace most people find it possible to believe, at lest nominally, in the received wisdom. In times of great social upheaval—the Napoleonic Wars, the Russian Revolution—the received wisdom is shattered for everyone. The World is lost—because it was those shared beliefs, now overturned and discredited, that constituted the World. Our holiest fictions designate what is right and what is wrong, constitute a scheme of things that redeems the way things are. The way things are is the will to power of groups. The scheme of things conceals the ways of power behind a lofty and glittering façade. The whole system hands on the efficacy of images and words, the keeping of promises, the observance of convention. The reign of order which is that of symbols and signs, always results in fairly general disarmament, beginning with visible arms and gradually spreading to the will. Swords get thinner and vanish, characters get rounder. The age when fact was dominant fades imperceptibly away. Under the names of foresight and tradition, the future and the past, which are imaginary perspectives, dominate and restrain the present. However, the general disbarment is only within the system of order. The brutality and barbarism of the individual have but passed to the collective. The sword of the citizen gets thinner, vanishes; the sword of the state gets longer and sharper. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Parts serve the whole. The organism grows larger and more powerful by virtue of finding better and better ways to exploit its constituents. Slaves may be made to man the oars and drive the galley, but it requires the constant attention of a slave master cracking the whip. However, if the slaves can be converted to a faith in the ship and its mission, then no slave master will be needed—he will now be free to help with the cannon—while the ship slices forward ever fast, with more power, more dangerous to its enemies. There is no alternative to power, no other position—not Christianity nor the Golden Rule nor brotherly love nor nonviolence; not self-sacrifice nor the turning of the other cheek. For all these various abnegations of power by parts of a whole are, unwittingly, in the service of increased power to the whole; and the whole morality created by such renunciations is used by the aggregate to increase the power with which it then pursues more power. Good and evil come into existence as defined by power and are shaped to protect power. They filter down from rulers, magistrates, educators, from bishops, priests, and Sunday school teachers to parents, who shape the conscience of children, imprint the limits, instill the guilt. Order and safety are maintained; citizens need not bear arms; violence is proscribed, banished beyond borders. (More important than gun control is violence control and self-control.) And so it comes about that the modern state is thought to be a moral state, even a Christian state, the source and the defender of morality, of civilization, of high culture. However, the morality that is here, rightly, ascribed to the state is internal, the lawfulness of cells within an organism. In its conduct with other states, and with those barbarians beyond its borders, the state is a killer. And utterly self-righteous in its exterminations. The state claiming morality is like a murderer claiming innocence by pointing out that his hands and feet moved lawfully during the performance of the crime. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
The state does not intend itself to become moral; it requires morality of its subjects as the necessary basis of its own amoral power, of its continued ability to conduct international brigandage abroad and the torture of political prisoners at home. The unselfishness of individuals empowers the selfishness of states. The selflessness of patriots becomes the arrogance of nations. Morality constricts and diminishes the life of the individual as its strengths and enlarges the life of the collective. The cohesiveness of the group, achieved by the morality and lawfulness of its constituents, enables the group to become larger and stronger. The morality of the individual thus has survival value for the amora collective and, insofar as the safety of the individual depends upon the power of the collective, also for the individual. However, the group can never, as a group, govern itself, cannot organize and exploit its potential power. For this, leaders are required, leaders with a vision of how the group may become even stronger. If only certain individuals within the morally organized collective are themselves immoral, and break the rules in pursuit of personal power, such leaders can appear. So the greatest chance of survival falls, paradoxically, to that collective which has achieved solidarity by mortality and, at the same time, contains within itself a leaven of opportunists who will exploit that morality for personal power. Let us go on to the Occupational Outlook of those who are verbally bright. Among this group, simply because they cannot help asking more general questions—exempli gratia, about utility—the problem of finding man’s work is harder, and their disillusion is more poignant. He explained to her why it was hard to find a satisfactory job of work to do. He had liked working with the power drill, testing the rocky envelope of the shore, but then the employers asked him to take a great oath of loyalty. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
“What!” cried Rosalind. “Do you have scruples about telling a convenient fib?” “No, I do not. However, I felt uneasy about the sanity of the director asking me to swear to opinions on such complicated questions when my job was digging with a power drill. I cannot work with a man who might suddenly had a wild fit.” “Why do you not get a job driving one of the big trucks along here?” “I do not like what is in the boxes,” said Horatio sadly. “It could just as well drop in the river—and I would make mistakes and drop it there.” “Is it had stuff?” “No, just useless. It takes the heart out of me to work at something useless and I begin to make mistakes. I do not mind putting profits in somebody’s pocket—but the job also has to be useful for something.” “Why do you not go to the woods and be a lumberjack?” “No! they chop down the trees just to print off the New York Times!” The more intelligent worker’s “indifference” is likely to appear more nakedly as profound resignation, and his cynicism may sharpen to outright racketeering. “Teaching,” says the Handbook, “is the largest of the professions.” So suppose our now verbally bright young man chooses for teacher, in the high school system or, by exception, in the elementary schools if he understands that the elementary grades are the vitally important ones and require the most ability to tech well (and of course they have less prestige). Teaching is necessary and useful work; it is real and creative, for it directly confronts an important subject matter, the children themselves; it is obviously self-justifying; and it is ennobled by the arts and sciences. Those who practice teaching do not for the most part succumb to cynicism or indifference—the children are too immediate and real for the teachers to become callous—but, most of the school systems being what they are, can teacher fail to come to suffer first despair and then deep resignation? Resignation occurs psychologically as follows: frustrated in essential actions, they nevertheless cannot quit in anger, because the task is necessary; so the anger turns inward and is felt as resignation. (Naturally, the resigned teacher may then put on a happy face and keep very busy.) #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
For the job is carried on under impossible conditions of overcrowding and saving public money. Not that there is not enough social wealth, but first things are not put first. Also, the school system has spurious aims. It soon becomes clear that the underlying aims are to relieve the home and keep the kids quiet; or suddenly, the aim is to produce physicists. Timid supervisors, bigoted clerics, and ignorant school boards forbid real teaching. The emotional release and the pleasures of the flesh expression of the children are taboo. A commercially debauched popular culture makes learning disesteemed. The academic curriculum is mangled by the demands of reactionaries, liberals, and demented warriors. Progressive methods are emasculated. Attention to each case is out of the questions, and all the children—the bright, the average, and the dull—are systematically intellectually disabled one way or another, while the teacher’s hands are tired. Naturally the pay is low—for the work is hard, useful, and of public concern, all three of which qualities tend to bring lower pay. It is alleged that the low pay is why there is a shortage of teachers and why the best do not choose the profession. My guess is that the best avoid it because of the certainty of miseducating. Nor are the best wanted by the system, for they are not safe. Bertrand Russel was rejected by New York’s City College and would not have been accepted in a New York grade school. What we see here are the outlines, therefore, of a wholly new way of life, affecting not only individuals but the planet as well. The new civilization sketched here can hardly be termed a utopia. It will be agitated by deep problems, sone of which we will explore in the future. Problems of self and community. Political problems. Problems of justice, equity, and morality. Problems with the new economy (and especially the relationship between employment, welfare, and presumption). All these and many more will arouse fighting passions. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
However, the Fourth Wave is also no “anti-utopia.” It is not 1984 writ large nor Brave New World brought to life. Both these brilliants books—and hundred of derivative science fiction stories—paint a future based on highly centralized, bureaucratized, and standardized societies, in which individual differences are eradicated. We are now heading in exactly the opposite direction. While the Fourth Wave carries with it a deep challenge for humanity, from ecological threats to danger of nuclear terrorism and electronic fascism, it is not simply a nightmarish linear extension of industrialism. We glimpse here instead the emergence of what might be called a “pratopia”—neither the best nor the worst of all possible Worlds, but one that is both practical and preferable to the one we had. Unlike a utopia, a practopia is not free of disease, political nastiness, and bad manners. Unlike most utopias, it is not static or frozen in unreal perfection. Nor is it reversionary, modeling itself on some imagine ideal of the past. Conversely, a practopia does not embody the crystallized evil of a utopia turned inside out. It is not ruthlessly antidemocratic. It is not inherently militarist. It does not reduce its citizens to faceless uniformity. It does not destroy its neighbours and degrade its environment. In short, a practopia offers a beneficial, even a revolutionary alternative, yet lies within the range of the realistically attainable. Fourth Wave civilization, in this sense, is precisely that: a practopian future. One can glimpse in it a civilization that makes allowance for individual differences, and embraces (rather than suppresses) racial, regional, religious, and subcultural variety. A civilization built in considerable measure around the home. A civilization that is not frozen in amber but pulsing with innovation, yet which is also capable of providing enclaves of relative stability for those who need or want them. A civilization no longer required to pour its best energies into marketization. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
A civilization capable of directing great passion into art. A civilization facing unprecedented historical choices—about genetics and evolution, to choose a single example—and inventing new ethical or moral standards to deal with such complex issues. A civilization, finally, that is at least potentially democratic and humane, in better balance with the biosphere and no longer dangerously dependent on exploitative subsidies from the rest of the World. Hard work to achieve, but not impossible. Flowing together in grand confluence, today’s changes thus point to a workable countercivilization, an alternative to the increasingly obsolete and unworkable industrial system. They point, in a word, to practopia. Life brings humans what they need, which is sometimes what one desires but at other times what one fears. The modern World badly needed a shake-up, and got one. However, it received only what it deserved. The war descended on it in accordance with Universal Law. When nation arouse against nation, it was only an end-expression of the innate selfishness which had been actuating them. We must expect such situations, for they are the natural and inevitable consequence of all that has happened before. Unless the war has brought a vivid realization of the truth of law of compensation, it has not brought any spiritual progress. However, it is too much at this time to expect the modern World to understand the cause of its tribulations. What valuable ethical and psychological significances, what striking illustrations of the inexorable law of retribution, could be drawn from the War! The evolutionary pressure upon humanity is not to give up its fratricidal warfare, although it will eventuate in that, but to give up the aggressive selfishness in which such warfare has its roots. If the nations cannot settle their differences peacefully it is because the ego in them is too strong, the passions too violent, and the antagonisms too blind. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
The differences must be faced on deeper than physical levels, and the refusal to do this on the grounds that such are idealistic and not practical results in superficial and not true considerations and results. How hard it is to get people to draw accurate conclusions from their experience one can read from the annals of history. Again and again the people of one nation, race, or religion who have been subjected to persecution by a different one, have failed to behave justly and tolerantly when the turning wheel of destiny put them later into power. The gusts of hate or anger or greed which blow humans off their mental balance, blow them eventually to war. In spite of the spiritual messages which have been given to humankind by the great prophets, the savagery of war still continues to show the strength of the animal in humans. If their compassion for helpless animas is so small that they will not give up fighting each other, by what right do they call upon God to show compassion toward them and stop war? The World war was not only the consequence of the desecration of the Egyptian graves, of course. It was much more a consequence of the evil thoughts and feelings which exit in human’s hearts and of the spiritual ignorance which exists in their minds. The desecration was itself only one of the symptoms of that ignorance. Evil desires and unjust acts were the seed: the horrors of war were the fruit. The awful retribution which fell upon whole nations was impelled and guided by the power behind the eternal an immutable law of consequences. Up to a certain point, it could have been modified and even prevented, but beyond this point nothing could annul its appointed course. Let us blame none but ourselves. This holocaust was needed in order to bring humanity fully to its senses, to purge its materialistic atheism of its pride, and to show it how hollow and hypocritical was its façade of civilization. When we penetrate these social, economic, political, educational, and national problems to rock bottom, we find that they are really ethical problems. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
Virgil, the Roman, dreamt of Universal Peace. Many today entertain the same dream but at the same time they are contradicted by piled-up evidences of the violence in human nature, the strife engendered by blind self-interest, the killing instinct that is a heritage from the animal. So long as egos come into conflict with one another, so long will nation do the same. We are to expect the brutal carnage and concentrated massacre of war until and unless we are impelled to renounce it at last as a method of removing affronts to justice. Be open and honest and tell the whole truth. Learn to listen to your conscience. God put that inside of you so you would have an inner rule by which to know right from wrong. When you start to compromise, you will hear that alarm go off in your conscience. Do not ignore it. Do what you know in your heart is the right thing. Is somebody watching you? Oh, yes; people are watching, and so is your Heavenly Father. Live this day to please Him, and you will be pleased with yourself. “Never be lazy in your work, but serve the Lord enthusiastically,” reports Romans 12.11. Make a decision that you are not going to live another day without the joy of the Lord in your life; without love, peace, and passion; without being excited about your life. And understanding that you do not have to have something extraordinary happening in your life to be excited. You may not live in the perfect environment or have the perfect job or the perfect marriage, but you can still leave each day with enthusiasm. Wherever you are in life, make the most of it and be the best that you can be. Do your work with such excellence that others will be impressed with your God merely by observing you excellent work ethic. We should be so excited, and so full of joy that other people will want what we have. In other words, are you drawing people to God because of your joy, your friendliness, your enthusiasm, your attitude of faith? If you want to point people to God, or simply to a better way of living, have some enthusiasm and be excited about life. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Dear Lord in Heaven, please help me to do the right thing whether anyone is watching or not. I know you see my actions, and beyond that, You know the motives of my heart. I want my words and deeds to be pleasing to you. Please let my enthuaism for life be contagious; may I live in such a way that causes other people to want to know You and how they can discover a different, better quality of life now and forever. Listen with the night falling we are saying thank you, we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings, we are running out of the glass rooms with our mouths full of food to look at the sky, and say thank you. We are standing by the water looking out in difference direction, back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging, after funerals we are saying thank you, After the news of the pandemic, we are saying thank you. Whether or not we knew those who died, we are saying thank you. Looking up from tables we are saying thank you. In a culture up to its chin in shame, we are saying thank you. Living in the stench it has chosen, we are saying thank you. Over telephones, we are saying thank you. In doorways and in the backs of cares and in elevators, remembering the wars and the police at the back door, and the beatings on stairs, we are saying thank you. In the banks that use us, we are saying thank you. With the crooks in the office with the rich and fashionable unchanged we go on saying thank you. With the animals dying around us, our feelings we are saying thank you. With our forests falling faster than the minutes of our lives, we are saying thank you. With the words going out like cells of a brain, with the cities growing over us like the Earth, we are saying thank you faster and faster with nobody listening, we are saying thank you. We are saying thank you and waving, dark though it is. And wind lifted me up, and I heard behind me a mighty chorus proclaiming: Blessed be the glory of the Lord everywhere. [Then a wind lifted me up, and I heard behind me the mighty moving sound of those who uttered praises and said: Blessed be the glory of the Lord from the place of His abode.] The Lord shall reign for ever and ever. [The kingdom of the Lord is established forever and to all eternity.] #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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You Understand that Harsh Night Was Only a Comedy!
We judge ourselves by what we are capable of doing; try not to become a human of success but rather a human of value. There are many reasons celibacy was so population in the 18th century. Youth were sometimes exposed to adults involved in pleasures of the flesh and they did not like seeing that, and these adults when then prey on the youth and try to get them involved. Because of how disgusted they were, a lot of women did not want to marry, but it was not just because of what they were exposed to, but some other things as well. Mother Ann Lee, the founder of American Shakerism, was born in 1736 into misery and degradation of Manchester, England. As a child, she did have the luxury of attending school, and joined the racks of child labour with her job in a textile factory. Against her repeated pleas, her father forced Ann into marriage—and its dread conjugal duties—with blacksmith Abraham Stanley. Sadly, the union produced three babies, who died soon after birth, which was the fate of half Manchester’s children, and this was a true depression. Nothing is more sad than the loss of life. Ann had a fourth child called Elizabeth, who lived for only six years. This left her tormented by grief and guilt. Ann concluded that the root of her personal tragedy, and indeed of all human depravity was pleasures of the flesh. As if it had embers in it, Ann’s shattered psyche inspire her to avoid her own marriage bed. Despite Stanley’s passion for his beautiful, blue-eyed, chestnut-haired wife, he was willing to forgo pleasures of the flesh and accepted her religion and celibacy. With her new found freedom, Anne became a preacher. She was so passionate and enthusiastic that she converted her faither and two brothers. #RandolphHarris 1 of 26
However, Ann’s new found freedom did not last for long. Patriarchal England was hostile to women preachers. Persecution, including imprisonment began. While in a brutal dungeon, Ann had a vision. Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, fornicating, whereupon God flung them out of sight. This was, Ann believed, a divine revelation. Just as the regimen of healthy people is not suitable for the sick, one should not want to govern a corrupt people by means of the same laws that are suited to a good people. Pleasures of the flesh had caused humankind’s alienation from God. We are told that people of true Christians would form the most perfect society imaginable. Celibacy, therefore, was essential for spiritual rebirth. We have based our words about virginity on the fact that it is first of all a charism, a gift received from God and, consequently, a vocation. Virginity must be received as a gift—an offering to God’s majesty, a living sacrifice and imitation of the imitation of the Eucharist of Christ. Ann’s version of the Fall of Man differed radically from the Church’s. God had punished Adam and Eve equally, so their longings for pleasures of the flesh, not Eve’s special wickedness, were at the crux of His fury. Maybe God wanted humans to procreate like the Virgin Mary, spontaneously and without indulging in pleasures of the flesh. Ann wasted no hatred on womankind but spent it all on the great evil, pleasures of the flesh. The Fathers of the Church were not content to observe the commandments, but also offered God gifts. Christ’s commandments have been given to all Christians, and every Christian is obliged to observe them. The most beautiful thing we can do is renew this gift of ourselves. What makes a gift beautiful and precious is its integrity. The object must be new and intact. We must all nothing in ourselves—in thoughts, looks, or actions—to offend His presence or “grieve” the Spirit. #RandolphHarris 2 of 26
It was Ann’s startling message—celibacy, even after marriage—that converted people. Women had their own special reasons to welcome celibacy. With no effective birth control or it not being allowed by the Church, abstinence was a great idea. Many people still enjoyed bearing children, but they also feared what could happen, so some dreaded it. Childbirth could be agonizing and often fatal: morality rates for mothers and newborns were sky-high. Women delivered squatting over filthy birthing stools or straw, and postpartum puerperal fever killed them in droves. Poor nutrition deformed pelvic bones so bad that babies were trapped in misshapen birth canals. Midwives used hooks to extract the babies, often in bloody chunks. Those children who survived into adulthood faced only the same bleak poverty their parents could never escape. Abstinence was a woman’s main defense against these prospects, but husbands, churches, and society would not tolerate it. Mother Ann’s style of celibacy was different. It was a form of devotion, a duty to God, a conscious renunciation of odious carnal indulgence. It bestowed on the believer the moral authority to resist opposition, including irate husbands. Slowly, the number of Shakers grew. The idea that one had a higher self, the conviction that on had a soul, broke in upon their little existence with great revelatory force, and the people felt it emerging into glorious lighter after a dreary journey though a long dark tunnel. The Overself was enthroned. The disciples realized its presence in their inmost feelings. Nothing on their experience, intellectual or emotional, had possessed for the member such satisfying ecstasy, such as paradisical contentment. For the delight of the higher levels of spiritual experience, unlike the delight of passionate Earthly experience, never palls but remains ever fresh and vivid as through encountered for the first time. #RandolphHarris 3 of 26
The World took on the texture of a lovely half-dream. God’s feet treaded air. Blissfully, wondrously, and overwhelmingly the disciple became that which one sought. The delight of these exalted moments and the fragrance of these Heavenly visitations lingered in the Shaker’s memories for years after they themselves had vanished, and the influence on subsequent life and thought was as long and they themselves were short and beautiful. The experienced would slip away, but the memory of its certitude would remain. This all happened deep in the secret places of one’s own heart. As Ann’s fame increased, so did the hatred of civil authorities. They imprisoned her time and again and did little to prevent enraged citizens from chasing, kicking, and stoning her. Ann’s sufferings simply strengthened her faith and honed her theology. Ann saw her marriage to Christ as evidence of her own greatly exalted status as a person entrusted with divine truths and wisdom. Shaker celibacy was not only its own reward but also the precursor of other, tangible offices and honours. Something similar happens in the life of a young man or woman when they really fall in love. While they were “free” and open to various possibilities, any man or woman who passed by might have drawn their attention and “distracted” them, just as a sheep always leaves a scrap of its wool on the thorns of a hedge when it comes too close. However, one true love for someone has taken hold, every other person and in fact the whole World, respectfully steps back and even fades away entirely for a while. Their hearts are not fixed on one person. A kind of catharsis happens: the new relationship does not destroy all others—companions, relatives or friends—but puts each one in its proper place. Something similar happens to the consecrated soul on the day when, moved by the uncreated love which is the Holy Spirit, one chooses Jesus as Lord and Spouse. The heart is no longer “free,” no longer wanders, and is no longer so easily “distracted” this way and that. #RandolphHarris 4 of 26
This is true virginity for the sake of the Kingdom. God grant that we may desire it, even if from a distance, and make our way towards it, albeit haltingly, with the steps of a child. To encourage one to do this and to strengthen one’s willingness to turn away from the lower nature, the higher self alternately reveals and hides itself at intervals. Once the Overself has vouchsafed to one its Grace, one must make oneself increasingly worthy of the gift. The aspirant should regard the glimpse afforded one in the glow of one’s best moments as a working blueprint. One has to make oneself over again according to the mental picture thus placed before one. The purpose is to call one to more serious, more frequent, and sterner efforts, and to arouse one in increased ardours of moral self-improvement. Mother Ann designed Shaker society so that even its physical plant reflected the celibacy at its ideological core. Men and women lived in segregated quarters and were never alone. At religious services, they sat apart. However, Mother Ann was too wise to suppose that forced separation could, by itself, forestall all lapses in conduct. Lust, she knew all too well, was a powerful force: her husband, Abraham, for one, had lusted after he for years. In fact, his unquenchable longing for a carnal relationship was one of the first things she dealt with in America. Somehow, she managed to convince him that she would never relent about pleasures of the flesh, and her grieving husband finally walked out, leaving his wife alone in her splendid celibacy. To that diviner self thus glimpsed, one must henceforth address all one’s prayers; through its remembrance one must seek succor; in its reliance one must perform all one’s endeavours; by its light one must plead for grace. For the Overself to give itself wholly and perpetually to a human is a rare and wonderful event. Most often it gives itself only for a short time. This serves to intensify and enlarge his love and attraction for it, and to provide one with beautiful memories to support and sustain one in faithfulness to the quest in the fatiguing long-drawn years of struggle and darkness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 26
When the Grace has led one sufficiently far, one will be distinctly aware of an inner presence. It will think for one, feel for one, and even act for one. This is the beginning of, and what it means to have, an egoless life. Just as the sun’s rays are reflected on a burnished silver plate, so the Overself’s attributes are faithfully reflected on a purified and egoless mind. For socializing, the Shakers enjoyed thrice-weekly “union meetings” where men and women sat face-to-face, talking or reading or singing. They released their tensions by speaking in tongues: we can only guess what streamy yearnings were dissipated in the babel. No great sexual scandals ever surfaced. Sexual sublimation, orchestrated into daily life, made celibacy joyous for many believers, tolerable for those with aching loins. However, celibacy was not enough: even loyalty between celibate spouses threatened the tightly knit Shaker community. As late as 1810, an Ohio Shaker meeting-house was mobbed by five hundred angry men. It took six bitter years to establish equilibrium in the commune. By then Shaker core had become Americanized. New rituals and traditions replaced the lost ones, and internal harmony developed. And, thanks to Shaker industry and ingenuity, poverty gave way to prosperity and financial security. However, they failed to interest their growing children into staying. The most serious point of dissension was the most fundamental: celibacy, which dictated the Shaker’s architecture, regulations, and way of life. The Shaker’s worst failure was with their children, most of whom rejected the austere religion and lifestyle. At New Lebanon between 1821 and 1864, of 144 boys admitted, some foundlings but most with their parents, 8 died, 10 were “carried away,” 2 were sent away, 22 became Shakers, and 102 left “for the World.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 26
Many suicide notes go undetected or unconfirmed because the only people who could tell us the truth are gone from the World. Many other people who commit suicide, however, an estimated 12 to 33 percent—leave notes that reveal their intentions and psychological state only hours or minutes before they died. “Bill: I am sorry for causing you so much trouble. I really did not want to and if you would have told me at the first time the truth probably both of us would be very happy now. Bill I am sorry but I cannot take the life any more, I do not think there is any goodness in the World. I love you very very much and I want you to be as happy in your life as I wanted to make you. Tell your parents I am very sorry and please if you can do it do not ever let my parents know what happened. Please, do not hate me Bill, I love you. -Mary.” “Dear Jean, Unfortunately this is the only way to make good the frightful wrong I have done you and to wipe out my abject humanity, I love you. -Paul (You understand that hash night was only a comedy.)” Each suicide note is a personal document, unique to the writer and the circumstances. Some are barely a single sentence; others run several pages. People who leave noted clearly wish to send a powerful message to those they leave behind, whether it be “a cry for help, an epitaph, or a last will and testament.” Most suicide notes are addressed to specific individuals. Survivours’ reactions to suicide notes vary. A note can clarify the cause of death, thus saving relatives the ordeal of a legal investigation. Friends and relative may find that it eases their grief to know the person’s reasons for committing suicide. Yet some suicide notes add to the confusion, guilt, or horror that survivours experience, as was the following case. #RandolphHarris 7 of 26
Rather than permit his wife to leave him, twenty-year-old Mr. Jefferson hanged himself in the bathroom, leaving a note on the front door for his wife, saying, “Cathy I love you. You’re right, I am crazy…and thank you for trying to love me. Phil.” Mrs. Jefferson felt and frequently insisted that she “killed Phil.” She attempted suicide herself a week after. Clinical researcher have tried to improve their understanding of suicide by studying differences between genuine and fake suicide notes, the age and gender of note writers, the grammar of notes, the type and frequency of words used, conscious and unconscious contents, handwriting, and emotional, cognitive, and motivational themes. One important finding is that suicide notes vary significantly with age. Younger persons express more hostility toward themselves and site more interpersonal problems in their notes; those between 40 and 49 report being unable to cope with life; those between 50 and 59 tend not to cite a reason for their suicide; and those over 60 are motivated by such problems as illness, pain, disability, and loneliness. Studies of notes have also revealed that the nature of suicide had changed little since the 1940s, except that we are seeing more “suicide by police officers,” which is when people do things to intentionally get killed by a law enforcement officer. Suicide notes written in the 1940s, and the 1950s, are similar in content to modern notes, with one exception: modern notes show less confusion and more limited thinking. A number of studies have also been conducted on writings that are similar to suicide notes. For example, one team of investigators compared poems by nine poets who committed suicide to those written by nine poets who did not commit suicide. #RandolphHarris 8 of 26
The poets who experienced death by suicide used more first-person self-references in their works, such as “I” and “me,” as well as more words associated with death. In addition, the poets who experienced death by suicide used fewer communication terms (such as “talk” and “listen”) in the poems they had written close to the time of their death by suicide, while nonsuicial poets actually increased their use of such words during this same period of time. Thus, it may be that people who are contemplating suicide tend to use language in distinct ways—ways that may eventually help clinicians identify and distinguish a person’s risk for suicide. A suicide note (or similar offering) provides only a partial picture of the writer’s experiences, perceptions, thoughts, and emotions. Moreover, the writers themselves may not be fully aware of their motives; their desperate thinking prevents them from being truly insightful. Suicide notes are not the royal road to an easy understanding of suicidal phenomena, but in combination with other sources they can point clinicians and researchers in the right direction. Research use a strategy to determine who is at risk of death by suicide by studying people who survive their death by suicide attempts. It is estimated that there are 8 to 20 nonfatal suicide attempts for every fatal suicide. However, it may be that people who survive death by suicide differ in important ways from those who do not. Many of them may not really have wanted to die, for example. Nevertheless, suicide researchers have found it useful to study survivours of suicide; and we shall consider those who attempt death by suicide and those who experience death by suicide as more or less alike. To help address the psychological trauma experienced by many fans of celebrities who have recently experienced death by suicide, postvention” approached are often employed, including counseling sessions in schools and special media programs. #RandolphHarris 9 of 26
In the days following the death of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, a candlelight vigil in Seattle was attended by 5,000 people. What triggers death by suicide? Sometimes people are trying to silence a victim or witness, and faking a suicide is a way to cover up a murder. Often times if the family does not press for an investigation, if it looks like death by suicide, that is how it is labeled, even though it may not be. Suicidal acts may be connected to recent events or current conditions in a person’s life. Although such factors may not be the basic motivation for the death by suicide, they can precipitate it. Common triggering factors include stressful events in the recent lives of suicide attempters than in the lives of matched control subjects. In one study, suicide attempters reported twice as many stressful events in the year before their attempts as nonsuicial depressed patients or patients with other kinds of psychological problems. One form of immediate stress seen in cases of suicide is the loss of a loved one through death, divorce, or rejection. Another is the loss of a job. Still another is the stress experienced during pandemics, hurricanes or other natural disasters, even by young children. A suicide attempt may also be precipitated by a series of recent events that have a combined impact, rather than by a single event, as in the following case. Aaliyah’s suicide attempt took place in the context of a very difficult year for the family. Aaliyah’s mother and father separated after 9 years of marriage. Father the father moved out, he visited the family erratically. Four months after he loved out of the house, the mother’s boyfriend moved into the house. The mother planned to divorce her husband and marry her boyfriend, Robert, who had become the major disciplinarian for the children, a fact that Aaliyah intensely resented. Aaliyah also complained of being “left out” in relation to the closeness she had with her mother. #RandolphHarris 10 of 26
Another problem Aaliyah had was that she and her mother looked alike, so people thought Robert was her boyfriend. Also, Aaliyah had experienced two changes in schools in the last two years which left her feeling friendless. In addition, she received a 4.0, but it was totally overshadowed by rumors of a marriage and a new baby sibling. China’s 300,000 annual suicides, 10 times the United States of Americas’ toll, represents 40 percent of all suicides in the World. China is the only country in which female suicides are more common than male suicides, account for more than 50 percent of suicides by women Worldwide. Research finds that fans of heavy metal rock consider suicide more acceptable then do people who are not fans. However, this attitude does not seem to result from the music or the lifestyle it espouses. Rather, heavy metal fans tend to be low in religiosity, and low religiosity relates to greater acceptability of suicide. Those fans who are religious rate suicide just as unacceptable as nonfans do. There is authority in faith-filled words. The authority in the widow’s words changed the unjust man’s decision. Though he would not do it for a while, her words—the authority in those words—troubled him, and he finally gave in. Many have thought Jesus Christ was teaching us to keep pestering God until we finally wear him down. This could never be representative of God. This was an unjust judge, who had all the qualities of Satan. The authority in the window’s voice changed the decision of the unjust judge. Her words changed his mind. Jesus said, “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life,” reports John 6.63. The words that Jesus Christ spoke are not just printed pages. They are spirit life. When you get them on the side of you, they will transform your spirit. They will cause you to speak words of faith, driving out defeat and bring victory. #RandolphHarris 11 of 26
Jesus said, “Hear what the unjust judge saith.” People try to relate the unjust judge to God, but how can you compare an unjust judge to God? Rome perished in the same way, and the excessive power of the tribunes, which they had gradually usurped, finally served, with the help of the laws that were made to protect liberty, as a safeguard, with the help of the laws that were made to protect liberty, as a safeguard for the emperors who destroyed it. As for the Council of Ten in Venice, it is a tribunal of blood, equally horrible to the patricians and the people, and which, far from proudly protecting the laws, no longer serves any purpose, after their degradation, beyond that of delivering blows in the dark which no one dares notice. If we do that, we have missed the whole point of what Jesus was teaching. Let us rightly divine the Word of Truth: “Though I fear not God, nor regard man; yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, least by her continual coming she weary me.” In other words, “That woman meant what she said. I know by the tone of her voice, she will be back.” The unjust judge is only troubled. He is not weary yet. However, her continual coming would cause him to be weary. Since he is not weary yet, evidently she had not been coming. She only came once. He said, “I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.” The unjust judge granted her request so she would not come back. The Lord said, “Shall not God avenge His own elect, which cry day and night unto Him, though he bear long with them? He is not saying they were crying day and night over the same thing; yet we have read that into it. We have had the same idea here as in the first verse when Jesus said, “Men ought always to pray, and not faint.” In other words, “You have a need this morning, pray about it. If it is not manifest and you have another need tonight, do not sit around wringing your hands saying, ‘Since God did not answer my first prayer, He will not answer this one.’” #RandolphHarris 12 of 26
God has to bear long with us at times. However, that is because we are not in line with the Word of God and we try to do it our way. There have been times when I have prayed about everything and just thrown out a scatter load, hoping to God some of it would work. Once in a while, some of it would and I would be surprised. That is what you call a “faith accident.” You finally come across something that you believe, and it happens. Jesus said, “I tell you that He (God) will avenge them speedily.” The unjust judge did not avenge speedily, but Jesus said that God would avenge us speedily. “Nevertheless, when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on Earth?” Will He find the kind of faith this woman possessed? Even though she was so insignificant in the eyes of the public, she went to the unjust judge—a man who feared neither God nor man—and her request was granted. Will the Son of man find that kind of faith when He comes back? “There was a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man.” As we have noted, he would qualify for the devil. It certainly could not be God. The unjust judge is representative of the evil one or Satan. The widow represents that individual believer. Jesus is showing us the power of speaking boldly. Without Christ, we can not do nothing; but, praise God, we are not without Him! Jesus said, “Hear what the unjust judge saith.” Now when Jesus says hear something, He means to pay special attention to it. Hear what Satan will say when a believer comes to him and demands boldly, “Avenge me of my adversary.” As believers today we would say, “I demand my rights in Jesus’ name.” This little woman was coming in the authority of her faith and not by sight. The unjust judge is representative of Satan who is subject to the authority of faith-filled words. When the Son of man returns, will He find this kind of faith on Earth—that a believer would dare to stand before the unjust one and tell him what to do? #RandolphHarris 13 of 26
This not only portrays the individual believer using his authority, but also the Church using the name of Jesus. Isaiah 54.4-5, says she shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood any more. For thy Maker is thine husband; the Lord of hosts is his name. Ephesians 3.9-10, outlines the role of Church is to play: “And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the World hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in Heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God.” What principalities and powers is he talking about? The same principalities and powers mentioned in Ephesians 6.12, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this World, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” He is saying, “For we wrestle…against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this World, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” He is talking about the devil, his angels, and all his evil forces. To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers might be known by the church manifold wisdom of God. The Church is going to reveal the manifold wisdom of God, showing that God was in Christ reconciling the World to Himself, declaring His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past and bestowing on us His righteousness. The Church can come forth wearing the breastplate of righteousness and the helmet of salvation, having our loins grit with the Truth and our feet sod with the gospel of peace, with the shield of faith in our hands and the Sword of the Spirit in our mouths. We can come boldly before the unjust judge and say, “In the name of Jesus, get your hand off me, off my finances, off of God’s property! I am redeemed from the curse and delivered from the powers of darkness!” #RandolphHarris 14 of 26
Experience teaches us every day the causes that lead to the revolutions of empires. However, since peoples are no longer being formed, we have almost nothing but conjecture to explain how they were formed. The majority vote in each tribe determined the tribe’s vote; the majority vote of the tribes determined the people’s vote; and the same went for the curia and the centuries. This custom was good so long as honesty reigned among the citizens and each was ashamed to give one’s vote publicly in favour of an unjust proposal or an unworthy subject. However, when the people became corrupt and votes were bought, it was fitting that they should give their votes in secret in order to restrain the buyers through distrust and to provide scoundrels the means of not being traitors. Only the greatest dangers can counterbalance the danger of altering the public order, and the sacred power of the laws should never be suspended except when it is a question of the safety of the homeland. In these rare and obvious cases, public safety can be provided for by a special act which confers the responsibility for it on someone who is most worthy. Hence this the judgment whose regulation is the point at issue. Whoever judges more judges honour; and whoever judges honour derives one’s law from opinion. The opinions of a people arise from its constitution. Although the law does not regulate mores, legislation is what gives rise to them. When legislation weakens, mores degenerate; but then the judgment of the censors will not do what the force of the laws has not down. It follows from this that the censorship can be useful for preserving mores, but never for reestablishing them. Establish censors while the laws are vigorous. Once they have lost their vigour, everything is hopeless. Nothing legitimate has any force once the laws no longer have force. The censorship maintains mores by preventing opinions from becoming corrupt, by preserving their rectitude through wise applications, and sometimes even by making a determination on them when they are still uncertain. #RandolphHarris 15 of 26
What is honour for the one, what is shame for the other; and without having given praise of blame to either of the two! By the mere fact that a god was placed at the head of every political society, it followed that there were as many gods as there were peoples. Two peoples who were alien to one another and nearly always enemies could not recognize the same master for very long. Two armies in combat with one another could not obey the same leader. Thus national divisions led to polytheism, and this in turn led to theological and civil intolerance which are by nature the same. However, if asked how in pagan cultures, where each state has its own cult and its own gods, there are no wars of religion, it was for this very reason that each state, having its own cult as well as its own government, did not distinguish its gods from its laws. Political war was theological as well. The departments of the gods were, so to speak, fixed by national boundaries. The gods of one people had no rights over other peoples. The gods of the pagans were not jealous gods. They divided dominion over the Word among themselves. Moses himself and the Hebrew people sometimes countenanced this idea in speaking of the god of Israel. It is true they regarded as nothing the gods of the Canaanites, a proscribed people destined for destruction, and whose land they were to occupy. However, note how they spoke of the divinities of neighbouring peoples whom they were forbidden to attack! Is not the possession of what belongs to you god Chamos, said Jephthah to the Ammonites, lawfully yours? By the same right we possess the lands our victorious god has acquired for himself? It appears to me that here was a clear recognition of the parity between the rights of Chamos and those of the god of Israel. #RandolphHarris 16 of 26
The Romans having spread their cult and their gods, along with their empire, and having themselves often adopted the gods of the vanquished by granting the right of the city to both alike, the peoples of this vast empire gradually found themselves to have multitudes of gods and cults, which were nearly the same everywhere. And that is how paganism finally became a single, identical religion in the known World. Such were the circumstances under which Jesus came to establish a spiritual kingdom on Earth. In separating the theological system from the political system, this made the state to cease being united and caused internal division that never ceased to agitate Christian peoples. However, since this new idea of an otherworldly kingdom had never entered the heads of the pagans, they always regarded the Christians as true rebels who, underneath their hypocritical submission, were only waiting for the moment when they would become independent and the masters, and adroitly usurp the authority they pretended in their weakness to respect. This is the reason for the persecutions. What the pagans feared happened. Then everything changes its appearance. The humble Christians changed their language, and soon this so-called otherworldly kingdom became, under a visible leader, the most violent despotism in this World. However, since there has always been a prince and civil laws, this double power have given rise to a perpetual jurisdictional conflict that has made all good polity impossible in Christian states, and no one has ever been able to know whether it is the priest or the master whom one is obliged to obey. Nevertheless, several peoples, even in Europe or nearby have wanted to preserve or reestablish the ancient system, but without success. The spirit of Christianity has won everything. The sacred cult has always remained or again become independent of the sovereign and without any necessary link to the state. #RandolphHarris 17 of 26
Christianity is a completely spiritual religion, concerned exclusively with things Heavenly. The homeland of the Christian is not of this World. One does one’s duty, it is true, but one does it with a profound indifference toward the success or failure of one’s efforts. So long as one has nothing to reproach oneself for, it matters little to one whether anything is going well or poorly down here. If the state is flourishing, one hardly dares to enjoy public felicity, for fear of becoming puffed up with one’s country’s glory. If the state is in decline, one blessed the hand of God that weighs heavily on one’s people. For the society to be peaceful and for harmony to be maintained, every citizen without exception would have to be an equally good Christian. However, if, unhappily, there is a single ambition human, a single hypocrite, a Cataline, for example, or a Cromwell, one would quite undoubtedly gain the upper hand on one’s pious compatriots. Christian charity does not readily allow one to think ill of one’s neighbours. Once one has discovered by some ruse the art of deceiving them and of laying hold of a part of the public authority, behold a human established in dignity! God will that He be respected. Soon, behold a power! God wills that he be obeyed. Does the trustee of His power abuse it? He is the rod with which God punishes his children. It would be against one’s conscience to expel the usurper. It would be necessary to disturb the public tranquility, use violence and shed blood. All this accords ill with the meekness of a Christian. And after all, what difference does it make weather one is a free human or a surf in this value of tears? The essential thing is getting to Heaven, and reignation is but another means to that end. What is a foreign war breaks out? The citizens march without reservation into combat; none among them dread of deserting. #RandolphHarris 18 of 26
Christians do their duty, but without passion for victory; they know how to die better than how to be victorious. What difference does it make whether they are the victors of the vanquished? Does not providence know better than they what they need? Just imagine the advantage a fierce, impetuous and passionate enemy could draw from their stoicism! Set them face to face with those generous peoples who were devoured by an ardent love of glory and homeland. Suppose your Christian republic is face to face with Sparta or Rome. The pious Christians will be beaten, crushed and destroyed before they realize where they are, or else they will owe their safety only to the scorn their enemies will conceive for them. To my way of thinking, the oath taken by Fabius’ soldiers was a fine one. They did not swear to die or to win; they swore to return victorious. And they kept their promise. Christians would never have taken such an oath; they would have believed they were tempting God. However, I am deceiving myself in talking about a Christian republic; these terms are mutually exclusive. Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence. Its spirit is too favourable to tyranny for tyranny not to take advantage of it at all times. True Christians are made to be slaves. They know it and are hardly moved by this. This brief life has too little value in their eyes. Christian troops, we are told, are excellent. Crusades were soldiers of the priest; they were citizens of the church; they were fighting for its spiritual country which the church, God knows how, had made temporal. Properly understood, this is a throwback to paganism. Since the Gospel does not establish a national religion, no holy war is possible among Christians. Under the pagan emperors, Christian soldiers were brave. All the Christian authors affirm this, and I believe it. This was a competition for honour against the pagan troops. #RandolphHarris 19 of 26
Once the emperors were Christians, this competition ceased. And when the cross expelled the eagle, all Roman valour disappeared. The doctrines and covenants of the civil religion ought to be simple, few in number, precisely worded, without explanations or commentaries. The existence of a powerful, intelligent, beneficent divinity that foresees and provides; the life to come; the happiness of the just; the punishment of the wicked; the sanctity of the social contact and of the laws. These are beneficial doctrines and covenants. As for the negative doctrines and covenants, I am limiting them to just one, namely intolerance. It is part of the cults we have excluded. Those who distinguish between civil and theological intolerance are mistaken, in my opinion. Those two types of intolerance are inseparable. It is impossible to live in peace with those one believes to be damned. To love them would be to hate God who punishes them. It is absolutely necessary either to reclaim them or torment them. Whatever theological intolerance is allowed, it is impossible for it not to have some civil effect; and once it does, the sovereign no longer is sovereign, not even over temporal affairs. Thenceforward, priests are the true masters; kings are simply their officers. Now that there are no longer is and never again can be an exclusive national religion, tolerance should be shown to all those that tolerate others, so long as their doctrine and covenants contain nothing contrary to the duties of a citizen. However, whoever dares stay outside the church there is no salvation ought to be expelled from the state, unless the state is the church and the prince is the pontiff. Such a doctrine and convent is good only in a theocratic government; in all other forms of government it is ruinous. The reason why Henry IV is said to have embraced the Roman religion should make every decent man, and above all any prince who knows how to reason, leave it. #RandolphHarris 20 of 26
I should always set my sights on things that are nearer at hand to me. The Fourth Wave society, unlike its predecessor, must (and will) draw on an amazing variety of energy sources—hydrogen, solar, geothermal, tidal, biomass, lightning discharges, ultimately perhaps advanced fusion power, as well as other courses not yet imagined in 2022. Fourth wave civilization will rely on a far more diversified technological base as well, springing from biology, genetics, electronics, materials science, as well as on outer space and under-the-sea operations. While some new technologies will require high energy inputs, much Fourth Wave technology will be designed to use less, not more, energy. Nor will these new technologies be as massive and ecologically dangerous as those of the past. Look how much smaller computers, hot water heaters, heaters, and many other things have become and how efficient LED lights are, and how long they last. Many of our new technologies will continue to be small in scale, simple to operate, with the waste of one industry predesigned for recycling into primary materials for another. For Fourth Wave civilization, the most basic raw material of all—and one that can never be exhausted—is information, including imagination. Through imagination and information, substitutes will be found for many of today’s exhaustible resources—although this substitution, once more, will all too frequently be accompanied by drastic economic swings and lurches. With information becoming more important than ever before, the new civilization will restructure education, redefine scientific research and, above all, reorganize the media of communication. Today’s mass media, both print and electronic, are wholly inadequate to cope with the communications load and to provide the requisite cultural variety for survival. Instead of being culturally dominated by a few mass media, Fourth Wave civilization will rest om interactive, de-massified media, feeding extremely diverse and often highly personalized imagery into and out of the mind-stream of the society. #RandolphHarris 21 of 26
Television has already given way to “indi-video”—narrow-casting by the Internet of thousands of shows that have never aired on television, images addressed to a single individual at a time. We may also eventually use medication, direct brain-to-brain communication, and other forms of electrochemical communication only vaguely hinted at until now. All of which will raise startling, though not insoluble, political and moral problems. The fusion of Fourth Wave energy forms, technologies, and information media will speed revolutionary changes in the way we work. Factories are still being built (and in some parts of the World they will continue to be built for decades to come), but Fourth Wave factory already bears little resemblance to those we have known until now, and—in the rich nations—the number of people in factor jobs will continue to plummet. The factory will no longer serve as a model for other types of institutions. Nor will its primary function be that of mass production. Even now the Fourth Wave factor produces de-massified—often customized—end products. It relies on advanced methos such as wholistic or “presto” production. It will ultimately use less energy, waste less raw material, employ fewer components, and demand far more design intelligence. Most significantly, many of its machines will be directly activated not by workers but as a distance, by consumers themselves. Those who do work in Fourth Wave factories will perform far less brutalizing or repetitive work than those still trapped in traditional jobs. They will not be paced by mechanical conveyor belts. Noise levels will be low. Workers will come and go at hours convenient for them. The actual workplace will be far more humane and individualized, often with flowers and greenery sharing the space with machines. Within fixed limits, payment and fringe benefit packages will be increasingly tailored to individual preference. #RandolphHarris 22 of 26
As we are seeing, many jobs will shift of work from both office and factory back into the home and remain there. However, not all jobs can, will, or should be caried out in people’s homes. Some doctors and dentists may even buy mansions and work out of their homes like in the Victorian days. As low-cost communications are substituted for high-cost transportation, as we increase the role of intelligence and imagination in production, further reducing the role of brute force or routine mental labour, a significant slice of the work in Fourth Wave societies will perform at least part of its work at home, factories remaining only for those who must actually handle physical materials. With information increasing in importance, universities will replace the factory as the central institution. Multinational executives, for their part, see the executive suite as the pivot of today. The new profession of “information manager” pictures their computer rooms as the center of the new civilization. Scientists look to the industrial research laboratory. A few remaining hipsters dream of restoring the agricultural commune to the center of a neo-medieval future. Others may nominate the “gratification chambers” of a leisure-drenched society. Yet, it is unlikely that any institution—not even the home—will play as central a role as the cathedral or the factory did in the past. For the society is likely to be built around a network rather than a hierarchy of new institutions. Corporations will stop towering over other social institutions and will be recognized as complex organizations that pursue multiple goals simultaneously—not just profit or production quotes. These managers will watch over (and be held personally responsible for) multiple “bottom lines.” #RandolphHarris 23 of 26
Executive paychecks and bonuses will gradually come to reflect this new multi-functionality, as the corporation, either through voluntary means or because it is compelled to, becomes more responsive to what today are regarded as non-economic and hence largely irrelevant factors—ecological, political, social, cultural, and moral. This society will also be built on segmentation and diversity. Instead of a society that concentrates population, energy flows, and other features of life Fourth Wave Society will understand the meaning of “appropriate scale.” Many new organizations will do away with the old insistence on one person is the boss—all of which suggests a work World in which more people share temporary decisional power. Vast increases in white-collar and service work will be absorbed who had been previously laid off by the shrinking manufacturing sector. The sufferings that World War II brought to so many have deeply shocked us but the significance of those sufferings must also be examined from a fresh standpoint. In all theories offered to a bewildered World concerning it own woes, there is much anxiety and alarm at the symptoms but little search for the causes. If people accept a deceptive World-view as the Germans did and as the Russian do, or a defective one as so many others did and do, they must also accept the troubles and disaster which go with it. We must push the spade of enquiry deep down into the Earth that surrounds the roots of this problem of wars and riots, aggression and crimes, rather than be content with a mere surface view. The evils that menace our existence will then be found to grow out of two roots: ignorant egoism and unchecked emotion. The one is unnecessary, the others unreasonable. Each of the World Wars which afflicted humankind was the inevitable self-earned effect of causes previously set going. The unerring law of Karma brings whatever good or evil recompense is deserved. The debit account of wrong done is allowed to run on until the end of the page and then it has to be totalled and the balance entered to adjust the total. #RandolphHarris 24 of 26
The great famines, like the great wars, which afflicted and still afflict humankind, constitute part of this adjustment, part of the payment which humankind is forced to make by the higher governing law of karma. Their causes are as plural as the causes of the wars, although on the deepest level there is only the same single cause of human ignorance leading to human wrong-doing. One of them is the refusal of humankind to utilize the Earth’s grain harvests for its own direct use, diverting them instead to the use of animals deliberately bred for slaughter and then eating the grain indirectly in the form of those animals’ corpses. Such a way of supporting life is both utterly unnecessary and utterly cruel. The life of innocent creatures cannot be taken upon such baseless grounds with impunity. Retribution has hit humankind again and again in the past, with the weapons of hunger, disease, and war, and it is hitting them again in the present. If it does not face the real challenge and meet it, no reorganization of agricultural methods on more efficient and more productive lines, no re-arrangement of trading relations, no governmental subsidies in cash, tractors, seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, or equipment will save humankind from suffering famines and enduring starvation. A radical change of life is demanded from humanity, a repentant change of heart is the only way to win back Nature’s smile. It must stop this unjustified murder of helpless living beings, murdered merely because they are considered to be less important on the scale of evolution. It must accept the perfectly sufficient diet of grains, cereals, vegetables, pulses, fruits, nuts, and dairy produce which will enable it to live with less suffering and more healthy, less punishment and more conscience, than other diets permit. All praise be yours through Brother Sun. All praise be your through Sister Moon. By Mother Earth, the Spirit be Praised. #RandolphHarris 25 of 26
By Brother Mountain, Sister Sea, through Brother Wind and Brother Air, through Sister Water, Brother Fire, the Stars above give thank to Thee, all praise to those who live in Peace. All praise be yours, through Brother World. All praise be yours, through Sister Whale. By nature’s song, the spirit be praised. By Brother Eagle, Sister Loon, though Brother Tiger, Sister Seal, let creatures all give thanks to Thee. All praise to those who live in peace. Ask of the beasts and they shall teach you the beauty of the Earth. Ask of the Trees and they shall teach you the beauty of the Earth. Ask of the Flowers and they shall teach you the beauty of the Earth. Ask of the Wind and it shall teach you the beauty of the Earth. A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand, but it shall not come near you. You shall behold only with your eyes, and see the recompense of the wicked. Because you have made the Lord your fortress, and the Most High your refuge, no evil shall befall you, neither shall any plague come near your tent. For He will give His Angels charge over you, to guard you in all your ways. They shall bear you upon their hands, lest your strike your foot against a stone. You shall tread upon the lion and asp, you shall trample on the young lion and serpent. Because he has set his love upon Me, I will deliver him, I will protect him because he has known my name. He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and bring him to honour. I will give him abundance of long life, and he shall witness My salvation. Thou art holy, O Thou that art enthroned upon the praises of America. And one called to another and said: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole Earth is full of His glory. [And they receive sanction one from the other, and say: Holy in the highest Heavens, the place of His abode; Holy upon Earth, the work of His might power, Holy forever and to all eternity is the Lord of hosts; the whole Earth is full of the radiance of His glory.] #RandolphHarris 26 of 26
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The Spirits of Darkness Seem to Meddle a Good Deal More than is Necessary for them!
When a person becomes a Christian and lives in fellowships with God, one does not have to dodge the sobering realities of life and death. One can reflect upon the future without becoming depressed or fearful. One can talk about death, either one’s own or that of a loved one, without being engulfed by morbid feelings. One can face the possibility of nuclear war and Worldwide destruction without despairing. Why? Because one believes in an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving God. One is assured that Jesus Christ paid the price for one’s sin on Calvary, and is confident that the power of death has been destroyed by Christ’s resurrection. Believing that a glorious eternity awaits one in Heaven, one is not afraid to die. For these reasons, one does not need a fortuneteller to analyze cards, read one’s palm, or gaze into a crystal ball. Nor does one have to consult the horoscope for information and advice. One places no confidence in the visions of self-styled prophets. Instead, one reads the Christian Bible to find God’s message of instruction and comfort, and through prayer one receives the strength and grace of needs day by day. Most people, either through ignorance or determined unbelief, have never placed their trust in Christ. In fact, multitudes have more or less ruled out the idea of God from their thinking, and therefore possess no real hope for the future. This attitude of unbelief may suffice for some people part of the time, but the uncertainties, problems, disappointments, and sorrows of life are so great that many must look somewhere beyond themselves for help. A large percentage of such people in recent years have turned to occultism, and claim to have found a measure of satisfaction in it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
An ever-increasing number of people are visiting mediums to make contact with the spirits of loved ones who have died. When someone talks about “the gift of prophecy,” the public today is not surprised. Even among those who have had little or no contact with the Christian Bible are many who maintain that certain people are able to foretell the future. This is an amazing and paradoxical phenomenon of our scientific age. True, self-styled prophets and fortunetellers have appeared in every generation, but usually little attention has been paid them by most people. Today, however, millions of intelligent and well-educated members of our affluent society are spending vast sums of money for books, magazine, pod cast, private consultations to gain information about the future. A person who has only a superficial knowledge of what the Bible teaches may be inclined to think that anyone who claims to have the gift of prophecy and speaks well of God and Christ is to be considered genuine and trustworthy. Nothing could be farther from the truth! An individual may live an outwardly respectable life, teach a noble system of ethic, and speak of Jesus Christ in a highly complimentary manner, but still be a servant of the forces of evil. Remember, Paul warned believers, if necessary, that the devil is so clever he will make himself and his followers appears as “angels of the light,” to deceive people who are not well-grounded in faith. “For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore, it is no great thing is his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness, whose end shall be according to their works,” reports 2 Corinthians 11.13-15. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
Believers must carefully examine the life and doctrine of any person who claims the gift of prophecy, and use Scriptural principles to make an accurate evaluation. Let us turn the searchlight on Mrs. Dixon, perhaps one of the best-known fortunetellers. She was reported to be a very religious person who advocated and lived a highly moral life. She had recorded a number of her alleged visions, consults an old deck of cards given her Rom lady, gazes into a crystal ball, writes horoscopes, and has made numerous specific prophecies. She gained her reputation as a prophetess because of an unusual number of accurate predictions. She foretold the death of President Franklin Roosevelt, and predicted Harry Truman’s election defeat of Thomas Dewy. She also stated that the communist would obtain control of China long before the takeover actually occurred, and foresaw the coming to power of Nikita Khrushchev, his removal from office, and the orbiting of Sputnik. In addition, she warned that an assassination attempted would be made upon President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. Strangely enough, she even gave advice to men who bet on horse races and predicted the success or failure of certain business enterprises. Some astute gamblers and businessmen claimed her predictive “batting average” was so high they considered her a genuine mystic. However, does this mean she was really endowed with the “gift of prophecy” of which the Bible speaks? We say, “No!” In the first place, she was not batting a thousand, which is required if one is to be considered a genuine prophet of God. The Almighty never makes mistakes. In the Old Testament He told that Israelites that they were to test the validity of a person’s claim to be a prophet by the accuracy of one’s predictions. No one was to be considered God’s spokesman unless what one said concerning the never future actually came to pass in every detail. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
As you read the Old Testament, you will notice that the prophets never spoke only of events far in the future. They always preached a message relevant to their own day, and included prophecies of things which would soon take place. If these predictions were not fulfilled in every respect, the spokesman was not to be accepted as a prophet of God. “And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the LORD hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously; thou shalt not be afraid of him,” reports Deuteronomy 18.21-22. Mrs. Dixon had not maintained a perfect “batting average.” She may be hitting a little better than .500, but this is not high enough. For example, she prophesied peace in Vietnam as far back as 1965, said that Richard Nixon would defeat John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election, and declared that Walter Reuther would run for the presidency in 1964. No other present-day fortuneteller does any better. Therefore, not one of them is qualified to be considered as an inspired prophet of God. In addition, any person who dabbles in occult activity forfeits the right to be God’s spokesman. That the Lord strongly forbade such practices cannot be questioned. Listened to the words of Isaiah: “Therefore shall evil come upon thee; thou shalt not know from where it riseth, and mischief shall fall upon thee; thou shalt not be able to put it off, and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, which thou shalt not know. Stand now with thine enchantments, and with the multitude of thy sorceries, in which thou hast laboured from thy youth, if so be thou mayest prevail. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
“Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee. Behold, they shall be like stubble; the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame; there shall not be a coal to warm at, nor fire to sit before it. Thus shall they be unto thee with whom thou hast laboured, even thy merchants, from thy youth; they shall wander every one to one’s quarter; none shall save thee,” reports Isaiah 47.11-15. Anyone who disobeys these clear prohibitions cannot be a prophet for God. Another reason to avoid present-day fortunetellers is that their visions and messages often do not square with the teachings of the Christian Bible. Their unbiblical statements are serious, for they claim to speak by direct communication from God. The Bible teacher who makes errors in one’s interpretation of certain Scriptures can admit one’s blunders without embarrassment because one does not claim infallibility. A prophet, however, should never err, for the very nature of one’s message as coming directly from the Lord would implicate the Almighty, not the human instrument. Since Mrs. Dixon is regarded as a prophet, not a Biblical student, her errors are of a different nature than the ones preachers sometimes make. And she does blunder occasionally. For example, in her description of her first vision, which allegedly took place on July 14, 1952, she said that a huge serpent approached her bed and slowly entwined itself around her body. As she looked into the eyes of this creature, she saw that they were full of love, goodness, and knowledge, and a deep sense of peace flowed through her. Anyone well-versed in the Scriptures cannot help but be puzzled by this strange interpretation of the serpent’s significance. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
Mrs. Dixon made it represent goodness, knowledge, peace, and love, but this is in direct contradiction to the consistent Biblical symbolism of the serpent. All through the Bible it is associated with Satan and sin. The instructed Bible student also raises serious questions when one studies Mrs. Dixon’s interpretation of a vision she claims to have received on February 5, 1962. This happened to be a day when an unusual conjunction of the planets occurred, and astrologers were unanimous in declaring that a significant event would take place on this date. Mrs. Dixon reports that the lights in her house began to flicker, first dimming and then burning brightly. She went to bed, and awakened before sunrise. She looked out her window toward the east, and in vision saw an Egyptian pharaoh with his queen Nefertiti walking toward her on the rays of the sun. Both the kind and queen were gorgeously attired in royal apparel, but the wife was holding in her arms an infant dressed in rages. Mrs. Dixon said that when she looked into the eyes of the baby, she saw that they were full of wisdom. Then, as she continued to gaze at the scene, she saw the baby grow into manhood, and, to her amazement, a small cross which was suspended over his head became larger and larger until it stretched over the entire Earth. Soon people from every part of the World knelt before this man in adoring worship. This so-called vision, considered by itself, could be quite naturally explained. It contained elements Mrs. Dixon could have drawn easily from reading the Bible and other books on ancient history, and one might believe that she was actually asleep and dreaming instead of awake and beholding a vision. The astonishing element in the whole story is the fact that Mrs. Dixon has set forth two conflicting interpretations of what the vision meant. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
In her first report she said that the baby who became a man and was worshipped represented the great leader of a new Christianity, and predicted that he would unite the people of every sect and creed in the service of God. She declared that a baby, born somewhere in the Middle East shortly after 7 A.M. E.S.T. on 5 February 1962, is the World’s great hope. He will be the founder of this new and perfect form of the Christian faith. Her explanation of the meaning of this vision was a surprise to devout Bible scholars. Anyone who is familiar with the prophetic Scriptures knows that the Bible does not predict the coming of a second Christ to perfect the Christian faith. In fact, it declares unequivocally that a great enemy of the Lord Jesus will make his appearance, and that he is the Antichrist. The apostle John declared, “Little children, it is the las time; and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists, by which we know it is the last time,” reports 1 John 2.18. Every enemy of Christ (antichristos) and every self-styled christ (pseudo christos) who have crossed the threshold of history are forerunners in miniature of one exceedingly powerful and indescribable wicked man who will be “the Anti-Christ.” In the book of Revelation, the beloved apostle portrays a seven-headed beast who rises from the sea and swiftly becomes the World dictator. His coming up out of the water symbolizes that his rise to power will take place in the midst of turbulent conditions among the nations, and the fact that he is closely related to the dragon (Satan) reveals immediately his true character. He is a blasphemer, World ruler, and along with Satan becomes the object of human worship. In fact, he demands that people revere him as God, and instigates bitter persecution against those who refuse to bow down to him. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
Here are the words of John: “And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns tend crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. And the beast which I saw was like a leopard, and his feet were like the fear of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion; and the dragon gave him his power, and his throne, and great authority. And I saw one of his heads as though it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed, and all the World wondered after the beast. And they worshipped the dragon who gave power unto the beast; and they worshiped the beast says, Who is like the beast? Who is able to make war with him? And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies, and power was given unto him to continue forty-two months. And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in Heaven. And it was given unto him to make war with saints, and to overcome them; and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. And all that dwell upon the Earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of the life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the World. If any man have an ear, let him hear. He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity; he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints,” reports Revelation 13.1-10. This same enemy of Christ is presented in the Old Testament Scriptures. Daniel refers to hm as the willful king who rises to power, blasphemes the Almighty, and magnifies him as God. (See Daniel 11.36-45.) The apostle Paul spoke of him in 2 Thessalonians, referring to him as the man of sin, the son of perdition, that wicked one, and “him whose coming is after the working of Satan with all the power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved,” reports 2 Thessalians 2.1-12. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
In the light of these Scriptures, it seems that the baby of Mrs. Dixon’s alleged vision should represent the Antichrist rather than the founder of the “new Christianity.” Apparently Jeane Dixon had second thoughts too, for she changed her mind. However, if Mrs. Dixon was communicating with demons, then the birth of evil and him having influence over Christianity would be a good thing. That is the tricky thing about communicating with spirits. Why did she change her mind? Did she restudy the Bible? Or was she influenced by the literature of some scholar? At any rate, on page 203 of her second book, entitled My Life and Prophecies (1969) she wrote, “There is no doubt in my mind that the ‘child’ is the actual person of the Antichrist, the one who will deceive the World in Satan’s name.” She also reversed her earlier interpretation about the serpent she saw in her first vision, now concluding it was a symbol of Satan. We are not passing judgement upon Mrs. Dixon’s honesty or sincerity, but we wonder why she did not admit that she did not receive her visions from God. The Lord would not lead His servants to make mistakes of this nature and then later to issues a complete reversal. God’s inspired prophets would not have made such errors. Nonetheless, a most remarkable instance of legal proceedings being instituted at the instigation of a ghost comes from the Co. Down in the year 1662. About Michaelmas one Francis Taverner, servant to Lord Chichester, was riding home on horseback late one night from Hillborough, and on nearing Drumbridge his horse suddenly stood still, and he, not suspecting anything out of the common, but merely supposing him to have the staggers, got down to bleed him in the mouth, and then remounted. As he was proceeding two horsemen seemed to pass him, though he heard no sound of horses’ hoofs. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
Presently there appeared a third at his elbow, apparently clad in a long white coast, having the appearance of one James Haddock, an inhabitant of Malone who had died about five years previously. When the startled Taverner asked him in God’s name who he was, he told him that he was James Haddock, and recalled himself to his mind by relating a trifling incident that had occurred in Taverner’s father’s house a short while before with Haddock’s death. Taverner asked him why he spoke with him; he told him, because he was a man of more resolution than other men, and requested him to ride along with him in order that he might acquaint him with the business he desired him to perform. Taverner refused, and, as they were at a cross-road, went his own way. Immediately after parting with the spectre there arose a mighty wind, “and withal he heard very hideous Screeches and Noises, to his great amazement. At last he heard the cocks crow, to his great comfort; he alighted off his horse, and falling to prayer desired God’s assistance, and so got safe home.” The following night the ghost appeared again to him as he sat by the fire, and thereupon declared to him the reason for its appearance, and the errand upon which it wished to send him. It bade him to go to Eleanor Walsh, its widow, who was now married to one David, and say to her that it was the will of her late husband that their son David should be righted in the matter of a lease which the father had bequeathed to him, but of which the step-father had unjustly deprived him. Taverner refused to do so, partly because he did not desire to gain the ill-will of his neighbours, and partly because he feared being taken for one demented; but the ghost so thoroughly frightened him by appearing to him every night for a month, that in the end he promised to fulfill its wishes. He want to Malone, found a woman named Eleanor Walsh, who proved to be the wrong person, but who told him she had a namesake living hard by, upon which Taverner took no further trouble in the matter, and returned without delivering his message. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
The same night he was awakened by something pressing upon him, and saw again the ghost of Haddock in a white coast, which asked him if he had delivered the message, to which Taverner mendaciously replied that he had been to Malone and had seen Eleanor Walsh. Upon which the ghost looked with a more friendly air upon him, bidding him not to be afraid, and then vanished in a flash of brightness. But having learnt the truth of the matter in some mysterious way, it again appeared, this time in a great fury, and threatened to tear him to pieces if he did not do as it desired. Utterly unnerved by these unearthly visits, Taverner left his house in the mountains and went into the town of Belfast, where he sat up all night in the house of a shoemaker named Peirce, where were also two or three of Lord Chichester’s servants.” About midnight, as they were all by the fireside, they beheld Taverner’s countenance change and a trembling to fall upon him; who presently espied the Apparition in a Room opposite him, and took up the Candle and went to it, and resolutely ask’d it in the name of God wherefore it haunted him? It replied, Because he had not delivered the message; and withal repeated the threat of tearing hum in pieces if he did not do so speedily: and so, changing itself into many prodigious Shapes, it vanished in white like a Ghost.” In a very dejected frame of mind Taverner related the incident to some of Lord Chichester’s family, and the chaplain, Mr. James South, advised him to go and deliver the message to the window, which he accordingly did, and thereupon experienced great quietness of mind. Two nights later the apparition again appeared, and on learning what had been done, charged him to bear the same message to the executors. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
Taverner not unnaturally asked if Davis, the step-father, would attempt to do him any harm, to which the spirit gave a very doubtful response, but at length reassured him by threatening Davis If he should attempt anything to his injury, and then vanished away in white. The following day Taverner was summoned before the Court of the celebrated Jeremy Taylor, Bishop of Down, who carefully examined him about the matter, and advised him the next time the spirit appeared to ask it the following questions: Whence are you? Are you a good or a bad spirit? Where is your abode? What station do you hold? How are you regimented in the other World? What is the reason that you appear for the relief of your son in so small a matter, when so many widows and orphans are oppressed, and none from thence of their relations appear as you do to right them? That night Taverner went to Lord Conway’s house. Feeling the coming presence of the apparition, and being unwilling to create any disturbance within doors, he and his brother went out into the courtyard, where they saw the spirit coming over the wall. He told it what he had done, and it promised not to trouble him any more, but threatened the executors if they did not see the boy righted. “Here his brother put him in mind to ask the Spirit what the Bishop bid him, which he did presently. But it gave him no answer, but crawled on its hands and feet over the wall again, and so vanished in white with a most melodious harmony.” The boy’s friends then brought an action (apparently in the Bishop’s Court) against the executors and trustees; one of the latter, John Costlet, who was also the boy’s uncle, tried the effect of bluff, but the threat of what the apparition could and might do to him scared him into a promise of justice. About five years later, when the story was forgotten, Costlet began to threaten the body with an action, but, coming home drunk one night, he fell off his horse and was killed. In the above there is no mention of the fate of Davis. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
Whatever explanation we may choose to give of the supernatural element in the above, there seems to be no doubt that such an incident occurred, and that the story is, in the main, true to fact, as it was taken by Glanvill from a letter of Mr. Thomas Alcock’s, the secretary to Bishop Taylor’s Court, who must therefore have heard the entire story form Taverner’s own lips. The incident is vividly remembered in local tradition, from which many picturesque details are added, especially with reference to the trial, the subsequent righting of young David Haddock, and the ultimate punishment of Davis, on which points Glanvill is rather unsatisfactory. According to this source, Taverner (or Tavney, as the name is locally pronounced) felt something get up behind him as he was riding home, and from the eerie feeling that came over him, as well as from the mouldy smell of the grace that assailed his nostrils, he perceived that his companion was not of this World. Finally the ghost urged Taverner to bring the case into Court, and it came up for trial at Carrickfergus. The Counsel for the opposite side browbeat Taverner for inventing such an absurd and malicious story about his neighbour Davis, and ended by tauntingly desiring him to call his witness. The usher of the Court, with a sceptical sneer, called upon James Haddock, and at the third repetition of the name a clap of thunder shook the Court; a hand was seen on the witness-table, and a voice was heard saying, “Is this enough?” Which very properly convinced the jury. Davis slunk away, and on his homeward road fell from his horse and broke his neck. Instead of propounding Bishop Taylor’s shorter catechism, Taverner merely asked the ghost, “Are you happy in your present state?” “If,” it replied in a voice of anger, “you were not the man you are, I would tear you in pieces for asking such a question”; ad then went off in a flash of fire!—which, we fear, afforded but too satisfactory an answer to his question. #RandolphHarris 13 or 17
In other supernatural adventures, at night, passers-by heard ghostly music wafting from the dark Winchester mansion. The bell in the belfry high in the gables tolled regularly at midnight to summon incoming flights of spirits. Later it tolled again to warn these visitors to return to their sepulchers. However, once a week, these departed ones relaxed and face in the Great Ball Room. Notes from Mrs. Winchester’s journal: At the time we passed our evenings in the mansion, which opened up to the fruit orchard. After seven o’clock, an apparition, of the late Mr. Winchester—with his blue eyes, sandy slick blonde hair, his thin white nose, his metallic voice, and his mystic ideas, occasioned us some little disquiet. It used to trouble us to see him rise abruptly and pace two or three times up and down the room, gesticulating the while, mocking with a strange air the patterns of wallpaper. Then he would seat himself down again, empty his glass of milk at a gulp, and commence a discussion about the music of Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa, about the lute of the Hebrews, about the introduction of the organ into our churches, about the shopar, the sabbatic epochs, et cetera. He would knit his brows, plant his sharp elbows on the edge of the table, and lose himself in deep thought. Yes, he perplexed us not a little—we others who were grave accustomed to methodical ideas. However, it was necessary to put up with it; it was a bit of a pleasure to have him with us again. Henry, the butler, in spite of Mr. Winchester’s bantering spirit, in the end grew calm and no longer continued to contradict Mr. Winchester, who began known as the organist, when he was right. As for me, I listened to the wind gambolling without amongst the plane trees of the estate, to the drip of the water from the spouts, and to its dashing against the windows. From time to time one could he the windchimes, a door shut with a bang, a shutter beat against a wall. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
Then would raise the great clamour of the storm, sweeping, sighing, and groaning in the distance, as if all the invisible powers were seeking and calling on one another in the darkness, while living things hid themselves, sitting in corners, in order to escape a fearful meeting with them. One night, Henry shook his hat like a possessed, and saying in his husky voice, “Surely the Evil One is about this work! What nonsense is that you are singing there, Organist? What to Amschaspands signify to us? or the nine time nine thousand nine hundred and ninety thousand spirits of Envy? Where on Earth did you pick up such strange language?” Outside the rain fell in torrents, the gutters gushed over, the spouts disgorged themselves, and the ditches were swollen into little rivers. When suddenly Henry shouted again, “It is abominable! How can some return from the dead? Abominable to think that every father of a family, even such as bring up their children in fear of God, as exposed to misfortunes.” “Yes,” I replied. “It is so. They say, no doubt rightly, that Heaven orders all things; but the spirit of darkness seems to me to meddle a good deal more than is necessary in them. For one good fellow how many villains do we find, without faith or law. And for one good action how many evil ones? I tell you, my friend, if the Evil One were to count his flock—” I had not time to finish, for at that moment a terrific flash of lightning glared in through the cracks of the shutters, making the lamp burn dim. It was immediately followed by a clap of thunder, crashing, jerky—one of those claps which make you tremble. One might have thought that the World was coming to an end. The clock of the mansion just then struck the half hour. The tolling bells seemed to be just hard by one. From far, very far off, there came a trembling plaintive voice, crying. The time sounded from the belfry of the mansion. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
The glass door was scarcely opened when came another flash of lightning. The grounds were washed by rain, the gutters of the mansion flushed, its multitude of windows, its gables, the post, glared out from the night, and then was swallowed up in the darkness. That glance of the eye allowed me to see the seven-story tower of the mansion with its innumerable little carvings all clothed in white light. In the tower were bells hanging to black beams, with their clappers, and their ropes hanging down to the body of the mansion. Below that was a stork’s nest, half torn to pieces by the wind,–the young ones with their beaks out, the mother at her wits’ end, her wings extended, while the male bird flew about the shining steeple, his breast thrown forward, his neck bent, his long legs thrown out behind as if defying the thunder peals. It was a strange sight, a veritable Chinese picture—thin, delicate, light, something strange, terrible, upon a black background of clouds broken with streaks of gold. It was astonishing when Earth and Heaven confound themselves, while the good and bad are struggling together, while such mysterious crimes occur around us even as this day, as ghost dance in the grand ball room, as my phantom husband plays the organ. And ghouls dine in the dining room, as demons conjure up storms to make their presence known. Is it strange? Be clam—listen and see. Heaven be with us! The rain steaked the darkness. Then a man appeared in the darkness, and all the supernatural guest set off. The wretched man made no resistance. Henry and I looked at each other’s pale faces. “Good evening,” he said and the organ started playing again. As for me, I turned my heard more than twenty times before I came to my door, fearful that I should see a demon. And when at last, thank Heaven, I was safe in my room, before I got into bed and blew out my light I took the rise precaution of looking under my bed to convince myself that it was not hidden there. I even said a prayer that it would not strangle me during the night. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
Henry was still in the Grand Ball Room exchanging correspondence with spirits. I think the fascinated him at this point. The grave sound of the organ kept waking me in the night. It was as if martial music swept war on to us, and the simple melodies led me into reveries, it was because the different melodies were the invocation of the spirits of the Earth, who came suddenly into our midst, and made us participants of their own proper essence. My husband, Mr. Winchester was longer a material being, he was no longer composed of a soul; it was almost difficult to comprehend his direction action of occult powers, but the tremble of emotions, elevated my soul to Heaven, melted me, awakened me in the ardour of life. It gave me enthusiasm, love, fear, pity. In the end all my prejudices against the invisible World disappeared, and new facts occurred to confirm me in this fresh manner of thinking. My head was full of shadows and weird reflections. At that moment, a hand touched my arm. It was my William. A ray of the moon, falling on the window-panes, scattered its light around. His face was white, and his stretched-out hand pointed to the shadows. I followed his finger with my eyes, for he evidently was directing my attention to something, and I saw the most terrible sight of which I have a memory—a shadow, motionless, appeared before the most expensive window in the house, against the light surface of the moon. This shadow had a man’s shape, and seemed suspended between Heaven and Earth. Its head hung down upon its breast, its elbows stood out square beside the body, and its legs straight down tapered to a point. Then, at the foot of this deathly apparition, I saw a white figure, kneeling, with long disheveled hair. It was my baby girl, her hands joined in prayer. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
So much for answers to a few of these endless rumors surrounding our Mystery Lady. Some may laugh at the idea of such an infinity; some may tremble at it; others many crane themselves over the abyss in order to see what passes in the depths. It all, however, comes to the same thing in the end. No one has ever penetrated the mystery which envelops with Winchester mansion. No one shall ever penetrate it. Death does not find echo.
Winchester Mystery House
The Winchester Mystery House wants to wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year! 🎆
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
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The Kingdom on Earth Would be Uncontaminated!
Life is not a destination; it is a journey. Accept life unconditionally. Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to accept the truth. Do the right things. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity. Even abbreviated celibacy purifies the soul and clears that channel of communication between the celibate and God. The next logical stage, of course, is extending the rule of celibacy to infinity—this is knowns as a spiritual marriage. Some people cherish spirituality above all else and wish to live a pure life, undefiled by the bestial urges of eroticism. Multitudes of men and women have been attracted to monasticism as a way of dedicating their lives to their religious ideals. Within these cloisters they strive for spiritual growth and depth, union with God, communion with their saints, and in general, to shun worldliness. Celibacy is, as we have seen, an integral part of the monastic system, exalted as an absolute good and exacted as an essential instrument for achieving spiritual purity. It is seldom, however, what motivates people to enter cloisters. They merely accept it, even embrace it, as an essential component of their determined pursuit of godliness. Occasionally, however, celibacy by and of itself is one of the bedrock principles that inspires religious movements. Often, devotees forsake mainstream society for celibate communal life. The Essenes were one such group. More recently, various Christian sects including the Shakers, Peace Mission angels, Koreshan Unity, and Sanctificationst Commonwealth have celebrated celibacy as the cornerstone of their belief systems. These groups concur wholeheartedly with the orthodox Christian theology premise that pleasures of the flesh are the root of evil, but they draw quite contrary conclusions about what this means. Not for them the corrosive, postlapsarian vision of a bifurcated humanity, Eve’s seductive daughters forever tempting Adam’s weak sons. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Instead, these sectarians zero in on the evils of pleasures of the flesh, glorify celibacy as redemptive, and develop cogent doctrines with feminists values at their core. Femtech is actually one of the fastest growing sectors in the economy. In 2018, the global femtech market was worth $4 billion. By 2025, that number is projected to grow to $50 billion. Nonetheless, one assistant to living virginity for the sake of the Kingdom is community. Men and women are “relational beings.” Relationships constitute the person (as we say today), just as in the Trinity it is the “relationships” (of the Father to the Son, of they Holy Spirit to the Father and the Son, et cetera) that constitute the three divine “Persons.” No-one can live and grow harmoniously without real and deep inter-personal relationships. Community is often precisely what constitutes our “hundredfold” in this life. When it is healthy and genuine, community enables us to have (and to be) fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters. Friendships too with people of the other gender (which can easily become danger if they are cultivated exclusively and furtively) are a great gift, if they are shared in some way with one’s community. For some time now, new forms of celibacy and consecrated virginity have come to exist in the Church, know as “secular institutes.” Their members each live in their own home and environment, yet the fact of sharing the same spirituality and observing the same rule, and the strong human bonds between them, reinforced by the days and weeks they spend together during the year, can be for them the equivalent of a community. On the other hand, there is a question about diocesan priests and pastors who live entirely along. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Is this a suitable situation in which to live in celibacy? I believe we must have the courage to face up to this problem. They very example of secular institutes today shows that it is possible to achieve a type of community and communion without living together under the same roof. The natural community where a diocesan priest finds nourishment and support, and is also challenged when necessary, is the “presbyterium.” When this ministry first appeared in history, alongside bishops and deacons, the term indicated the community of presbyters gathered around their bishop—a community which the martyr St. Ignatius compares to the college of apostles gathered around Jesus. Every reform of the clergy has felt the need to tackle this problem, by creating forms of common life for the clergy, some of which are still actively functioning today. A presbyterium whose members know one another, who cultivate the bonds of brotherhood established during the years spent together in the seminary, who meet for monthly retreats and spiritual exercises, together with their bishop, and who exchange news and experiences, especially in these days of easy communications, is already a form of community which must be strengthened at all costs. Jesus’ words about celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom are preceded, as often happens in the Gospel, by the fact. And the fact is Jesus Himself, Who not only remained a virgin but was also born of a virgin mother. After Jesus, called by the Fathers “the-Arch-Virgin” (Archiparthenos), there is Mary, who the Church calls “the Ever-Virgin” (Aeiparthenos). “The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a virgin,” reports Luke 1.26. Notwithstanding all the discussions, the words are there, in the Bible, firm as a rock. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Exegetes point out that on this point Luke’s account depends on the prophecy of Isaiah 7.14: “The virgin is with child, and will give birth to a son.” This is true, but it changes nothing, in fact it heightens the importance of the Gospel account by demonstrating its long prophetic preparation and rootedness in the history of salvation. It is the literary presentation of the fact, the account of the event, which depends on Isaiah, not the event that is recounted. If in fact, behind the account, there had not been a new event that actually happened, why would the evangelist and the Christian community have thought of that very prophecy, which (at least in the Septuagint text) contained the idea of virginity, so foreign to the Jewish mentality of the time? Why not copy, for example, the mode of Isaac’s birth—much more acceptable and biblically convincing—or that of Moses or some other Old Testament celebrity? The answer is given: in order to mark Christ’s difference and superiority over any others human who came before Him. However, that is something we can say, after the event, and the Fathers did say so from the second century onwards, once the superior value of virginity for Christians had been affirmed. However, the community in which this account was formed was not yet in a position to say so. It did not yet have the elements to enable it to give precedence to virginity—especially in its feminine version—over marriage. To suppose, already in this initial stage of the Christian faith, a knowledge and influence of pagan myths about the miraculous births of the gods, would be altogether artificial and without foundation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
The most important thing to note is, therefore, not that the Gospel account depends on the prophecy of Isaiah, but that both the account and the prophecy depend on a certain event that God had first pre-announced and later accomplished in the fullness of time. I have never understood those biblical scholars who recognize the prophetic value of the Old Testament as a proclamation of the preparation for the New, but who then refuse to recognize any such prophetic character in any actual text, including this text of Isaiah, which the Gospel itself explicitly relates to the birth of Christ from the Virgin Mary (Matthew 1.23). At the dawn of the new times, May, in her virginity, embodies the new form of life which has been made possible precisely by the coming of the Kingdom. One could see a symbolic significance in the counter between Mary and Elizabeth in the Visitation. Elizabeth, representing the Old Testament economy (Matthew 11.13: “For all the Prophets and the Torah up to John prophesied”), was married; Mary, representing the New Testament economy, is a virgin. In Mary appears all the splendor of the biblical motivation for virginity, expressed in the words “for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven” and “for the Lord.” She was chosen; the Kingdom “overcame” her, took possession of her, and she let herself be possessed. Jeremiah would say: she let herself be “seduced.” St. Paul is the man “set apart for the service of the Gospel” (Romans 1.1); Mary is the woman singled out and set apart for the Author of the Gospel. I believe that the idea of a “vow” of virginity taken by Mary, apart from being biblically unfounded, actually diminishes rather than enhances Our Lady’s virginity, because it would then depend more on the personal initiative of a creature than on the sovereign and free initiative of God. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
It would there be an ascetical practice, rather than a work of grace. Mary did not “find favour with God” because she was a virgin; she was a virgin because she had found favour with God, and she was chosen so that through her the beginnings of the Kingdom on Earth would be uncontaminated. Certainly Mary responded perfectly, with absolute faith, to call to virginity. She accepted all its consequences joyfully and without discussion, saying: “Here I am!” She thus became the model for all the countless hosts of young men and women who, through the centuries, were to receive the same call to be “virgins and mothers,” “virgins and fathers.” After the title of “Theotokos” (Mother of God), that of “Ever-Virgin” is the one by which Mary is most often invoked by the liturgy, both Latin and Orthodox. The latter, in its finest Marian hymn, the Akathistos, never tires of greeting her with the refrain: “Hail, Virgin Spouse,” invoking her as the model and protector of virgins: “Hail, mother and nurse of virgins! Hail, you who lead souls to the Bridegroom! Hail, Virgin Spouse!” Saint Gregory of Nyssa brings out the profound affinity that exists between Mary and every Christin virgin, which in turn is based on an analogous relationship to Christ. He writes: “That which came about physically in Mary Immaculate, when the fullness of Godhead shone in Christ through virginity, is also repeated in every soul who follows reason and remains a virgin, even though the Lord no longer makes Himself materially present.” Mary is not only the model but also the “advocate” and protector of virgins. She does not confine herself to pointing out the way of virginity, but helps them to follow it by her intercession and watchful care. Saint Basil writes: “Just as clear and transparent bodies, when struck by a ray of light, themselves become resplendent and reflect a different ray, so do those Spirit-bearing souls, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, themselves become fully spiritual and shed grace other others.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Mary is, quintessentially, the “Spirit-bearing” soul, bearer of the Holy Spirit; she is the shining body who casts light over others. So true is this that even Luther was obliged to write of her: “No image of woman gives a man such pure thoughts as this virgin does.” Mary is truly a unique creature, the “blessed one among women.” All other women in the Church are either virgins physically and mothers spiritually, or physically mothers and spiritually virgins. She alone is both, in other words physically and spiritually both “virgin and mother.” God could choose no more eloquent language than this by which to honour both marriage and virginity, and to make us accept both as His handiwork. These two charisms, coming “from the same Spirit,” before dividing into two categories of persons in the Church, found themselves united in Mary, who is the first cell and model of the entire Church. Thus, no state of life in the Church is deprived of the glory of having, in Mary, its own beginnings and model, and no state of life can boast of imitating Mary by itself, with no need of the other. “All creatures,” writes the poet we met earlier, “lack something. Those who are carnal lack purity. [Instead of “carnal” and “pure,” read “virgin” and “mother,” and all will be clear.] She, on the contrary, lacks nothing, because, though carnal, she is pure. However, though pure, she is also carnal. So it is that she is not simply a woman unique among all women. She is a creature unique among all creatures. Literally the first, after God.” Until the human psyche is equilibrated it cannot gain durable peace or solid wisdom, and the aspirant must turn one’s attention to those aspects of one’s psyche the development of which has not kept pace with those with which one has been most concerned. Balanced living does not overdevelop one phase and underdevelop another. If an individual’s advance is an unbalanced one, if its various points do not meet on the same even level, then there is no alternative but to go backward and bring up the laggards. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
If one has purified one’s emotions of grossness and selfishness but failed to purge one’s intellect of errors and illusions, then one will have to undertake this task. One has to build up the other sides of one’s nature, where they have been neglected in the building of the mystical side. And this will enable one in one’s mystical attainment to “bring it down to Earth,” as it were, and adjust it to the body, intellect, and environment. It is very encouraging to one to have the “Witness Self” experience quite a number of times. It speaks more for itself than any descriptive words could do. The student’s meditation may have been unfruitful on the surface for many years, yet if one remains loyally patient, and persistent, one may have at last in this experience the definite and discernible fruits of seeds sown long before. The experience does help to make the burden—and it is such to old souls—of the body more bearable. It helps in the understanding of what Spirit means, and gives testimony of its existence. It demonstrates what the quest is trying to reach, and how real is its divine goal. It is very important that the disciple should have this experience, and it is a favourable augury for one’s future progress. The vision of truth is one thing, its durable realization is another. The felicitous experience of the Overself may come briefly during meditation. It comes abruptly. At one moment the student is one’s ordinary egoistic self, struggling with one’s restless thoughts and turbulent feelings; at the next the ego suddenly subsides, and every faculty becomes quiescent. Al the disciple has to do is to be nonresistent to the divinity which is taking possession of one, to receive lovingly and laboriously. The oncoming of this experience will be marked by various other signs: the intellect becomes suspended; will, judgment, memory, and reasoning slip gently into abeyance. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
A deep serenity unknown before takes possession of one, and an exquisite calm settle over one. In these moments of joyous beauty, the bitterest past is blotted out, and the ugliest history redeemed. With the mind deep-held by the Overself in an atmosphere of exaltation, the harassments and burdens of life beat but faintly at the portals of attention; the troubles of a lifetime recede to nothingness, the fears of the future decline into triviality. The disciple’s outlook on the World becomes enlarged, ennobled, and illumined, and is no longer bounded wholly by commonplace interests. The veils hiding truth from one are lifted for a time. The idea that one has a higher self, the conviction that one has a soul, breaks in upon one’s “little existence” with great revelatory force, and one feels one is emerging into glorious light after a dreary journey through a long dark tunnel. Attributions do not occur in an interpersonal vacuum. Common interpersonal processes in depression such as reassurance seeking may be interpreted as a way of gathering information for the formation of attributions. Hopelessness common to depression may generate interpersonal stressors. Other types of expectations may be closely linked to interpersonal processes. A child who is abused or neglected may come to expect other people to neglect or abandon one. A depressed individual who experiences a great deal of interpersonal rejection is likely to expect further rejection from other people. Parents who pressure their children for inappropriate levels of achievement may inadvertently teach perfectionist attitudes to their children, who then become prone to eating disorders as a maladaptive means of achieving these standards. In cases such as these, the distorted cognitive process that contributes to the psychological problems have interpersonal origins. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
The tradition of behaviourism places the focus not on the internal “unobservable” cognitive processes, but rather on the observable behaviours and the resultant rewards or punishments that they receive from the environment. With a moment’s thought, it ought to be apparent that many of the maladaptive behaviours that contribute to and even define psychopathology are interpersonal behaviours. Similarly, the behaviours whose extinction can be implicated in the development of psychological problems also tend to be interpersonal in nature. Perhaps most prominently, the sources of reward and punishment are typically found in the social environment. If a person becomes lonely and depressed because one no longer finds pleasure in relations with other people, and therefore withdraws, one’s feeling of reward or punishment tells only half of the story. The other half concerns what other people do or fail to do to create that sense of reward or punishment. Admittedly, not all behaviours that play a role in poor mental health are interpersonal in nature. However, the behaviours with the greatest capability for producing feelings of reward or punishment tend to be inherently social, involving a transaction between two or more people. Advances in the medical sciences have brought a tremendous amount of attention to the potential for understanding psychopathology through such biological mechanisms as genetics, neurochemical agents, and neurophysiological structures and functions. The identification of numerous such agents in most problems we have discussed, coupled with the documented efficacy of pharmacological treatments for them, has brought great acclaim to the biological paradigm. How could an interpersonal paradigm possibly be integrated into a biological perspective on mental illness? #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The ultimate resolution of the mind-body debate is that biology affects psychology and psychology affects biology. It can now be stated with equal certainty that interpersonal interaction affects biological functions. When people are reared in social isolation, there are clear biological consequences. Individuals reared in social isolation have lower brain weights that those reared in a socially enriched environment. Males exposed to aggressive behaviour from another over a long period, exhibit adrenal hypertrophy and an increase in basal corticosterone. These biological signs of stress indicate that exposure to aggressive interpersonal behaviour can affect physiological structure and neurochemical action. Early adverse experiences (exempli gratia, exposure to maternal depression, inadequate parenting) in neonates produce changes in corticotrophin-releasing-factor containing neurons and the sympathetic nervous system; these changes may be immediately protective, but are detrimental in the long run by creating an increased sensitivity to stress. Adults who experience marital distress exhibit a variety of immunosuppressive effects and changes in endocrine function. These are only a few of the findings that unequivocally establish a connection between interpersonal experiences and subsequent changes in biological structures and functions. There is considerable plasticity in both human and nonhuman brains well into the lifespan. One of the agents responsible for changes in brain development, as well as other neurological actions, is interpersonal interaction. Therefore, when a biological agent or action is identified in association with a particular psychological disorder, it is essential to bear in mind that interpersonal experiences may be partially or largely responsible for the biological disturbance that some are tempted to conclude “caused” the problem. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Finally, the psychodynamic paradigm seeks to explain psychopathology through largely unconscious motivations and drives that are imbalanced or otherwise maladaptive. Early experiences with the mother and father, as well as siblings, projection, and transference, all figure prominently in psychodynamic explanations. Various factions of the psychodynamic school, such as object relations theorists and attachment theory, as even more explicitly interpersonal in their orientation. Indeed, the “object” in object relations is “people.” The “attachment” in attachment theory is attachment to caregiver (id est, another person). Although the interpersonal paradigm takes a more behavioural perspective, and the psychodynamic paradigm is more psychological in its orientation, the two actually share many similar interests when it comes to explaining psychopathy. The biopsychosocial model recognizes that biology, cognition, affect, and social behaviour are mutually influential. A complete understanding of any health problem, whether physical or psychological, cannot be attained without granting attention to biological, psychological, and social factors, according to this model. This intelligent recognition is long overdue, and should be something of a wake-up call to advocates of a monolithic paradigm in mental health. Though the interpersonal paradigm has its own core assumptions, explanations, and predictions that are distinct from other schools of thought, its component fit well within the superordinate biopsychosocial model. Historically, scientific inquiry into mental health problems has emanated from a variety of perspective. Patterns of reinforcement and punishment can affect mental health. Close relationships may cause or be caused by mental health problems. Interpersonal interactions play a causal role in mental health. Interpersonal issues are also recognized as vulnerability factors that make people susceptible to the ill effects of stress, as well as potential stressors themselves. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Disturbances in interpersonal relations are viewed as inevitable consequences of most psychological problems. Interpersonal interactions are known to maintain psychopathology and to have significant impact on the course and outcome of mental disorders. However, psychology cannot comprehensively deal with mental illness and humanity. Because sometimes the community is afflicting the individual, like during the Salem Witch Trials. It is not always the individual that is the afflicter. However, psychology tends to assume that most people are rational, so the individual is to blame from the problems. And that is where religion comes in. Religion realizes the human nature can be sinful and often times groups of people do afflict individuals, so it teaches one how to deal with this on a spiritual level. We are also to pray and live a righteous life and pray to Jesus Christ and the devil will flee from you. Not only is mental illness cognitive, it is also spiritual. Some people have a mental and spiritual sickness. “Let the word [spoken by] Christ (the Messiah) have its home [in your hearts and minds] and dwell in you in [all its] richness, as you teach and admonish and train one another in all insight and intelligence and wisdom [in spiritual things, and as you sing] psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody to God with [His] grace in your hearts,” reports Colossians 3.16. Have you ever felt as though somebody was watching you? Guess what? Whether you realize it or not, people are watching you. They are watching how you dress, how you take care of your home, how you treat other people. They are watching you at play and at work. They are trying to determine whether your words and your walk—your lifestyles—are consistent. What do they see? Are you a good representation of our God? Are you striving for excellence? Or are you compromising in so-called insignificant areas? #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
God wants us to be people of integrity, people of honour, people who are trustworthy. A person of integrity is open and honest. One does not have any hidden agendas or ulterior motives. A person of integrity is true to one’s word. One keeps one’s commitments. One does not need a legal contract to force one to fulfill one’s promises; one’s word is one’s bond. People of integrity are the same in private as they are in public. They do not go out and treat their friends and coworkers kindly and then go home and treat their family rudely or disrespectfully. No, when you have integrity, you will do what is right whether anybody is watching or not. Every day our integrity is tested. If the bank teller gives you too much money in return, are you going to have integrity and go back and make things right? Or are you going to go out of there saying, “Thank You, Jesus! You did it again!” Do you call in sick at work so you can stay home and take care of your personal business, go to the beach, or go play golf? When the boss asks how things are going, do you inflate the figures in your favour? When the phone rings and it is somebody you do not want to talk to, do you tell your child to lie? “Tell them I am not home!” Lies are not coloured in the Bible. In God’s sight, there is no such thing as a white, gray, or black lie. A lie is a lie. If you are not telling the truth, that is being dishonest. Sonner or later, it will catch up to you. What you sow you will eventually reap. Understand this: If you will lie about the little things, before long you will lie about bigger things. We read about the large companies that have come tumbling down because of fraud and financial misdeeds. Those people did not start off stealing millions of dollars. Most likely, they started off compromising a hundred dollars here, a thousand dollars there. Then, when the opportunity came, they compromised millions. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Do not kid yourself, if you will compromise in something small, eventually you will compromise in more serious matters. Compromise is a downhill slide. And theft is theft, whether it is a dollar, a thousand dollars, or a million dollars. If you are taking home your company’s office supplies, that is being dishonest. If you are not giving your company a full day’s work, that is wage theft, not integrity. If you are having to stretch the truth in order to get that new account, that is deceit, and God will not bless that. We need to live honestly before our God and before other people. I heard somebody put it this way: “Do not do anything that you would not feel comfortable reading about in the newspaper the next day.” If you do not have integrity, you will never reach your highest potential. Integrity is the foundation on which a truly successful life is built. Every time you compromise, every time you are less than honest, you are causing a slight crack in your foundation. If you continue compromising, that foundation will never be able to hold what God wants to build. If you do not first have integrity, you will never have lasting prosperity. Oh, if you do not take the high road and make the more excellent choices, you may enjoy some temporary success, but you will never see the fullness of God’s favour. On the other hand, if we settle for nothing less than living with integrity, God’s blessings will overtake us. Of course, we all want to prosper in life. However, the real question is: Are we willing to pay the price to do the right thing? It is not always easy. Are we paying our honest debts? Are we being above board in our business decisions? Are we treating other people with respect and honour? Are we being true to our word? Integrity and prosperity are flip sides of the same coin. You cannot have one without the other. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
God may be reminding you about something such as paying a bill that you have swept under the rug. Maybe it is about getting to work on time consistently; maybe you know you should be more truthful in your business dealings. Start making things right. Step up to a higher level of integrity in those areas. God is calling us out of mediocrity and into excellence. The Christian Bible says if we will be faithful in little things, then God will trust us with more (see Matthew 25.21). If I will not do the right thing with a hundred buck, how can God trust me to do the right thing with millions of dollars? Yet how often have we heard of instances in which a person’s upward progress was thwarted because of one’s mismanagement o something seemingly minor and insignificant? You may not think it makes any difference when you do not pay your bills on time, or when you tell those “little white lies.” If you treat your friends one way, and your family another, you may think it does not make a difference. If you do not learn to do what is right in the little areas, God cannot trust you with more. Remember, our lives are an open book before God. He looks at our hearts. He looks at our motives. God sees every time you go the extra kilometer to do what is right. He also sees the times that you compromise and take the easy ways out. Be open and honest and tell the whole truth. Learn to listen to your conscience. God put that inside you so you would have an inner rule by which to know right from wrong. When you start to compromise, you will hear that alarm go off in your conscience. Do not ignore it. Do what you know in your heart is the right thing. Is someone watching you? Oh, yes; people are watching, and so is your Heavenly Father. Live this day to please Him, and you will be pleased with yourself. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Let us look at this passage of scripture, so often misinterpreted and misleading to many in their praying: “And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not faint,” reports Luke 18.1. The Amplified Bible says, “And not turn crowd.” We ought always to pray. Obviously, God does not mean for us to crawl around on our knees, praying all the time; but you can be in an attitude of prayer continually. Here is what the Spirit of God revealed to me as I mediated and considered this scripture prayerfully: “If you have a need this morning and you prayed over it, believing that you received when you prayed, then tomorrow when some other need arises, do not faint, or turn coward and give up. they ought to pray about each need as it arises.” In Luke 18, verse 2, Jesus begins the parable: There was in a city a jungle, which feared not God, neither regarded man: And there was a window in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary. And he would not for a while: but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man; yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith. And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the Earth? (Luke 18.2-8). You would not take away from that scripture, nor would you really add to it, if you said, “Will He find that kind of faith on the Earth when He comes?” The widow was an insignificant person. She had no authority or political power. She had no support and no one to take care of her. She was at the mercy of the people. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Listen to what Jesus said: And there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him (the unjust judge), saying, Avenge me of mine adversary. From this, some have inferred that the window just kept coming. The only indication for this interpretation is that it says, she came unto him, saying. You can interpret it two ways, but I choose to believe that the widow came to the unjust judge with fire in her eyes and authority in her voice; that while she was walking toward him, she was saying, Avenge me of mine adversary. The literal Greek says, “She was coming to him saying.” To me, this indicates she was coming and saying at the same time. She was talking as she was walking. The literal Greek says of Jesus that on one occasion “He was coming to them saying.” It does not really mean that He kept coming and saying the same thing. He was speaking to them as He was walking toward them. Of the judge, Jesus said, And he would not for a while: but afterward he said within himself. Notice this did not happen outwardly. It happened on the inside of him. Though I fear not God, nor regard man; Yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. The words she spoke troubled him. Her words were filled with the authority of faith. Notice what she said: Avenge of mine adversary. She did not waste words. She did not say “maybe so” or “please” or “if it would not be too much trouble.” She demanded it. There was something about the words this widow spoke that troubled the unjust judge. It was the faith in the woman’s voice that troubled him, and her request was granted. Suppose this little widow had said to the unjust judge, “Those folks are giving me lots of trouble; let me tell you all the mean things they have done,” and then had gone back homes. What do you think would have happened? The unjust judge would have said, “I wonder why the woman came up here and told me all that.” No, she went to him with the answer. She did not mention the problem. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Neurosis is inhibition and anxiety. And what is normality? The freedom to love and to work. So we say. However, is there not something disingenuous about this jaunty loftiness? What are we hiding? Normality is the free pursuit of power—curbed, in deference to prevailing morality, only enough to maintain appearances and to keep us out of trouble. The child grabs for power in whatever ways spontaneously suggest themselves to him, and is so doing encounters disapproval, punishment, loss of love—so brining it about that the mere indication toward forbidden behaviours causes fear, counsels caution. Eventually the parental prohibitions, installed as conscience, operate from within, honoured as duty, enforced by guilt, elevated as right and as good. Morality is fear that has been transformed into conscience. The morality that is observed, as distinct from the morality that is but professed, measures the freedom that individuals have surrendered to the collective in return for security. The will to power impels the rush of life; mortality and fear constitute the barrier; the outcome in behaviour is a compromise. If the barrier is massive, the inhibition or deflection of drive may be so great that no trace of power will sustain the goal in view. But however masked or attenuated or denied, hunger for power is the source—for the selfless, the anchorite, the martyr, and the saint, no less than for the man on horseback. We say we want freedom and justice, and surely we do; but when the tyrant is overthrown and the palace ransacked, the triumphant leaders of the revolution proceed to consolidate that power which was, all along, the unavowed aim ulterior to freedom and justice. We sicken of power, would give it up, forsake it. We push it away, avert our faces. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
We try to locate the moving principle of life in love or spirit or service or sacrifice. However, power is inalienable. Renounced, it turns out to have been not renounced but cloaked. One simply reaches a point in the pursuit of power at which fear or scruple calls a halt. And there, at that point, inhibited from further pursuit, holding fast to what one has, one arrives at an uneasy equilibrium, alert to depredations equally from those who have more and from those who have less. Each of us, all of us, every moment of our lives, eating or trying not to be eaten, pursuing or fleeing, struggling to achieve power or dodging its hammer blows—or huddled uneasily at some halfway position. The way to live should issue, not only from our nature, but also from the nature of the World in which we live, the World that is shaped by the will to power groups. Waking up this morning, I see the blue sky, I join my hands in thanks for the many wonders of life; for having twenty-four brand new hours. The sun is rising on the frost and so is my awareness. I walked across the field of sunflowers. Tens of thousands of flowers waving at me; my awareness is like the sunflower; my hands are sowing seeds for the next harvest. My eat is hearing the sound of the rising tide on the magnificent sky. I see clouds approaching with joy from many directions. I can see the fragrant lotus ponds of my homeland; I can see coconut trees along the rivers; I can see rice fields stretch their shoulders launching at the sun and the rain. Mother Earth gives me coriander, basilicum, and celery. Tomorrow, the hills and mountains of the country will be green again. Tomorrow, the buds of life will grow quickly; the folk poetry will be as sweet as the songs of the children. The whole family of humans will sing together with me in my work. God will deliver you from the snare of the fowler, and from the destructive pestilence. He will cover you with His pinions, and under His wings shall you take refuge; His truth is a shield and armour. You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, now of the arrow that flies by day; of the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor of the destruction that ravages at noonday. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
A great outdoor living space has become essential…and we’re so glad our home at Meadows Residence 1 has such a great one.
There’s so much to love about this model…but the spacious backyard is just one of them! https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/residence-1/
Simplicity Betrayed and Bound by Indissoluble Knots!
When you aim for perfection, remember that some of the World’s greatest feats were accomplished by people who did not know they were impossible. Well into the eighteenth century, nunneries were dumping grounds for inconvenient women, and their lives withing the dour convent interior were at best tolerably dull and hollow, at worst savagely unhappy or recklessly rebellious. To the unwilling, convents were monstrous prisons in which time served was eked out in minuscule rations, crushing tedium, terrible loneliness, and countless small cruelties. Enforced celibacy increased their angst, for they had to cope simultaneously with the pleasures of the flesh they could never satisfy and the knowledge that marriage and family life were permanently closed to them. Release or escape were seldom options. Most endured in despairing silence. Arcangela Tarabotti, trapped in her Venetian convent of Santa Anna for thirty-two years until her death, poured out her rage on paper. Her magnum opus, Simplicity Betrayed, is a scathing attack on fathers who imprison their daughters in nunneries to prevent the erosion or division of the family fortune or to indulge in sinful luxuries. “You heartless shame,” she lambasted them “is greater than Nero’s or Diocletian’s because, unlike these heartless fathers, they only cruelly murdered and tormented the bodies of the holy martyrs, but did not torment their souls.” Worst of all was the betrayal. These men watched delightfully as their tender little girls lisped their first words, gamboled gracefully, sang joyously like baby songbirds. Then, “guileful, weaving the web of deception, they think of nothing but to force them from sight as soon as possible and bury them, as if they were dead, in cloisters, for the rest of their lives, bound by indissoluble knots.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
Convent life was contrary to nature, Arcangela charged. This gentle little girl was forced to cut her long tresses, symbol of her freedom. She was stripped of her winsome gowns and hidden in a drab habit. She was forced to obey the convent rule; eat, pray, meditate when told; cast her eyes downward, hold her tongue; suppress her every emotion, even her longing for her vanished home life. And this way of life was interminable, a sentence from which no appeal was possible. “There is an inscription over the gate of hell: ‘Abandon all hope, you who enter’; on the gate of monasteries, the same should appear. Rather, it would be more painfully appropriate to include an inscription for the dying: ‘The torments of death surround me. The torments of hell surround me.’” Why not kill all but one male baby per family? Arcangela suggested bitterly. At least their innocent souls would fly straight to Heaven. However, nuns kidnapped and entombed alive will plunge downward into fiery depths to seek out their anguished fathers, for whom looking at their daughters’ accusing faces will be infinitely worse than all hell’s other torments. Your motive for abusing your daughter, Arcangela charged, for thrusting her into a convent and a life for which she has no vocation, is simply to cheat her out of her inheritance, so you can give it to someone else you prefer. Arcangela’s indictment was no exaggeration. One English father consigned his unwanted daughters to a European convent where they languished, miserable and lonely. Cut off from home, they wrote letters pleading for continued contact and love. Certainly not, their father responded. One message each year was perfectly satisfactory. These cloistered children, even infants, were routinely trained in nunly ways and, at sixteen or younger, professed their vows. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Some pledged these vows willingly, or at least not unwillingly, but many mouthed the words on pain of beatings or worse, or because they had no alternative. In strict convents, obedience was hammered home. Penalties were degrading and brutal—stepping on a nun’s face, hauling her across the floor, spitting at her, ostracizing her, depriving her of food, humiliating her. Saint Douceline whipped a seven-years-old bloody and threatened her with death because she had glanced at some convent workmen. Escapees were usually caught and disciplined, severely beaten, shut up for years, sometimes shackled, forced to fast on bread and water, sentenced to silence or to lowly ranks in the choir or chapel. Maud of Terrington was a runaway who was caught after years of sinful living. She was barred from ever leaving the convent, confined to solitude except during choir, beaten daily, humiliated, twice weekly deprived normal meals and shoes, and never permitted any contact or mail with the outside World. Maud’s treatment was particularly harsh, but transgressing against the complicated and habitual mechanics and rituals of an alien way of life never went unpunished. Chastity was the fundament of the nun’s vocation, the most crucial of her vows, with the farthest-reaching consequences. For committed nuns, it was not particularly difficult to honour. For unwilling nuns, as with monks and priests, it was immensely difficult. A dedicated nun approached the issue of her chastity from several perspectives, shoring up her resolve by recalling its spiritual meaning and rewards, her sacred obligations as Christ’s Bride, and the hellish sinfulness of wavering. To her help, she sublimated her erotic sensations into a sublime adoration of Christ; mysticism and pleasures of the flesh melded into rushes of frenzied outpourings, tranches, or fits of weeping, or screaming, all solemnly recognized by the highest ecclesiastical authority as manifestations of divine possession. The voluntary nun also starved her body into submission, killing its natural flows and cycles. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
However, the unwilling nun was, by definition, reluctant to surrender her woman’s essence just to satisfy this unwelcome requirement. As a wellborn laywoman, she would almost certainly have grasped and accepted the need for premarital virginity. However, as a nun forced into an unwelcome World in which marriage was forbidden, she could not even comfort herself with the knowledge that her chastity would ensure her eligibility for a future good marriage. From this sad perspective, what had she to lose, having already lost everything? Even the tools available to willing nuns made no sense to their incarcerated sister: The meals were stingy enough, so why deprive herself further? Why relinquish the tiny pleasure of a feast-day candy? Why scourge herself when life was whiplash enough? And why obey a domineering mother superior whose stony heart felt no mercy for the wretchedness of her bitter, frightened, and despairing captive? Though the majority of nuns likely remained chaste, a significant minority faltered and fell. In strict convents, this was rarer and trickier, but when abbesses themselves had been pressed into the cloister, they sometimes ran hopelessly dissolute convents. A seventeenth-century English abbess allegedly had twelve children, and a prioress dowried her daughter by selling off her convent’s possessions. The double monasteries were notorious for liaisons in pleasures of the flesh. Bishops routinely issued edicts barring the free intercourse—in all senses—between the male and female sides. The nuns of some slackly regulated convents had servants, ate lavish meals, adapted their habits to current fashion, carried pet lapdogs, strolled outside, or drove into the city. They received men in unsupervised visits, had pleasures of the flesh relations, connived at elopements. Critics charged that any man could walk into a covenant and that the nuns also came and went as they wished. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
The worst excesses were in Venice, where nunneries were often little more than whorehouses. In the fourteenth century, legal action was taken against thirty-three convents that tolerated, sometimes even facilitated, fornication between nuns and their gentlemen callers. The Benedictine Sant’Angelo di Contorta convent was the most outrageous, though its nuns were drawn from the Venetian elite. The nuns, and two abbesses, did not even bother with discretion but enjoyed pleasures of the flesh as picnics and—putting Madre Marcel’s vaunted solitude to a more mundane use—in their cells. Babies were conceived and born, lovers quarreled, and jealousy abounded. The pope shut down Sant’Angelo in 1474, but it was just one of many egregiously misbehaving religious institutions. Another bordello-like convent was England’s Cannington, in Somerset, small and poor, but peopled by daughters of the finest families. One culprit was Maud Pelham, a reluctant nun, the other High Willynge, a chaplain “as hot and lecherous as a sparrow.” Not only did Maud engage in feverish pleasures of the flesh, she was infuriated when reproached. “Turning like a virago upon the prioress and the other sisters who abhor the aforesaid things…she threatens to do manly execution upon them with knives and other weapons.” Certain English nuns were so free, they indulged in gadfly social lives, enjoying feasts, visits to and from friends, minstrel shows. Nuns actively engaging in pleasures of the flesh too the initiative in the affairs, for though some Anglo-Saxon kings specifically selected mistresses from covenants and chaplains prayed on their charges, English laymen were more reticent. Nuns arranged rendezvous within and without the convent and sometimes shucked off the habit for secular life with their beloved. In sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century France and Italy, young playboys haunted the convents, seeking nubile nuns as lovers. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
The record of documented sexual transgressions and pregnancies—5 percent in some contemporary investigations of English convents, which undoubtedly missed many affairs and which, in French, German, and Latin convents, would have been much higher—is an impressive indictment of enforced celibacy. Not surprisingly, when unwilling nuns predominated or were governed by unwilling abbesses, an overtone of Worldliness and sexuality tinged the moral tone of the entire establishment. The wonder is that so many unwilling nuns in strict, watchful cloisters found the courage to break that most basic of vows at the risk of humiliation, beatings, and shame. Cheek by cowl with sisters who agonized over the symbolism of dreams or the implications of quickened breath at devilishly tempting images, unwilling nuns understood only the hot tingling of their yearning loins. Their despair and rebellion at their lot, their contempt for their captors, their craving for sensual affection and for pleasures of the flesh, children and normalcy, betrayed their false vows. They nurtured sexual oases in their sterile desert, schemed, intrigued, and plotted, and risked hellfire for the present solace of fiery joy. The disrupted social behaviour of the distressed individual is only half the reason for interpersonal deterioration following psychological disorder. A true interpersonal analysis must also consider the reactions of other people. Research studies have repeatedly shown that people react to others with depression, social anxiety, schizophrenia, a personality disorder, or an eating disorder with interpersonal rejection. It is a harsh reality that most people are repelled by those who exhibit signs of psychopathology. People with psychological problems violate our expectations for appropriate and rewarding social interaction. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
Consequently, most people ultimately prefer to keep their distance from such individuals. The inevitable outcome to this interpersonal pattern is a marked deterioration of social relationships for the person suffering from psychological disorder. Closely related to the consequence assumption is the belief that interpersonal interactions will maintain mental health problems. Within the interpersonal paradigm, many research programs explore how interpersonal interaction maintain poor mental health once it is started. There is an implicit recognition in such research that mental health problems may have numerous origins. Regardless of how a problem was initiated, it is clear that interpersonal interactions can maintain and prolong psychological problems. By analogy, there are multiple casual origins of physical illnesses, such as influenza and the common cold. Regardless of how one contracts such illnesses, diet and rest can affect their course, despite having no straightforward connection to the cause of the illness. One can look at mental health problems from this same perspective. Even in cases where psychological problems may be caused by nononterpersonal agents, the quality of interpersonal relations will often significantly affect the course of the problems. For example, in the area of depression, interpersonal rejection from others may maintain the disorder. Similarly, CD (conduct disorder), EE (expressed emotion), and negative AS (affective style) in family members of patients with schizophrenia can prolong the active state of the disorder and precipitate relapse. Interpersonal conflicts and stressors can also activate episodes of substance misuse and disordered eating. These patterns have been conclusively documented, and appear to operate regardless of the actual “cause” of each disorder. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
A more radical version of the interpersonal maintenance hypothesis can be found in the faction of the interpersonal school knowns as family systems. Traditional family systems theorists eschew the search for “casual” agents in psychopathology in the traditional linear sense (exempli gratia A causes B). Rather, they see cause and effect as inseparable, and they see all components of an interpersonal system as acting on and being acted on all other components. To a system theorist, what “causes” a disorder is what keeps that disorder alive. Research in certain areas of mental health (exempli gratia, eating disorders, schizophrenia, substance dependence, and somatoform disorders) clearly illustrates the systems notions of mutual influence or interdependence. In such cases, it is clear that something is not quite right in the social fabric of the patient’s interpersonal system. Family members may be hypercritical and overly involved; spouses and friends may be combative and prone to conflict; and parents may exhibit and model behaviour that is itself indicative of questionable mental health. Presumably this disturbed interpersonal milieu is abrasive and leads to symptoms of poor mental health. However, at the same time, it is clear that living with an individual who has a psychological problem is itself taxing. The presence of a disturbed family member, for instance, will fundamentally alter the interpersonal communication and relationships in that family. Members may change their style of relating both to the “ill” member as well as to each other. People may feel shame, stigma, or burden associated with the presence of mental illness in their family or immediate interpersonal network. These changes in social behaviour then go on to affect the person with the psychological problem, and suddenly the attribution of “cause” and “effect” becomes impossible. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
Systems research showing that families of individuals with alcoholism literally structure their lives around drinking, and that families of patients with eating disorders exhibit preoccupation with food, dieting, and exercise, obfuscate conventional notions of cause and effect or action and reaction. Indeed, the popular terms “alcoholic family” and “eating-disordered family” reflect the key assumptions that the disorder is not located within the individual, but rather within the larger social system that maintains and sustains it. It is important to note that these interpersonal processes in psychological problems, be they causal, consequential, or maintaining factors, apply not only to clinical cases of these problems, but to subclinical instances as well. What has come to be known as the continuity hypothesis holds that subclinical cases of a particular problem differ in degree, not in kind. Although this hypothesis has drawn some controversy, most of the research evidence in the interpersonal domain is supportive of the continuity hypothesis. People with subclinical levels of depression, anxiety, and eating disorders, for example, often experience and exhibit many of the same interpersonal difficulties as those with full-blown clinical cases of the same problems. Often the only difference between the two, interpersonally, is the magnitude of the problems. Indeed, a portion of the research results examined in this report came from studies of subclinical syndromes, and these studies are generally consistent with those of clinically diagnosed cases. Therefore, one of the particularly useful aspects of the interpersonal paradigm in mental health is its explanator and predictive power for both clinical and subclinical versions of different psychological problems. “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for humans, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ who your serve,” reports Colossians 3.23-24. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
Why it is that some people are so blessed and continue to prosper and get ahead, while other remain in ruts of their own making? There may be many factors, of course, but one thing is for sure: God does not bless mediocrity. He blesses excellence. Notice, whatever we do, we should give it our best effort and do it as if we were doing it for God. If we will work with that standard in mind, God promises to reward us. What does it mean to be a person of excellence and integrity? A person of excellence and integrity goes the extra kilometer to do what is right. One keeps one’s word even when it is difficult. People of excellence arrive at work on time. They give their employers a full day’s work; they do not leave early or call in sick when they are not. When you have an excellent spirit, it shows up in the quality of your work, and the attitude with which you do it. If you want to live a successful life right now, start aiming for excellence and integrity in everything you do, doing a little bit more than you are required to do. If you are supposed to be at work at eight o’clock, get there ten minutes early and stay ten minutes late. Go the extra kilometer. A lot of people show up at work fifteen minutes late, then they wander around the office, go get some coffee, and finally get to their desk or workstation thirty minutes later. They spend half the day engaged in personal telephone calls, playing games, or sending jokes on the Internet, and then they wonder, “God, why do You not ever bless me? Why do I not every get a promotion?” The answer is easy to figure out. God does not bless mediocrity. God blesses excellence and integrity. Even if everyone is slacking off, clowning and acting a fool, do not be like everyone else! #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
You care called to live a life of excellence. You represent Almighty God. How you live, how you conduct your business and do your work is all a reflection on our God. Start making the more excellent choices in every area of life, even in mundane matters such as paying your bills on time. In everything you do, attempt to represent God well. For instance, you may be driving a car that has not been washed in six weeks. Your trunk or backseat may be filled with so much junk—everything from your sports equipment to your office equipment—you can barely close the door! I am not condemning anyone, some people have children—and sometimes their car looks wild. However, I do not like driving a car like that. Not only does it represent God poorly, but it makes me feel unkempt, undisciplined, sloppy, and less than my best. Many times before I leave the house, I will take a couple of minutes and clean out the car, not because I want to impress my friends, but because I feel better driving a clean car. You need to take pride in what God has given you. Even if your car is a few years old, take care of what God has given you. God will be more likely to give you something better. Similarly, you may not live in a big, new, beautiful Cresleigh home. You may have an older, smaller home, but at least you keep it clean and looking nice. God’s people are people of excellence. They stand out from the crowd because they choose to do things well. You may be in a situation today where everybody around your is compromising their integrity or taking the easy way out. Do not let that rub off on you. Be the one to have an excellent spirit. Do your work well, take care of the resources that God has given you, and live in such a manner that when people see you, they will be attracted to your God. Dear Lord in Heaven, please let my life be a beneficial reflection of You, O Lord. In everything I say and do, by the way I dress to the way I take care of my personal possessions, I pray that You will receive honour from my life. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
Basing ourselves on the Word of God, what can we say? St. Paul told us earlier that the unmarried woman, the virgin, gives one’s full attention to the Lord’s affairs “and to being holy in body and spirit,” reports 1 Corinthians 7.34. To be a virgin only in body means little or nothing; to be a virgin in spirit is a fine thing; but to be a virgin “in body and spirit” is very beautiful indeed. In such a case, the sign and its meaning meet and complete each other, as do nature and grace. For such as these, the Book of Revelation reserves the singular privilege of “following the Lamb wherever Ge does,” reports Revelation 14.4, making them the symbol of those absolutely faithful souls who have never compromised themselves with idolatry. We must therefore encourage those consecrated souls who, without any merit of their own, of course, but by God’s gift, have managed to preserve their purity and are able to offer an integral gift to God. In actual fact there is, in this, an altogether special hint of God’s glory which is not to be found anywhere else, because—as our friend the poet says—“That which has been regained, defended every inch, retaken and won back, is not the same as what was never lost. A sheet of whitened paper is not white; a whitened fabric is not white; a human soul is never quite as white, when whitened, as it would be, white.” It is not a question of a taboo, as unbelievers think, or of a simple privilege or honour of which whoever has it is usually proud. Rather, when it is freely accepted, what is involved is a delicate and profound sacrifice, one which calls to mind the primordial sacrifice God asked for from His creatures, that they should give up to the will to know “good and evil” personally and by experience. In fact it is one thing to give up the use of pleasures of the flesh and bodily pleasure after having experienced it, and another (much more demanding) to renounce the wish to experience it. That means accepting that there is an experience, basic to other men and women, which you freely choose not to want to experience, for love of the Lord. Only God knows the fragrance of this sacrifice, which touches not just the heart or body, but the very being of the creature. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
Having said this, however, it must also be said that spiritual virginity is the most important, and that it is not something given once and for all and to be preserved, but rather something that can be acquired day by day. By His grace, God has transformed some of the greatest sinners into His most loving and most loved spouses. This is why anyone who has lost physical integrity and baptismal innocence, for whatever reason, does not need to spend one’s consecrated life constantly looking back and brooding over past failures and mistakes in every detail. This only makes the situation worse, like a woman walking with a jar of water on her head: the more tense she is and the more she thinks about it, the more water she spills. On the contrary, what is necessary is to strive to grow in interior virginity, letting go of the useless desires and affections in our hearts, because purity of heart can restore a new virginity to the soul. In a certain sense, virgins are not born, they are made. This does not mean that one can calmly accept any situation and wait for it to improve. On the contrary, if a person has not yet managed to eliminate from one’s habits that are seriously contrary to chastity, and has not achieved a certain balance and master in the sphere of pleasures of the flesh, it is still a good rule to advise the person against making a definitive commitment to celibacy or virginity. Precisely because the essential virginity is that of the heart, the way of virginity is in some way open to all, even to those who are or have been married. If there are some “who do not marry for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven,” there are others who, for the same reason (id est, for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven), do not re-marry, though they could do so. There is a certain kind of windowhood, devoted to the family and to good works, that has always been highly honoured in the Church and placed immediately after virginity. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
People who, for a whole variety of possible reasons, have been unable to marry, though they would have liked to do so. They did not choose their situation. In fact, it may cause them great suffering. To them I would like to say this: Jesus tells us that some are eunuchs because they are like that from birth, others are made so by human agency, others again have made themselves so “for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven.” Apparently, you belong to the first or second category. However, in the sight of God, no one is irredeemably condemned, or a prisoner of situations. In other words, it is possible to pass from one category to another: from the category of those who have not married because of the circumstances of life, to the category of those who do not marry “for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven.” You need only accept the situation as something allowed by God, reconcile yourselves to that way of life and use your greater freedom to devote yourselves to prayer and to the Gospel cause. In this way you can share in the “hundredfold” promised by Christ to those who leave everything to follow Him. The greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven are not those who belong to the “more perfect state,” but those who love and suffer most. This is why they can move ahead of so many others whose lives, apparently, were more successful. For some there be that without much and long exercise may not come thereto, and yet it shall be but full seldom, and in special calling of our Lord that they shall feel the perfection of this work; the which calling is called ravishing. And some there be that be so subtle in grace and in spirit, and so homely with God in this grace of contemplation, that they may have it when they will in the common state of a human’s soul; as it is in sitting, going, standing, or kneeling. The way is a progressive one only in the largest sense. In actuality it consists often of stagnations and setbacks, falls and even withdrawals. Nearly all seekers experience lapses and wanderings aside. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
Continuous advance without retrogression is likely to begin only after initiation into the ultimate path. The disciple should not worry about the ups and downs of one’s moods, but should wait patiently while continuing one’s regular meditation practices and philosophical studies, for if one has a teacher one will come within one’s sphere of protection, so that advice and guidance are always open to one, and inwardly one will be aware of this. It is as much a part of the aspirant’s experience of this quest to be deprived at times of all feeling that the divine exists and is real, as it is to be granted the sunny assurance of such existence and reality. The upward flights of one’s novitiate have to be bought at the cost of downward falls. A period of illumination is often followed by a period of darkness. At fist the experience of reality will come only in flashes. Many a student tells of disheartenment at the lack of results, and depression over long period of barren waiting, despite the faithfulness with which meditation has been practised. They tend to overlook that the path is integral, is a fourfold and not a single one. Often there is something left undone by the student. For instance, no effort in character building may have been made by this student, or in religious prayer by that one. Living from this core, the actualizing Christian exemplifies a new dimension of openness to life in the following ways. One becomes: An adventurer in truth. One sees life as an adventure in becoming oneself as fully as Christ was Himself in His life. An expression of one’s own Christlikeness—because one believes in the kingdom of God within, one’s goal is to express grace-full and in an original way the particular talents, gifts, or ministries that one has been given by God. An enlightened traveler on the road of life—one’s core represents a light within. It is a light that each person must discover. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
The actualizing Christian can make one’s light shine so as to guide others to discover their own inner light. As Jesus said, “You are the light of the World. Let your light so shine before humans, that they may see your good works, and give glory to your Father who is in Heaven,” reports Matthew 5.14 and 16. The kind of full and intimate surrender to God that we have been talking about may seem difficult for some readers to understand. Yet the message of the New Testament is that union with Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit is the calling of every Christian and the meaning of true spirituality. It then becomes highly feasible to speak of the inner core of the personality as being filled with the Holy Spirit. And the overflowing of that “infilling” is a lifetime of graced relationships with others. One of the New Testament Greek words used for the Holy Spirit is Paracletos. This translates as “one called alongside to help,” or “comforter” or “companion.” These meanings clearly indicate a most personal and intimate role of the Holy Spirit in supporting, nurturing, and guiding a person through life. In addition, Jesus promised of the Holy Spirit to those who accepted and followed him (John 14.18). He portrayed the Holy Spirit as the believer’s personal Companion who would be adequate for all the needs of daily life. We encourage the reader who is unfamiliar with these references to read or reread the four Gospels and the Book of Acts, found at the beginning of the New Testament. As we move further in the process of integrating the Bible with psychology, we can say that the Holy Spirit is intended by God to be the center of our existence—the inspiration of our feelings, thoughts, choices, and values. One of this oneness, flow forth the words of God. He asks us to lend him our eyes to see, our mouth to speak, our eats to hear, our mind to think, our hear to love, our feet to walk, our hands to acts. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
We would say that genuine spirituality, for the Christian or anyone else, is responding to the Spirit of God and doing God’s will. This is the surrender that we have been talking about. This is the surrender of one’s whole being to the will of God. We do not believe that it is a once-and-for-all event as much as it is a continuous day-by-day process. How is it possible that the fear behind our manipulations, character disorders, and even psychoses described in this report can be healed by the perfect love of God? We believe that the key to understanding this is the awareness that the actualizing Christian, in being filled and led by the Holy Spirit, lives in an atmosphere of inspiration rather than condemnation. According to Webster’s, to perfect means “to bring to final form.” Our fears are healed when we realize that we are being enabled by God’s Spirit within to perfect our love of ourselves, others, and God. We no longer fer punishment because we know that we are partners with God in developing our capacity to be all we are meant to be—and to love our neighbours as ourselves. The artesian well provides an excellent analogy for understanding the human personality. An artesian well is a well drilled deep enough to reach water that has converged underground from a source originally higher than the well itself. Therefore, the water that flows into the well has a natural pressure upward that forces it through the well. All that is required to keep the well filled to overflowing is the continued release of its water. This keeps the core of the well cleansed and open, allowing fresh water to always flow through. Here we see the great importance of developing a giving attitude in life. So it is with us in our reliance on the flow of God’s Spirit, a Source greater than ourselves, to follow through the core of our lives. If we receive freely from the abundance of God’s inner provision, we will have much to give. In giving, our own wells are continually filled to overflowing. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
However, not everyone receives the richness of God’s love in the inner self. Some have not drilled deep enough; they have not fully surrendered to God as their Source. Others have begun to tap the unlimited supply within, but find that it quickly clogs up when fear constricts their giving attitude toward others. However, when we begin to understand how profoundly we are loved by God, we can begin to surrender in our innermost being to the gentle flow of the Spirit in our lives. Before long, we will experience firsthand the thrill of “stirrings deep within” as our inner core is filled to overflowing with the Holy Spirit. This flow within gives us a sense of perfect peace, even though we know that we are not yet perfect. As the scripture says, “Thou wilt keep one in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee, because one trusteth in thee,” reports Isaiah 26.3. As Christians, we can remain humble, and joyous, recognizing that our beings are vessels through which flows the Holy Spirit. It is the power of God, not our own power, that flows through us into our life and relationships. Drinking deeply from the well within, and knowing that God is working each day to move us toward wholeness, truly creatures a sense of “wellness.” As the song says, “When peace like a river attendeth my soul….I know it is well with my soul.” Jesus said, “One who believes in Me, ‘From one’s innermost being shall flow rivers of living water,” John 7.38. One night after I had taught on prayer, a lady said to me, “What about the woman that went to the unjust judge? She kept going back and pestering him until finally he gave in. Is that not what Jesus wants us to do?” In Mark 4.24, Jesus said, “Take heed what ye hear.” When you hear something explained a certain way and you accept it, then each time you read it, hear it, or think about it, you will receive it the same way. The Spirit of God spoke to me and said, “Study the Word of God like you have never heard it before.” In other words, “Turn off your religious head when you study the Christian Bible.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
Sometimes you must turn it off to receive the truth. For instance, when you first look at the parable of the unjust judge, which that lady was referring to, it is easy to think that the widow just kept pestering the judge until he gave in to her request. Some translations indicate this, but we must realize that some areas of this translation are the result of humans trying to logically reason out a meaning. It is their opinion, so they include it. If this parable means what it seems to say on the surface, then Jesus was speaking contrary to what He taught in Matthew 6.7 “when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do.” Prudence requires that our hatred of the powerful be hidden, while our respect is manifest, often ostentatious. As every king must know, however, the hatred though invisible, is always present. Uneasy lies the head….et cetera. Naked power is quicksilver, lost in a flash—a bank robber on the run, hand on his gun, shot down at the next corner. So power rushes to form, which endows power with legitimacy, defines the processes whereby it is acquired, exercised, delegated, transferred. Hiding behind form, power acquires stability. Form is a structure of power but claims legitimacy as a map of reality. Reality is flux, while power, always trying to preserve itself, insists on the permanence of forms; so form falls ever more at variance with the changing reality it claims faithfully to reflect. Power clings to form even after form’s claim to truth has become manifest travesty. The emperor has no clothes. We are not suited to be free. We are suited still, as when we were children, to live under the protection of, and within the limits set by, loving parents. As adults we strive to continue this arrangement, with kings and gods slipping into the place of parents. Always we are of two minds about power. Because we are insecure, we need someone above us, more powerful than we, to whom we can turn for protection and guidance. So great is this need that it shapes our perception: we see our wise humans as wiser than they are, our kings as more kingly, our priests as more holy. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
Being themselves but human, and having the same needs as we, they, too are driven to look upward, to find someone or something more powerful than they. So we have gods. We kneel, we pray to an Almighty. At the same time we distrust all power, know that it may not protect but exploit, may use us for its own ends. So we are poised for rebellion. When the wind veers, we will turn upon our leaders, tear them apart. The bodies of Mussolini and his mistress, strung up by the heels, swing from the lamppost in Milan. Most manual jobs do not lend themselves so readily to knowing the facts and fraudulently taking advantage oneself. In factory jobs the workman is likely to be unaware of what does on, since one performs a small operation or a big machine that one does not understand. Even so, there is evidence that one has the same disbelief in the enterprise as a whole, with a resulting attitude of profound indifference. Semiskilled factory operatives are the largest category of workmen. Big companies have tried the devices of applied anthropology to enhance the loyalty of these men to the firm, but apparently the effort is hopeless, for it is found that a thumping majority of men do not care about the job or the firm; they could not care less and you cannot make them care more. However, this is not because of wages, hours, or working conditions, or management. On the contrary, tests that show the men’s indifference to the company show also their (unaware) admiration for the way the company has designed and manages the plant; it is their very model of style, efficiency, and correct behaviour. Maybe if the men understood more, they would admire less. The union and the grievance committee take care of wages, hours, and conditions; these are the things the workmen themselves fought for and won. (Something was missing in that victory, and we have inherited the failure as well as the success.) #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
The conclusion must be that workmen are indifferent to the job because of its intrinsic nature: it does not enlist worthwhile capacities, it is not “interesting”; it is not his, he is not “in” on it; the product is not really useful. And indeed, research directly on the subject shows that it is defects in the intrinsic aspects of the job that make workmen unhappy. A survey of the literature shows that Interest is second in importance only to Security, whereas Wages, Conditions, Socializing, House, Ease, and Benefits are far less important. However, foremen, significantly enough, think that the most important thing to the workman is his wages. (The investigators do not seem to inquire about the usefulness of the job—as if a primary purpose of working at a job were not that it is good for something! My guess is that a large factor in “Security” is the resigned reaction to not being able to take into account whether the work of one’s hands is useful for anything; for in a normal life situation, if what we do is useful, we feel secure about being needed. The other largest factor in “Security” is, I think, the sense of being needed for one’s unique contribution, and this is measured in these tests by the primary importance the workers assign to being “in” on things and to “work done being appreciated.” Limited as they are, what a remarkable insight such studies give us, that humans want to do valuable work and work that is somehow theirs! However, they are thwarted. Is not this the “waste of human resources”? The case is that by the “sole prerogative” clause in union contracts the employer has the sole right to determine what is to be produced, how it is to be produced, what plants are to be built and where, what kinds of machinery are to be installed, when workers are to be hired and laid off, and how production operations are to be rationalized. There is none of this that is inevitable in running a machine economy; but if these are circumstances, it is not surprising that the factory operatives’ actual code has absolutely nothing to do with useful service or increasing production, but is notoriously devoted to “interpersonal relations”; do not turn out too much work; do not turn out too little work; do not squeal on a fellow worker; do not act like a big-shot. This is how to belong. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
We are no longer where we stood a decade ago, dazzled by changes whose relationships to one another were unknown. Today, behind the confusion of change, there is a growing coherence of pattern: the future is taking shape. In a great historical confluence, many raging rivers of change are running together to form an oceanic Third Wave of change that is gaining momentum with every passing hour. This Third Wave of historical change represents not a straight-line extension of industrial society but a radical shift of direction, often a negation, of what went before. It adds up to nothing less than a complete transformation at east as revolutionary in our day as industrial civilization was 350 years ago. Furthermore, what is happening is not just a technological revolution but the coming of a whole new civilization in the fullest sense of that term. Thus, if we briefly look back over the ground we have covered, we find profound and frequently parallel changes at many levels simultaneously. Every civilization operates in and on the biosphere, and reflects or alters the mix of population and resources. Every civilization has a characteristic techno-sphere—an energy base linked to a production system which in turn is linked to a distribution system. Every civilization has a socio-sphere consisting of interrelated social institutions. Every civilization has an info-sphere—channels of communication through which necessary information flows. Every civilization has its own power-sphere. Every civilization, in addition, has a set of characteristic relationships with the outside World—exploitative, symbiotic, militant or pacific. And every civilization has its own super-ideology—a kit of powerful cultural assumptions that structure its view of reality and justify its operations. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
The Third Wave, it should now be apparent, is brining revolutionary and self-reinforcing changes at all these different levels at once. The consequence is not merely the disintegration of the old society but the creation of foundations for the new. Often, as Second Wave institutions crash about our hears, as crime mounts, as nuclear families fracture, as once reliable bureaucracies sputter and malfunction, as health delivery systems crack and industrial economies wobble dangerously, we see only the decay and breakdown around us. Yet social decay is the compost bed of the new civilization. In energy, technology, family structure, culture, and many other fields, we are laying into place the basic structures that will define the main features of that new civilization. In fact, we can now for the first time identity these main features and even, to some extent, the interrelationships among them. Encouragingly, the embryonic Third Wave civilization we find is not only coherent and workable in both ecological and economic terms, but—if we put our minds to it—could be made more decent and democratic than our own. In no way is this to suggest inevitably. The period of transition will be marked by extreme social disruption, as well as wild economic swings, sectional clashes, secession attempts, technological upsets, or disasters, political turbulence, violence, wars, and threats of war. In a climate of disintegrating institutions and values, authoritarian demagogues and movements will arise to seek, and possibly attain, power. No intelligent person can be smug about the outcome. The clash of two civilizations presents titanic dangers. Yet the odds lie not with destruction but with the ultimate survival. If we manage to avoid the worst of the short-term perils that lie before us, it is important to know where the main thrust of change is taking us, and what kind of World is likely taking form? #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
If war comes, the blame must fall not only outwardly on the humans and policies which provoke it, but also inwardly on the passions and greeds and egoisms which influence leaders and led alike. When there is more of hate than of goodwill between two nations, and for a sufficient time, it is inevitable under the law of compensation that physical war will break out between them. War, being ultimately the expression of the mind’s errors and the heart’s passions, can only be stopped by getting at it in the places where it starts: in the mind and the heart themselves. It causes being primarily internal, it cannot be cured by an external remedy. This means that neither organized religion nor organized politics can save the World from the ruin that awaits it. We may wish them well in their attempts but we cannot help seeing facts which all history causes us to see. The guns and bombs, the gasses and tanks of modern war are only the symbols of humans’ inner disorder. The reality behind them is one’s ignorance of spiritual laws, one’s blindness to the fact that all war is a consequence and not a cause. All the national days of prayer and the eminent ecclesiastics who led them have failed to stop two World wars in our time. And they failed because they were tying to escape from a consequence whilst leaving the cause untouched. I thank You God, for this most amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes (I who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay great happening illimitably Earth) how should tasting, touching, hearing, seeing, breathing any—lifted from the no of all nothing—human merely being doubt unimaginable You? (Now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened.) #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
In the book of life, blessing, peace and ample sustenance, may we, together with all Thy people, the house of America, be remembered and inscribed before Thee for a happy life and for peace. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who establishest peace. O Lord, please guard my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking guile, and to those who slander me, please let me give no heed. May my soul be humble and forgiving unto all. Please open Thou my heart, O Lord, unto Thy sacred Law, that Thy statutes I may know and all Thy truths pursue. Please bring to naught designs of those who seek to do me ill; speedily defeat their aims and thwart their purposes for Thine own sake, for Thine own power, for Thy holiness and Law. That Thy loved ones be delivered, please answer us, O Lord, and save with Thy redeeming power. May the words of my mouth and meditation of my heart be acceptable unto Thee, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Thou who establishes peace in the Heavens, please grant our portion in Thy Torah and may the Temple be rebuilt in our day. There we will serve Thee with awe as in the days of old. Magnified and sanctified be the name of God throughout the World which He hath created according to His will. May He establish His Kingdom during the days of your life and during the life of all the house of America, speedily, yea, soon; and say ye, Amen. May His great name be blessed for ever and ever. Exalted and honoured be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, whose glory transcends, yea, is beyond all praises, hymns and blessings that humans cannot render unto Him; and say ye, Amen. And let Thy graciousness, O Lord our God, be upon us; establish Thou also the work of our hands for us; yea, the work of our hands establish Thou it. Dwelling in the shelter of the Most High, abiding under the protection of the Almighty, I say of the Lord: He is my refuge and my fortress, My God, in whom I trust. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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Imagine that there is an hourglass on your desk. The present is the point at which time touches eternity. May we never let the things we cannot have, or do not have, spoil enjoying this moment in time. Women religious viewed the issue of celibacy from vastly different perspectives. Most male clerics took holy orders by choice or were resigned to their family’s decision to provide a son as a priest. A great number of women, however, were consigned to convents, and to celibacy, without consultation and against their will. Many women took the vow of celibacy seriously because the moral pressure to preserve their virginity was particularly strong, for virginity was a perennial obsession of religious thinkers and writers. Even marital pleasures of the flesh was considered impure, loathsome, and bestial, and “indecent burning of the flesh and shameless coition, that fullness of coition, that fullness of stinking ordure and uncomely deed.” It was, in fact, mere “a bed for the sick, to catch in their fall the unstrong who cannot stand in the high hill, and so near to Heaven, as the virtue of maidenhood.” The virginal was commanded: “Break not thou that seal that sealeth you together!” Marriage struck a terrifying note for many women. The rare wife or husband was worried the other would die. Most, however, hated each other, and the housewife was a miserable drudge who, when her despised mate was home, “his looking on thee makes thee aghast; hist loathsome mirth and his rude behaviour fill thee with horror.” On top of this he mocked her, beat her, and pummeled her as if she were his slave. Of course pleasures of the flesh with this beast was mandatory. The next stage of the marital purgatory was pregnancy, when the wife’s faces turns green as grass, her eyes dark-rimmed, and her head a throbbing ache. Her mouth tastes bitter and she throws up everything that enters her stomach. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
During this period, even the daughters of wealthy families had to share the crowded women’s quarters, where they could still not escape male relatives and servants. They could never be alone, and for those who craved solitude, life was nightmarishly public. Women were barred from some rooms and often had to sit on cushions, not chairs. They owned nothing, including themselves. They could not travel alone, study, question authority. They could not teach or nurse, manage or administer. They controlled no aspect of their life, including their future. Given this reality, marriage and childbearing must have jolted many young women into serious consideration of their options, including their virginal alternative its they felt pressed to adopt. With no romantic view of marriage to seduce them, women attracted to spirituality easily slipped into thinking about, then longing for, life in a convent. Chastity was almost always an overriding attraction, because their pledge meant they renounced their sinful lust and their traditional role as a wife and mother in return for Christ’s approval and society’s administration and respect. This virginity was not merely abstention from pleasures of the flesh. It has an all embracing mystical quality as well, lyrically described by a sixteenth-century Spanish writer: “They virginity of the body is nought worth except the mind be pure withal, and if that, nothing to be more clean, nothing more pleasant to God and herself to be the follower of the most holy Mother of our Lord.” Virginity was unequivocally endorsed by the Church and guaranteed an angelic afterlife. It also eliminated the need for nasty marriage and messy childbirth and the grief of dying children. However, one could not expect to practice perpetual virginity at home, for parents would insist on marrying one off. If one was lucky, one was packed off to a convent where chastity was the cardinal virtue. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
The convent was also a legitimate way of fleeing the complications and confusions of family life and substituting passionate, intimate relationships with other nuns. Best of all, the convent offered a nun that elusive commodity—solitude—in the form of a room or cell of her own. That cell would be tiny, but it would contain all that she needed: a desk and a chair, a crucifix, and a bed. It would be hers alone, and for hours at a time she could pray or meditate or think or read and write to her soul’s content. Food haunted many nuns and was infinitely harder to conquer than sensual appetite. All fasted, but many were immoderate and starved themselves, so that the thin, pale virgins of the Church Fathers’ fantasy were actually gaunt, yellow anorectics whose emaciated bodies did not menstruate for feel or inspire the least desire for pleasures of the flesh. Medieval convents were great established that housed—or warehoused—a significant percentage of Europe’s patrician women. In sixteenth-century Florence, for instance, half the city’s elite daughters were cloistered. In the mid-seventeenth-century Venice, 3 percent of the entire population—three thousand women—were nuns, almost all from wealthy families. Why were so many privileged women shut up inside these religious institutions? After all, affluence and status are not the usual incentives for celibacy, poverty, and obedience, the pledges at the spiritual core of every convent. Religious convictions inspired many of the nuns, but other forces drove thousands of unwilling girls and women into taking the veil. Weep, struggle, and protest though they might, relegating them to a nunnery was the era’s conventional solution to their families’ problems. A family’s fortune could be dissipated by inheritances split between too many sisters or squandered on too many dowries, but with birth control, infanticide, and adoption considered unacceptable remedies, nunneries were an excellent alternative. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
One unwilling nun wailed in a folk song: “My mother wished me to become a nun to fatten the dowry of my sister and I to obey my Mama cut my hair and became one.” Inconvenient bastard daughters also cost money and created problems, but as nuns, they disappeared forever. When spinsters and windows likewise dug into the family purses, once again the convent was an obvious answer. The dowry required of a novice was much small than a husband would demand, and once it was paid, the inconvenient woman became a lifelong charge on her convent, not on her relatives. A father’s bad investments, addictive gambling, unwise political alliances, or personal extravagances might also drive him to rid himself of surplus female relatives by donating them, along with a small bequest, to the service of God. Girls in line for inheritances were also sometimes shunted off into cloisters because in the eyes of the law, a nun was dead, and a dead daughter could make no claims on her father’s estate. King, too, shut up rebels’ wives and daughters n convents, biblically justified punishment for their fathers’ sins. Parents also disposed of disabled, deformed, deaf, intellectually disabled girls by placing them in nunneries. Sometimes the abbesses or prioresses were loath to accept them, especially the mentally ill or insane, but financial considerations won some over, so a nun without the least comprehension of what she was pledging gave her solemn oath of chastity, poverty, and obedience. A popular poem observed sadly: “Now Earth to Earth in convent walls to Earth in churchyard sod. I was not good enough for man, and so am given to God.” Civil unrest and wars, danger and insecurity, also sent thousands of women inside the safety of convent walls. Even girls as young as five and six were cloistered, with nine being the average age in Italy. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
A fifteenth-century Venetian law bemoaned the legion of noble girls “imprisoned in monasteries with just tears and complaints,” and the chansons de nonne, sone about reluctant nuns, was a favourite theme of medieval poetry. For these women, a parent’s peremptory “Get thee to a nunnery” condemned them to a life sentence in a wretched prison. If the Enemy continues to make war against you, this might mean that he has still not obtained what he set out to achieve, otherwise he would stop tormenting you. If you experience struggle in your flesh, it means you have not surrendered, otherwise you would immediately be at peace (I am referring, of course, to a false peace). If you have no struggle at all, rather be afraid and question yourself. Recognize that either this has happened by a free gift of God—in which case you should simply thank Him and feel unworthy of it, or else it has happened because you have become accustomed to evil and compromise—in which case it is time for you to wake up. St. Catherine of Siena once received a visit from her Heavenly Spouse at a time when she was being assailed by a tide of temptations of the flesh. “My Lord,” she called out to Him, “where were You when my heart was being tormented by so many temptations?” And the Lord replied: “I was in your heart.” And she said: “Saving always the truth of what You say, my Lord, and with all due respect for Your Majesty, how can I believe that You were living in my heart, when it was full of unclean and devilish thoughts?” And the Lord answered: “Those thoughts and temptations: did they gladden your heart, or sadden it? Did they bring you pleasure or displeasure?” And she replied: “Great pain, and great displeasure.” And the Lord answered: “Who was it Who made you feel displeasure, if not I Whom was hiding in the center of your heart?” #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
What is said about temptation also, in a different way, to the simple “call” of the other gender. If at certain times the appeal of the other gender, no-one should be surprised or over-anxious; and for men, the fascination of women, are strongly felt. This is not evil, it is simply natural. It goes back to the fact that “from the beginning, God made them male and female.” We must not hide behind the screen of “angelism,” or seek refuge in coarse language, in order to show off our freedom with the other gender, when freedom is precisely what is missing. Nor do we need to make demons of the other gender, especially of women, or scorn and insult beauty simply because it is “visible” and “transitory.” Even if it can be wrongly used, beauty, as we know, comes from God. Since in the past, in this and in every other area, things were always seen from a man’s point of view, it is not surprising that the ambiguity of gender was translated into ambiguity about women and into misogyny. Not even the Holy Bible, in so far as it reflects a particular culture, is entirely immune from it. See, for example, the Book of Sirach (25.12): “Any spite, rather than the spite of a woman! Do not be taken in by a woman’s beauty. Since began with a woman, and thanks to her we must all die.” In this way anything shady or destructive about pleasures of the flesh is identified with women. From companion and “helper” similar to man, woman then becomes his shame, an obscure threat and a trap. However, this comes from sin, not from God. Instead, what we should do is turn that “call” and fascination of the other gender into the best part of our “living sacrifice.” We should tell ourselves: “Fine, this is exactly what I have chosen to offer for the sake of the Kingdom and for the Lord!” #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
And if at certain times, especially in youth, that call is transformed into temptation, we should launch bravely into battle with the name of Jesus in our heart and on our lips, as brave soldiers sometimes go on the assault, shouting the name of their sovereign or their captain above the fray. There is also a concern with the delicate question of physical or external virginity, and about spiritual or interior virginity. The Church has always honoured virginity, even in its physical and bodily manifestation, calling it “holy virginity (sancta virginitas). Clearly, it is not virginity itself that is “holy,” since it is possible to remain virginal and intact for many reasons which has nothing to do with holiness. What enables us to speak of holiness in this case is the intention or purpose that moves a person to remain a virgin. Sometimes people may have made the mistake of overvaluing the physical aspect of wholeness, both in men and women. A certain contemporary culture has reacted by going to the opposite extreme by denying virginity any value at all, and even making it a figure of fun. Mental health researchers working in the interpersonal tradition hold various assumptions about the relationship between interpersonal communication and relationships on the one hand, and mental health problems on the other. These associations can take a variety of forms. Perhaps the most powerful of these assumptions is that interpersonal phenomena are causally involved in disrupting mental health. Although this hypothesis has not often been tested directly, it is a deeply held conviction among many theorists and researchers. In some cases of psychopathology, interpersonal issues appear to be the dominant antecedent factor. For example, when marital distress or dissolution immediately precedes an episode of major depression the development of alcohol dependence, or a somatoform disorder, the disruption of interpersonal relationships is assumed to be the primary cause of the psychological symptoms of distress. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Research evidence in some areas (exempli gratia, personality disorders, eating disorders, and depression) suggest that these interpersonal antecedents to mental health problems need not always be proximal to the onset of the disorder. An intriguing possibility is that certain interpersonal events create dispositions that lie dormant until later adulthood, or that the effects of character styles of communication and relating to other people accumulate over time, until they pass some threshold that then initiates an episode of mental illness. For example, some of the most profound effects of childhood abuse and neglect may not be evident until a child reaches adulthood and attempts to initiate intimate relationships with other adults and/or to raise children of one’s own. Similarly, a child with poor social skills may not experience the full implications of this problem with interpersonal communication until, as an adult, one leaves the supportive family context and moves out into the World to establish close relationships with other people. In addition to being a proximal cause and a distal cause of psychological problems, interpersonal phenomena may also function as a vulnerability factor in the disruption of mental health. At least some interpersonal process, such as parental neglect and overinvolvement, poor social skills, and unavailable personal relationships, may create a vulnerability to the development of psychosocial problems. This conceptualization of the interpersonal origins of mental health problems fits well with diathesis-stress models. In diathesis—stress models of illness, a predisposition or preexisting factor (the diathesis) lies somewhat idle until the person experiences stress, at which time full-blown distress and illness results. For many if not most people, interpersonal issues such as relational distress, maltreatment by parents, and conflict can act as stressors that interact with preexisting temperamental, cognitive, psychological or biological predispositions to produce episodes of mental illness. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
What remain rather mysterious are how and why various interpersonal phenomena lead to vastly differing mental health outcomes in different people. The reasons why the same vulnerability factor, such as parental neglect, may lead to one type of psychopathology in one individual but a different problem in another are not yet well understood. Some people who are abuse as children develop major depression later in life. Other develop eating disorders, still others personality disorders, and yet others substance abuse or dependence. And then there are the myriad of people who have experienced vulnerability factors (abuse, parental alcoholism, family conflict, et cetera), but who have no symptoms of psychopathology at all. Such people are characterized as “resilient,” and present anomalies in need of explanation. These resilient cases are reminders that the relationship between interpersonal distress and psychological distress is probabilistic, not deterministic. The current search for moderating and mediating variables in this context holds great promise for answer to such questions, and is an imperative for future research in the interpersonal paradigm. Another primary assumption in the interpersonal paradigm is that interpersonal dysfunction is a consequence of mental health problems. This assumption has been scientifically proven beyond any reasonable doubt. When people experience episodes of psychopathology—be it depression, schizophrenia, social anxiety, substance abuse or dependence, eating disorders, personality disorders, somatoform disorders, or psychogenic sexual dysfunction—the quality of their interpersonal relationships and communication is bound to change. Usually this change is for the worse. Part of the reason for this deterioration in interpersonal relations, secondary to poor mental health, is the social behaviour of the individual. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Psychological problems can alter the most basic components of verbal and nonverbal communication. People with such problems may not be able or willing to express themselves clearly and openly to other people. Their discourse may be dominated by particular themes and concerns, or may show no coherence or pattern at all in the cause of more profound illnesses. Furthermore, psychopathology can alter the way afflicted individuals view and experience relationships with other people. Social relationships that were once experienced as rewarding can become frightening, distressing, and confusing for psychiatric patients. “The LORD will continually guide you, and satisfy your desire in scorched places, and give strength to your bones; and you will be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail,” reports Isaiah 58.11. Is it not interesting that we believe God is guiding us along as we are getting what we want and we are living on cloud nine, relatively unscathed by the warp and woof of life in the valley below. However, we need to understand that the Lord is directing our steps even when it seems things are not going our way. You may be in a stressful situation today. You may be living with a spouse or a child who is difficult to get along with. Or perhaps because of favouritism or politics at the office, you are not being treated fairly, or possibly you are having to work two jobs in order to make ends meet. You may be thinking, “This does not seem right. God, I do not understand it.” The Scripture says, “Since the Lord is directing our steps, why try to figure out everything that happens along the way?” reports Proverbs 20.24 Friend, you are never going to understand everything you go though in life or why certain things come against you. You simply must learn to trust God anyway. You must learn to keep a good attitude in the midst of the chaos and confusion, knowing that God is still in control. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
Sometimes God will put you in an uncomfortable situation so you can help someone else. God knows what He is going. He can see the comprehensive vision; God can see the future. And He has you exactly where He wants you today. Stop questioning Him and start trusting Him. Just know that God is in control. He has your best interest at heart. Trust Him today to direct your steps, and to cause you to be right where you need to be at just the right times. “Somewhere there’s speaking. It’s already coming it. Oh, and it’s rising at the back of your mind. You could never get it, unless you were fed it. Now you’re here and you don’t know why. But under skinned knees and the skid marks, past the places where to used to learn, you howl and listen. Listen and wait for the echoes of angels who won’t return. He’s everything you want, he’s everything you need, he’s everything inside of you that you wish you could be. He says all the right things at exactly the right time, but he means nothing and you don’t know why.” (Want by Vertical Horizon.) Dear Lord in Heaven, thank you that even in the uncomfortable spots in life, I can have confidence that You are aware of me, that You care about what is happening to me, and that You have a plane to bring good into my life and through my life as a result. We believe that the Holy Spirit expressed the presence of God within the human personality. God’s loving will becomes incarnate in the human situation when His love flows freely through a person into others and back to God through feelings of gratitude and praise. Thus the cycle is competed and God is able to permeate, transform, and elevate each life that is open to Him. Prayerful surrender to God from the core of one’s being brings about a fundamental change in the quality of a person’s life, so that life comes to be lived on an entirely different level of existence. Mysterious as this may sound, it actually has to do with changes in very ordinary aspects of living, such as increases awareness of what we see and hear, a heightened degree of receptivity, a growing capacity to respond—to be engaged in the moment as one who is fully present. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Coming home to one’s core involves surrendering to the quiet inner wisdom of the mysterious, bedrock presence of the Holy Spirit within one’s life and personality. King Solomon was aware of this when he wrote: “For wisdom will enter the very center of your being, filling your life with joy,” reports Proverbs 2.10. To glimpse the land beyond is not to reach the goal itself. If one were able to experience it constantly, one who experiences it only intermittently may guess from this how wonderful one’s existence would be. Seeing a human or an object is one thing, recognizing one or it is another. The glimpse is the beginning; recognizing it for what it is, is a further and extended operation. These glimpses come quite fitfully. Rare is the person to whom the Light comes and stays, day after day, year after year. Most have to work on, with, and by themselves to convert this momentary experience into the ever-present feeling of living in the Overself. It is a human’s highest happiness to stay in this Heaven of Consciousness all the time, not merely catch a glimpse of it, wonderful though that be. If its promptings are faithfully followed, enlightenment ripens into Exhilaration. The joyous awareness evoked for a short period is a foretaste of what will one day be manifested continuously. One can then say truthfully, knowing whereof speaks: A divine element lives in me!” Far through this has taken one from the ordinary good human or ordinary pious human, it is not enough. One needs to go further so that one can attain the place where, obedient, purified, conscious of the World-Idea, one can add: “This element now works in me.” With that the ego’s tyranny falls away. One’s impulses, intuitions, and emotional reactions alike will harmonize in time with the true. Flashes of Cosmic Consciousness or glimpses of the higher self could be one aspect of it only, such as its beauty or its wisdom. You will have to broaden out later. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
“For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, and shall not doubt in one’s heart, but shall believe that those things which one saith shall come to pass; one shall have whatsoever one saith,” reports Mark 11.23. Noticed He said, “Those things which one saith.” He did not say one would have what one hoped for or what one prayed. He said, “One will have what one says.” Evidently, your saying can nullify you praying. If you pray one thing and say another, you are going to have what you say, not what you pray. However, when you get your saying and your praying together, you have just the spiritual forces working for you. Jesus said, “Therefore it will work in prayer.” This faith principle, a principle of spiritual law, works in prayer; but we have used it in reserves. We have prayed, “Lord, the mountain is getting bigger. I cannot overcome it. Move the mountain, Lord it is getting bigger!” God says, “But child, I said you can have what you say.” “Yes, but Lord, I have this problem.” “But child you can have what you say, even in prayer.” “Yes, Lord but You do not understand. It is getting worse.” We have been operating it in reverse and it has caused the mountain to grow. Jesus said you are to speak to the mountain, not pray to God about the mountain. He said, “Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea and shall not doubt in one’s heart, but shall believe those things which one saith shall come to pass; one shall have whatsoever one prayeth?” No, one will have whatsoever one saith. If one does not get one’s saying in line with one’s praying, one will be wasting one’s time. God is not in the business of doing many of the things we pray for Him to do. We try to do what God is supposed to do and ask Him to do what we are supposed to do. We say, “Lord, take all my cares.” However, He is not going to do that. He said we are to cast all of our cares on Him because He cares for us. (1 Peter 5.7.) We have been doing all the caring and worrying. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
We pray for God to take our caring and worrying from us, but He cannot do that. If you cast them upon Him, he will do the caring. “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there by any praise, think on these things,” reports Philippians 4.6-8. We have been wanting God to give us peace while we think on all the bad things. He cannot do that. It is against His Word. Just as a jeweler cannot fix your watch until he or she has it in one’s possession, neither can God work out your problem until you give it to Him or cast it over unto Him, and leave it there. Once you have prayed, do not take it up again. Just thank Him for the answer. I remember as I was complaining about a problem, I realized so many people keep trying to work out their problems by their own rules. “They have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge,” reports Romans 10.2. In some developing countries, the less affluent spends about six hours a day merely finding firewood one needs for cooking and heating. Another four to six hours are spent bringing water from a well, and a similar amount to graze cattle, goats, or sheep. Since such a family cannot afford to hire labour and cannot buy labour-saving gadgets, its only rational response is to have at least three children to satisfy its energy needs. Rural energy may prove an excellent contraceptive. The requirement of villages in developing nations can easily be met by a tiny, inexpensive bio-gas plant that uses human and animal waste from the village itself. Many thousands of such units are far more useful, ecologically sound, and economical than a few giants, centralized plants. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
We have to be able to understand people and their lifestyles to be able to help them. We also need to understand why they do the things they do. Arid, miserably unproductive acres of land can be turned into World-renowned models of solar farms with bio-gas plants. These farms will produce enough grains, fruits, and vegetables to feed a family and employees as well as tons of food to sell at a profit to the marketplace. Many people complain about overfishing. However, at the Environmental Research Lab in Tucson, Arizona, shrimp are being grown in long troughs in greenhouses, right alongside cucumbers and lettuce—with the shrimp waste recycled to fertilize the vegetables. In Vermont experimenters are raising catfish, trout, and vegetables in a similar manner. The water in the fish take collects solar heart and releases it at night to keep temperatures up. Again, the fish waste is used to fertilize the vegetables. IN Massachusetts, at the New Alchemy Institute, chickens are being raised atop the fish tank. Their droppings fertilize algae, which the fish then eat. These are only three countless examples of innovation in food production and food processing—many of which have special, exciting relevance for many developing nations. Advances in other fields cast doubt on traditional development thinking. In many developing nations, they are facing an explosive unemployment and underemployment crisis. It is massive. Over emphasis on labour-intensive technology with low productive could trap poorer countries. They should focus on microelectronics. Productivity is rising spectacularly in the computer chip industry, it is certainly an advantage to capital-poor developing countries to get greater output per unit of capital invested. Developing countries can take basic technology and adapt it more easily to suit their own social requirements or raw materials. Microelectronic technology lends itself to decentralization of production. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
This also means reduced population pressures on the bid cities, and the rapid miniaturization in this field cuts transportation costs as well. Best of all, this form of production has low energy requirements, and the growth of the market so rapid—and the competition so keen—that even rich nations attempt to monopolize these industries they are unlikely to succeed. At the time of the industrial revolution, roads were a prerequisite for social, political, and economic development. Today an electronic communications system is necessary. It was once thought that communications were the outgrowth of economic development. Now, this is an outmoded thesis. Telecommunications were more of a precondition than a consequence, and helped to develop the Internet, which has revolutionized business. Today’s plummeting cost of communications suggest the situation of communications for many transport functions. In may be far less expensive, more energy-conserving, and more appropriate in the long run to lay in an advanced communications network than a ramified structure of costly roads and streets. Clearly, road transport is needed. However, to the degree that production is decentralized, rather than centralized, transport costs can be minimized without isolating villages from one another, from the urban areas, or from the World at large. Many countries are aware of the importance of communications and it is clear from the way they are waging for a redistribution of the World’s electronic spectrum. In 2018, the Marea cable began operating between Bilbao, Spain, and the United States state of Virginia, with transmission speeds of up to 160 terabits per second—16 million times faster than the average home internet connection. Today, there are around 380 underwater cables in operation around the World, spanning a length of over 1.2 million kilometers (745,645 miles), and they carry about 95 percent of intercontinental voice and data traffic, making them critical for the economics and national security of most countries. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Underwater cables are the invisible force driving the modern internet, with many in recent years being funded by internet giants such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. They carry almost all our communications and yet—in a World of wireless networking and smartphones—we are barely aware that they exist. Most people are absolutely amazed by the degree to which the internet is still cable-based. People are so mobile and always looking for Wi-Fi. They do not think about it, the do not understand the workings of this massive mesh of cables. They only notice when it is cut. This is creating a call for a New World Information Order. Chinese company Huawei is embedding itself into cable systems that ferry nearly all the World’s internet data. This has created a battle between America and China over control of global networks that deliver the internet. Current and former security officials in the United States of America and allied governments now worry that these cables are increasingly vulnerable to espionage or attack and say the involvement of Huawei potentially enhances China’s capabilities. The Chinese company, majority owned by Huawei Technologies, had worked on some 90 projects to build or upgrade submarine cables around the World. However, Huawei dines any threat. Yet, officials report that the company’s knowledge of and access to undersea cables could allow China to attach devices that divert or monitor data traffic—or, in a conflict, to sever links to entire nations. Such interference could be done remotely via Huawei network management software and other equipment at coastal landing stations, where submarine cables join land-based network. Given that undersea cables carry the bulk of the World’s telecommunications data, safeguarding these cables remains a key priority for the United State of America’s government and its allies. Many people still believe the future is with satellite communications systems. Developments like these in energy, agriculture, technology, and communication suggest something even deeper—whole new societies based on the fusion of past and future. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
A new balance has now to be struck between the most advanced science and technology available to the human race and the idyllic green pastures, the village republics. Such a practical combination requires a total transformation of the society, its symbols and values, its system of education, its incentives, the flow of its energy resources, its scientific and industrial research and a whole lot of other institutions. Implied in this approach is another synthesis at an even deeper level. This involves the entire economic relationship of people to the market—irrespective of whether that market is capitalist or socialist in form. It forces us to question how much of any individual’s total time and labour should be devoted to production and how much to presumption—ie est, how much to working for pay in the marketplace as against working for itself. Most develop nations, First Wave populations, have already been drawn into the money system. They have been “maketized.” However, while the wretched money income earned by the World’s poorest people may be vital to their survival, production for exchange provides only part of their income; presumption provides the rest. We have to look at this situation, too, in a fresh way. In country after country millions are jobless. However, if fully employment in these societies a realistic goal? What combination of policies can possibly, withing our lifetime, provide full-time jobs for all these surging millions? Is the very notion of “unemployment” itself a Second Wave concept? The problem is not unemployment, which is a Western concept that presupposes modern sector wage employment, labour markets, labour exchanges and social security payments. The problems is rather, unremunerative, unproductive work of the poor, particularly of the rural poor. The remarkable rise of the prosumer in the affluent nations today, is a striking phenomenon of the Third Waves, leads us to question the deepest assumptions and goals of most Second Wave economist. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
Perhaps it is a mistake to emulate the industrial revolution in the West, which saw the transfer of most economic activity out of Sector A (the prosumer sector) and into Sector B (the market Sector). Perhaps what is needed for most people is part-time employment for wages (possibly with some transfer payments) plus imaginative new policies aimed at making their presumption more “productive.” Indeed, linking these two economic activities more intelligently to one another may be the missing key to survival for millions. Misery in the poor countries (and even in America) is often so extreme that washing machines, battery testers, or power tools seem, at first glance, wildly out of place. The World’s poor do not necessarily want jobs—they want food and a home. The job is only a means to this end. However, one can often grow one’s own food and build one’s own home, or at least contribute to the process. By sending food to less affluent countries, sure we have helped the starving, but is has also led to the rapid growth of the World’s population and creating more starving human beings. Relaxing certain land laws and building codes will make it easier for people to build and improve their own housing. Government need to remove these obstacles and help people supply their own housing, offering them assistance in organization, the provision of some materials otherwise difficult to obtain, and if possible, site development—id est, water or electricity. Anything that helps the individual prosume more effectively may be just as important as production measured in conventional GNP (Gross National Product) terms. This would keep people out of institutional house,” keep them off the streets and allow them to have their privacy and freedom. To increase the productivity of the productivity of the prosumer, governments need to focus scientific and technological research on presumption. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
However, even now the government could, at a remarkably low cost, provide simple hand tools, community workshops, trained craftsmen or teachers, limited communications facilities and, where possible, power generation equipment—plus favourable propaganda or moral support for those who invest “sweat equity” in building their own homes or improving their bits of land. Second Wave propaganda today unfortunately coveys to even the World’s most remote and poorest people the idea that the things they make themselves are inherently inferior to the worst mass-produced junk. Rather than teaching people to despise their own efforts, to value Second Wave products and downgrade what they themselves create, governments should be offering prices for the best or most imaginative self-built homes and goods, the most “productive” presumption. The knowledge that even the World’s richest people are increasingly prosuming may help change attitudes among the very poorest. For the Third Wave casts into a dramatic new light the entire relationship of market to nonmarket activities in all societies of the future. Even with all these computers and technology that tells one what is wrong with a car, people are still taking advantage of consumers and making them spend thousands of dollars to figure out what is going on, instead of flat out telling them. The Third Wave also raises non-economic and non-technological concerns to primary importance. It makes us look at education, for example, with fresh eyes. Education, everyone agrees, is central to development. However, what kind of education? When the colonial powers introduced formal education into it made sense because people also had skills. Today we need to combine learning with work, political struggles, community service, and even play. All conventional assumptions about education need to be re-examined both in the rich countries and in the poor. Third Wave encourages of to look being conventional Second Wave assumptions with respect to motivation as well. Better nutrition is likely to raise the entire level of intelligence and functional competence among millions of children—at the same time that it increases drive and motivation. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
Second Wave people often speak of the passivity and lack of motivation of the less affluent. Leaving aside the demotivating effects of malnutrition, intestinal parasites, unclean living environments that make one sick, climate, and oppressive political control, might not a part of what seems like lack of motivation be an unwillingness to tear up one’s home, family, and life in the present in return for the dubious hope of a better life many years down the road? So long as “development” means the superimposition of a totally alien culture on an existing one, and so long as actual improvements seems impossibly beyond reach, there is every reason to hang on to the little one has. We are not at a point where there is a ready-made model for emulation anymore. America is still developing. However, for the poor as well as the rich it opens novel, perhaps liberating, possibilities. For it calls attention not to the weakness, poverty, and misery of the First Wave World, but to some of its inherent strengths. The very features of this ancient civilization that seem so backward from the standpoint of the Second Wave appear as potentially advantageous when measure against the template of the advancing Third Wave. The congruity of these two civilizations must, in the years ahead, transform the way we think about relations between the poor and the rich on the planet. The poor as well as the rich are crouched at the starting line of a new and startlingly different race into the future. So long as several humans together consider themselves to be a single body, they have but a single will, which is concerned with their common preservation and the general well-being. The more harmony reigns in the assemblies, that is to say, the closer opinions come to unanimity, the more dominant too is the general will. However, long debates, dissensions, and tumult betoken the ascendance of private interest and the decline of the state. The vice inherent in the body politic, there are, as it were, two states in one. What is not true of the two together is true of each of them separately. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
And indeed even in the most tumultuous times, the plebiscites of the people, when the senate did not interfere with them, always passed quietly and by a large majority of votes. Since the citizens have but one interest, the people had but one will. At the other extreme of the circle, unanimity returns. It is when the citizens, having fallen into servitude, no longer have either liberty or will. Then fear and flattery turn voting to acclamations. People no longer deliberate; either they adore or they curse. Such was the vile manner in which the senate expressed its opinions under the emperors; sometimes it did so with ridiculous precautions. There is but one law that by its nature requires unanimous consent. This is the social compact. For civil association is the most voluntary act in the World. Since every human is born free and master of oneself, no one can, under any pretext whatever, place another under subjection without one’s consent. To decide that the son of a slave is born a slave is to decide that one is not a human. If, therefore, at the time of the social compact, there are opponents to it, their opposition does not invalidate the contract; it merely prevents them from being included in it. They are foreigners among citizens. Once the state is instituted, residency implies consent. To inhabit the territory is to submit to sovereignty. The citizen consents to all the laws, even to those that pass in spite of one’s opposition, and even to those that punish one when one dares to violate any of them. The constant will of all the members of the state is the general will; through it they are citizens and free. To gain power is to gain respect; it is also—equally, inevitably—to be hated. One who is afraid to e hated is disabled in one’s pursuit of power, for with each gain in power will come an increase in hatred. The greater the fear of this hatred, the greater the obstacle to the pursuit of power. One continues on a course of increasing power until fear calls a halt. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
If Atlantis went to its grave under the impulse of violent eruptions that rocked the World, the Atlantean use of atomic power for warlike purposes lay behind the eruptions themselves. If humans had better character and more intuition they would not and could not accept such horrors, even in the name of self-defense. War disrupts customs, dissolves mortality, and destroys art. It alters fate and reveals the good and the bad in human character. It is the severest test both of a human and a nation. It shocks religion, blacks out mysticism, but confirms philosophy. When the usefulness of a tradition is at an end both humans and events attack and disintegrate it. The longer the war went on, the less did it become probable that the older order of thought could be restored after it. Behold! Our mother Earth is lying here. Behold! She gives of her fruitfulness. Truly, her power she gives us. Give thanks to Mother Earth who lies here. Behold! On Mother Earth the growing fields! Behold the promise of her fruitfulness! Truly, her power she gives us. Give thanks to Mother Earth who lies here. Behold on Mother Earth the spreading of beautiful trees! Behold the promise of her fruitfulness! Truly, her power she gives us. Give thanks to Mother Earth who lies here. Behold on Mother Earth the running streams; we see the promise of her fruitfulness. Truly, her power she gives us. Our thanks to Mother Earth who lies here. God did thus make thus His greatness and holiness know in Thy World, and didst bring great deliverance to America. Then Thy children came into Thy dwelling place, cleansed the Temple, purified the Sanctuary, kindled lights in Thy sacred courts, and they designated these days for giving thanks and praise unto Thy great name. For all this, Thy name, O our King, shall be blessed and exalted for ever and ever. O inscribe all the children of Thy covenant for a happy life. May all the living do homage unto Thee forever and praise Thy name in truth, O God, who are our salvation and our help. Blessed be Thou, O Lord, Beneficent One, unto whom our thanks are due. Grant lasting peace unto America Thy people, for Thou art the Sovereign Lord of peace; and may it be good in Thy sight to bless Thy people America at all times with Thy peace. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who blessest Thy people America. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Eating at the Table of Demons—He Had Made a Bargain with the Devil!
Every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ must consider spiritism in all of its forms to be a grave danger, and one should strictly avoid it. One must obey without question the Biblical prohibitions of necromancy. A Christian who becomes involved in this kind of activity will bring harm to oneself and/or others. One should also warn unsaved friends and relatives, realizing they will become increasingly difficult to reach for Christ if they become enslaved by the powers of evil that are part and parcel of spiritism. You see, the Lord does not look upon dabbling in occultism as merely being deceived or cheated by a group of charlatans. A real power of Satan is at work in various forms of spiritism. Scriptures which show that God demanded the death penalty for necromancers, and the consulting of a medium was considered the same as seeking help from a false god. The power of Satan in heathenism is indicated by the fact that its leaders sometimes exercised supernatural powers. For example, the Egyptian sorcerers were able to duplicate some of the miracles of judgment wrought by Aaron and Moses. It is well to bear in mind that the heathen idols, though nothing but wood, stone, or metal in themselves, were the props by which men and women actually worshipped demons. This affirmation is clearly set forth in Paul’s letter to the Christians in Corinth. He told them that he recognized an idol in itself to be nothing, and that if they unknowingly ate food which the heathen had dedicated to an imaginary god, they would be doing no harm to themselves or anyone else. He went on to say, however, that they should not participate with pagans in their sacrificial festivals, for behind the whole system of idolatry was the kingdom of darkness. Though the heathen did not realize it, they were actually presenting offerings to the World of evil spirits. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
Therefore, Paul, wrote, “Behold Israel after the flesh. Are not they who eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar? What say I, then? That the idol is anything, or that which is offered in sacrifices to idols is anything? But I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God; and I would not that ye should have fellowship with demons. Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and cup of demons; ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of demons,” reports 1 Corinthians 10.18-21. In a very real sense, the person who tries to communicate with the dead through a medium is eating at “the table of demons.” By doing this one is repudiating “the Lord’s table,” for all the precious truths symbolized in the Lord’s Supper are denied by the spiritualists. Therefore, if a believer becomes involved in spiritism and then partakes of the Lord’s Supper, one is flagrantly disobeying the Scriptures and will be severely chastened. One has participated in the Lord’s Supper unworthily, that is, in an unworthy manner, and the apostle warned, “Wherefore, whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. However, let a human examine oneself, and so let one eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For one that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to oneself, not discerning the Lord’s body. For this cause many are weak, and sickly among you, and many sleep,” reports 1 Corinthians 27-30. In addition to making oneself subject to divine chastening, the Christian who disobeys God’s warning against necromancy may experience a deep depression, the inability to pray, the lost of interest in the Christian Bible, and a compulsive desire to engage in sins which formerly repulsed one. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
Missionaries and Christian workers from all over the World testify that they can often link deep spiritual depression, disturbing delusions, or paralyzing fears with an incident in which the patient or counselee attended a séance or engaged in some form of occultism. Dr. Alfred Lechler, who for thirty-five years served as the medical superintendent of the largest mental hospital in Germany, definitely believes that even today Satan manifests himself in supernatural ways when Christians tamper with the occult. The Swiss author and physician, Dr. Paul Tournier, also believes in the reality of demonic oppression as the result of disobedience to God in these matters. Dr. William S. Reed, a well-known Christian psychiatrist, declared, “Many mental and physical illnesses result, in fact, from demonic attacks. Exorcism must therefore be given a place in present-day psychiatry and medicine.” I am pointing this out to impress upon everyone who reads this essay the Biblical warnings against spiritism must be taken seriously by every Christian. It is interesting to note that true believers in Christ are especially vulnerable to Satanic attack when they attend a séance or engage in some form of occultism. Dr. Unger declares it to be a well-documented fact that some people who practice the occult sense little or no ill effects from their contact with mediums. Apparently Satan is pleased whenever someone adopts spiritism in any of its forms as his religion. Let every true believer take heed! Never, never engage in any practice by which efforts are made to contact the spirits of the dead! From the earliest times the Devil has made his mark, historically and geographically, in Ireland; the nomenclature of many places indicates that they are his exclusive property, while the antiquarian cannot be sufficiently thankful to him for depositing the Rock of Cashel where he did. However, here we must deal with a later period of this activity. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
A quaint tale comes to us from Co. Tipperary of a man bargaining with his Majesty for the price of his soul, in which as usual the Devil is worsted by a simple trick, and gets nothing for his trouble. Near Shronell in that country are still to be seen the ruins of Damerville Court, formerly the residence of the Damer family, and from which locality they took the title of Barons Milton of Schronell. The first of the family to settle in Ireland, Joseph Damer, had been formerly in the service of the Parliament, but not deeming it safe to remain in England after the Restoration, came over to this country, and taking advantage of the cheapness of land at that time, purchased large estates. It was evidently of this member of the family that the following tale is told. He possessed great wealth, and ‘twas darkly hinted that this had come to him from no lawful source, that in fact he had made a bargain with the with the Devil to sell his soul to him for a top-boot full of gold. His Satanic Majesty greedily accepted the offer, and on the day appointed for the ratification of the bargain arrived with a sufficiency of bullion from the Bank of Styx—or whatever may be the name of the establishment below! He was ushered into a room, in the middle of which stood the empty top-boot; into this he poured the gold, but to his surprise it remained as empty as before. He hastened away for more gold, with the same result. Repeated journeys to and fro for fresh supplies still left the boot as empty as when he began, until at length in sheer disgust he took his final departure, leaving Damer in passion of the gold, and as well (for a few brief years, at all events) of that spiritual commodity he had valued at so little. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
In process of time the secret leaked out. The wily Damer had take the sole off the boot, and had then securely fastened the latter over a hole in the floor. In the storey underneath was a series of large, empty cellars, in which he had stationed men armed with shovels, who were under instructions to remove each succeeding shower of gold, and so make room for more. Another story comes from Ballinagarde in Co. Limerick, the residence of the Croker family, though it is probably later in point of time; in it the Devil appears in a different role. Once upon a time Mr. Croker of Ballinagarde was out hunting, but as the country was very difficult few were able to keep up with the hounds. The chase lasted all day, and late in the evening Croker and a handsome dark stranger, mounted on a magnificent black horse, were alone at the death. Croker, delighted at his companion’s prowess, asked him home, and the usual festivities were kept up fast and furious till far into the night. The stranger was shown to a bedroom, and as the servant was pulling off his boots he saw that he had a cloven hoof. In the morning he acquainted his master with the fact, and both went to see the stranger. The latter had disappeared, and so had his horse, but the bedroom carpet was seared by a red-hot hoof, while four hoof-marks were imprinted on the floor of the horse’s stall. What incident gave rise to the story we cannot tell, but there was a saying among the peasantry that such-and-such a thing occurred “as sure as the Devil was in Ballinagarde”; while he is said to have appeared there again recently. Now on to another interesting case. What was Mrs. Winchester’s true motivation for devoting the second half of her life to building what is now known as the Winchester Mystery House? As a youngster, Sarah Winchester fasted normally for a devout little girl. She enjoyed her childhood, laughing and playing, often outside. By the age of five, she would genuflect and say a Hail Mary on each step of the staircase up to her bedroom. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
At six or seven, Sarah Winchester had a vision of Jesus Christ and several saints. For years, she mediated on what this might mean. She and her little friends started a sort of club in which they flagellated themselves with knotted ropes. Sarah’s role in the instigating this was an indication of the depth of her religiosity, but in that pious age, it caused little comment. At fourteen, Sarah envisioned a mystical marriage to Christ, a glorious ceremony attended by the Virgin Mary, John the Evangelist, Saints Paul and Dominic, and even King David, who carried the Psalter. Jesus was his own ring-bearer and tenderly slipped the pear-and-diamond-studded gold ring onto her finger. “Now I betroth you to me in a faith that will survive from this hour forward forever immutable, until the glorious Heavenly marriage, in perfect conjunction with me in the second eternal wedding,” he intoned, “when face-to-face you will be allowed to see me and enjoy me.” Overwhelmed, the new, fourteen-year-old Bride of Christ instantly pledged her virginity to her husband. Many people thought Sarah was too pretty and that she would provoke some kind of sexual scandal. Sarah relied mainly on the Holy Host for sustenance and usually swallowed only cold water and chewed bitter herbs, rarely food. Some people criticized Sarah, slandered as a secret eater and condemned as a witch. At the same time, her confessors and acolytes “understood” and revered her as a holy woman obedient to God’s command, however mysterious. Mrs. Winchester’s view of marriage—pleasures of the flesh could kill much faster than starvation, and with no benefits whatsoever for the victim. Mrs. Winchester was a celibate who joyfully sacrificed pleasures of the flesh for glorious rewards of the infinitely better next World. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
Several times her weakened heart temporarily stopped beating. Once when this happened, Sarah imagined that she saw Christ save her life by exchanging his own sacred heart for hers. She later exulted that He had often scooped her body up from the Earth and she had felt her soul in perfect union with God’s. Mrs. Sarah Winchester was known for being intelligent, resourceful, courageous, outrageous, and driven. She was the quintessence of a successful Bride of Christ. Through superhuman effort and careful strategy, she achieved success, power, and influence unimaginable to most women irredeemably destined for marriage and motherhood. Her celibacy, so arduously preserved, was the essential precondition on which this triumphantly ascetic woman built her stunningly successful career. Mrs. Winchester’s financial resources were virtually unlimited; upon her husband’s death she received several million dollars in cash and 777 shares of stock in the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Upon her mother-in-law’s death in 1897, Mrs. Winchester received 2,000 more shares, which me she owned just under fifty percent of the company’s stock. This provided her with an income of $33,487.71 (2022 inflation adjusted). Mrs. Winchester suffered greatly from arthritis in her later years. She passed away in her sleep from heart failure of September 5, 1922. Back in 1897, many people would walk 30 miles just to go and see the Winchester mansion. It was said to be under construction by a ghostly army. At one time, it stood seven stories tall. It was a glorious morning, the sky flooded with light, and a cool breeze blowing. For some distance the play lay along the mountain side, through pine woods and by cultivated slops where the Indian corn was ripening to gold, and the late hay-harvest was waiting for the mower. Then the path wound gradually downwards—for the valley through a succession of soft green slopes and ruddy apple-orchards, and there was the glorious Winchester mansion. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
One could see a beautiful castle, like something out of a fairytale. Looking up at the grand structure, there were patches of blue sky and golden shafts of sunshine, and small brown squirrels leaping from bough to bough; on the path leading up to the estate there was deep rich grass on either hand, thick ferns, and red and golden mosses, and blue campanulas. It was like the Garden of Eden. One could feel the strings of the primitive Adam; some vague longing for that idyllic life of the woods and fields that dreamers were in their inmost souls, insane enough to sign after as the highest good. It was the love of a country life, turned to immortal poetry. People always talked about how Mr. Winchester would have loved this estate, a lad of great promise whose health had broken down, and who had soon died of rapid consumption. Poor fellow. I sometimes fancy he might have lived, if only he had had his heart’s desire. When visiting the Winchester mansion, one cannot help but have one’s mind running on poor Mr. Winchester. Somehow, the grander the scenery gets, the more one keeps thinking ho he would have exulted in it. Meanwhile the sun blazed in the Heavens, and the light, struck back from white rock and whiter road, it was almost blinding. And still the hot air danced and shimmered before us; and a windless stillness, as of death, lay upon all the scene. Suddenly—quite suddenly, as if he had stated out of the rock—I saw a man coming towards us with a rapid and eager gesticulations. He seemed to be waving us back; but I was so startled for the moment by the unexplained way in which he made his appearance, that I scarcely took in the meaning of his gestures. “How odd!” I exclaimed, coming to a halt. “How did he get there?” He was dressed in a grey suit—his collar open, and his throat bare. He wore a Scotch cap with a silver badge in it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
Then he disappeared. I paused once or twice, and tried to conjure up the figure before my eyes, but in vain. Now inside the mansion, with every step that I took the mouth of the tunnel grew larger, and the depth of the shade within it more blacker and more mysterious. Then next moment, being within half a dozen yards from the next room, I distinctly heard a cool murmur of a distant waterfall; and the next moment after that, I had plunged into a tunnel in this catacomb of a mansion. It was like the transition from an orchid-house to an ice-house—from midday to midnight. The darkness was profound, and so intense the sudden chill, that for the first second it almost took my breath away. Looking down at my feet, I saw that the floor was an inch deep in blood running from wall to wall. In that instant, a great horror feel upon me—the horror of darkness and sudden death. Blindly, breathlessly, wildly, with the horrible grinding sound of the imprisoned waterfall of blood in my ears, and the gathering torrent at my heels! Never while I live shall I forget the agony of these next few second—the icy numbness seizing on my limbs—the sudden, frightful sense of impeded respiration—the blood rising, eddying, clamouring, pursuing me, passing me—the swirl of it, as it flashed passed be down the never-ending hallway—the rush with which it leaped out into the sunlight like a living thing, and dashed down the stairs. At that supreme instant, just as I had darted out through the echoing arch and staggered a few paces up the stairs, a deafening report, crackling, hurried, tremendous, like the explosion of a mine, rent the air and roused a hundred echoes. It was followed by a moment of strange and terrible suspense. Then, with a deep and sullen roar, audible above all the rolling thunders of the mansion round, a mighty wave of blood—smooth, solid, glassy, like an Atlantic wave on an English western coast—came gleaming up the mouth of the hallway, paused as it were, upon the threshold, reared its majestic crest, curved, trembled, burst in a cataract of foam, flooded the floors for yards beyond the spot where I was clinging, and rushed back again, as the wave rushes down the beach, hurled itself out the door-to-nowhere, and vanished in a cloud of mist. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
After this, the imprisoned crimson flood came pouring out tumultuously for several minutes, bring with it fragments of bones and gold, and filling the ground blow with debris; but even this disturbance presently subsided, and almost as soon as the last echoes of the explosion had died away, the liberated blood was rippling pleasantly along the fruit orchards, sparkling out into the sunshine as it emerged from the mansion, and gliding in a smooth continuous stream until it melted away into the soil. For myself, drenched to the skin as I was, I could do nothing. I was left about sunset, shivering and hungry. I narrowly escaped with my life from this “illusion” I experienced in the winding, twisting, emotional tunnels of the Winchester mansion. Some might deny Heaven and Hell as a series of spiritual planes through which the souls of the dead pass in an evolutionary process, but I believe one can experience both in the Winchester mansion. It is a place of great beauty and joy, but also a place of pain and suffering. Those who live most wickedly begin on the very lowest plane, and need a great deal of help from other spirits to advance to the next sphere. The individual who does not smoke, nor drink alcoholic beverages, is kind, honest, and lives a clean moral life, may begin on a higher plan than one who in intemperate or immoral. There are spiritists who attempt to communicate with the dead without any distinct reference to the Christian faith. They are commended for their honesty, for they do not try to give their practices a superficial religious window-dressing. They usually admit that they cannot understand what happens in their seances. They believe that certain psychically gifted people possess the power to exert an invisible and incomprehensible force through which they can contact the spirits of the dead. Though totally naturalistic, some even atheistic, many people believe in continued existence after death. Human beings are subject to special tensions just because they have been endowed with the ability to reflect upon themselves and their future, and many people cannot keep disquieting thoughts from haunting them from time to time. Thousands of words have been and will be written about the Winchester Mystery House and its Lady. However, the great question is yet to be answered—Why? Why? #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
Winchester Mystery House
Ever-changing and evolving, Mrs. Winchester’s Llanada Villa once stood seven-stories tall before the 1906 earthquake forced the top three floors to be removed.
🎟 link: http://ow.ly/lRyo50HjwWR
It Arouses Bestial Passions and Forms Evil Character!
We are what we repeatedly do. How far you go in life depends on your being tender with excellence, and not making it an act, but a habit. A healthy knowledge and acceptance of the component of pleasures of the flesh in our life is also a valuable assistance to living our charism peacefully. Human pleasures of the flesh, as we now know, is not confined to procreation alone, but is reflected in the person in a vast range of potential expressions, some of which are fully valid also for celibates and virgins. Celibates and virgins have renounced the active taste of the poisoned paradise, not in sexuality itself. Certainly they have not gotten rid of it. It is still there, and it pervades practically every expression of the personality. A virgin man does not cease to be a man, nor a virgin woman to be a woman. This fact is also recognized by psychology, which admits the possibility of “sublimating” the instinct for pleasures of the flesh without destroying it, but spiritualizing it and making it serve ends that are equally worthy of humanity. If it is unconscious and directed towards the creation of substitutes, the sublimation process can be ambiguous, but it can also be beneficial and lived out in freedom. In this sense we can say that there is a dimension of pleasures of the flesh also experienced by celibates, and a dimension of celibacy that is often experienced by married men and women. A healthy knowledge of pleasures of the flesh helps us develop a clam, untroubled view—as far as this is still possible in our present situation, compromised as it is by sin—of the whole created reality, including the transmission of life. We must learn how to look at the opposite gender, at procreation, and at children, with pure eyes, in short, with eyes like those of Jesus Christ Who, as the Gospels show, was able to speak about these things in perfect freedom and even turned them into parables about spiritual reality. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
A proper knowledge of the life of married people helps us to avoid wrong or simplistic ideas about marriage, trains us to be healthy realistic (so necessary for anyone who has to preach the word of God), opens our eyes to the many advantages we have compared to married people, and makes us more understanding and attentive to their problems. Finally, a certain lucidity in this area is useful so that we do not mistake the flesh for the spirit, or vice versa, the spirit for the flesh—either in ourselves or in those we are called upon to guide. In other words, it is useful for spiritual discernment. When we take as supernatural and divine love, or spiritual friendship, what in fact are only the beginnings of human love, we mistake the flesh for the spirit. Human and “carnal” love, in its initial stages, produces effects that are easily mistaken for the effects of grace and conversion of heart. The face lights up, the person become sweet-tempered and compliant, feels generous and helpful and experiences a new idealism and fervour. If it is not immediately recognized as such, it is easy to think one is dealing with conversion of the heart, when in fact it is only the beginning of a human falling in love which can have unfortunate consequences. A religious may believe that, as a result of meeting one, a certain person has been transformed. So the religious is pleased, and insists on seeing, writing or telephoning the person. They may even thank God for having been chosen as His instrument. The truth is that God has been at work, but in quite a different way. He allows all this to bring us out of delusion and presumption and to make us humbler and wiser for the experience. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
Those who look for a magical release from their shortcomings and automatic victory over their weaknesses with the coming of the Glimpse, become disheartened at learning that this desirable result may happen only in a part of their nature, if at all, and is unlikely to happen in the totality of their nature. Others, governed by wishful thinking, even reject the teaching as untrue. That their own co-operative effort will still be needed is a reasonable demand. However, reason is what some of these people hope to transcend! The glimpse will be lengthened when one oneself develops: it will then no longer be abnormal, or supernormal, but a constant experience. Neither the movements of the Spirit-Energy nor then opening of the mind gives the ultimate enlightenment: usually a glimpse: that is discovered only in the Stillness of the Void. To go beyond the glimpse into the permanent condition of being established requires time to grow up, to develop, until the illusion of time is itself seen through. Although no act of thinking can take hold of That which is utterly beyond thinking—for it is the holy of holies—one may, by pushing attention deeply enough, stand as Moses stood and view the Promised Land as from afar. Or, by being still, in body and in mind, one may do the same. This effect is called a Glimpse. However, if the Grace is to wrap itself around one and end one’s quest then…alas! I may write no more. Why is the pen stopped? Because for each person the answer is different, personal, and to be given by God alone, for He is the real giver, not another human. A certain type of mystic experience represents a descent of Grace by the Overself. The results are transient, however, because such an experience is given merely as a glimpse of the goal yet to be achieved by one’s own personal effort. Through practice of the advanced meditation given in The Wisdom of the Overself such an experience may recur from time to time, although its emotional results may seem tamer after a while because they will lack the novelty which they first possessed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
The more one gives oneself up to the Overself as a consequence of these glimpses of what it requires of one, the sooner will their transience be transformed into permanence. “In carrying water and chopping wood—there is the wonderful Tao.” This ancient Chinese sentence is a subtle, clever way of saying that not only in meditation is the glimpse to be sought, but also in the World’s work and life it is to be found and kept. Such is the ultimate state, this emptiness of mind amid active body. It is possible only by knowledge, the unforgettable recognition and understanding that within this emptiness lies the Tao. It is the inward seeing in the sense of seeing beneath appearances what is under them. It does not refer to clairvoyance in the psychic sense, but rather to the metaphysical or mystical sense. It can be particularized as meaning entering into the witness state of consciousness. The ordinary person sees only the object; penetrating deeper, one enters the witness state which is an intermediate condition; going still deeper, one reaches the ultimate state of Reality when there is no subject or object, whereas in the witness there is still subject and object, but the subject no longer identifies oneself with the object as the ordinary human does. Sometimes the experience got in deep meditation verges on trance and abolishes the normal awareness of time and space. The sense of time may cease altogether so that there is so there is no succession from one moment to the next but an absolute stillness. The sense of space may be so enlarged that there is a feeling of being spread out to immense dimensions or a contrary feeling of being reduced to a single point. The whirling dervishes of the Near East by turning round and round and round for a long time also lose the sense of time and space. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
However, we must remember that the experiences just described have a beginning and an ending, they are only mental conditions which change; they are not the authentic ultimate experience of enlightenment. This latter is called sahaja. It is the permanent awareness of the divine presence whether in the midst of activity of meditation. It is not the faint glimpse of truth which reveals all but the full and steady insight. The innate felicity of the one may—and often does—deceive a human into believing that one is experiencing the absolute uniqueness of the other. However, the philosophic student, trained to control one’s ego, is unlikely to mistake these passing phases of one’s inner life for what they are. On the other hand, we mistake the spirit for the flesh, that is, good for evil, when we do not know how to distinguish temptation from sin. Choosing virginity does not spare a person from temptations. In fact, as we see from the lives of the saints, it often increases them. The Desert Fathers used to say that no one should think they possess a certain virtue, until it has been tested in the fire of temptation. However, temptation in itself is not bad. It is for our good, since we know that “along with the temptation, God will also provide a way out, so you will be able to endure it,” reports 1 Corinthians 10.13. “It is better for many not to be altogether free of temptations, but to be often assailed, least they become too secure, and run the risk of pride, or take more liberty to seek after exterior consolations.” Temptation is the crucible in which chastity is purified, the cold bath in which it is toughened, as steel is tempered by contact with water. Once we have accepted this grace, then ancillary virtues follow. Such qualities as caring, respect, and responsibility flow from this fountainhead of life within. We can always receive a boundless affirmation of love from deep within. It is grace, which is given us by God and finds a regal home in our core, the kingdom of God within. God becomes to us a deep and ever-present Companion. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
Virginity existed as a concept, though without the reverence devout Catholicism attached to it. Iroquois legends told of a society of virgins, but this was a long-ago phenomenon and Indian women were not tempted to replicate it. Celibacy, too, was an honoured tradition, an essential preparation for successful hunts or battles. However, it was for men, not women, and it was purely strategic and short-term. As a permanent condition—for example the Jesuits’ lifestyle—it was considered peculiar. When these men tried to impose celibacy on the natives they lived among, Iroquois reaction ranged from puzzled incredulity to ridicule and anger. For some, sworn celibacy had dual meanings and consequences. It was one’s personal declaration of ownership of one’s body and soul, which one withholds from their community and offers instead to God. However, some critics report that celibacy is a sham, and that many individuals slip off into the woods for sexual trysts with married men or women. Still, actualizing Christians see perpetual virginity and mystic marriage to Christ as being so thoroughly vindicating. Scandalmongers and angry relatives who plague the celibates in life, they are the best weapons in the holy war for allegiance. Celibate people must somehow embarrass others. However, ascetism, one’s celibacy, and the glory of one’s marriage to Jesus, makes one more willing to stand one’s ground against critics as one’s namesake. There is a difference between the ordinary glimpse and the philosophical way. Both come to an end; but the philosophical seeker incessantly returns to its remembrance, uses it to work continuously at the transformation of one’s self and never lets go of the vision. An elementary or obscure knowledge of reality is too often taken by the aspirant as the full knowledge. This is because it so dramatically transcends one’s ordinary condition. However, it is still not to be compared with the firm certitude of clear Insight. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
It is possible to be open to one’s best inner self, aware of its presence, its beauty and peace. And this possibility can be not only realized but also naturalized. It can become one’s normal condition. More and more its light will enter one’s mind, its strength one’s heart, and its presence one’s meditative periods. On that day when the glimpse comes, the impact may be strong enough and the human’s ambition high enough to make one believe that this is ultimate salvation. Not so, alas! One sees that one’s quest will not end with the illuminative experience of this first contact with the higher self and that the processes so started must continue. Since it is a glimpse only, and not a completed experience, one ought not to expect one’s own person and personal life to be completely transformed. This is one’s further task, to infuse the beauty and tranquility, the unworldliness and immaterialism of the glimpse into one’s ordinary everyday life. This beautiful state of heart has yet to become natural and continuous. And that cannot happen until the personal ego is laid low and until the whole psyche of the human engages in the struggle for self-conquest. My dearest friend. No more smelts, no more mullets, no more herings! Just Act and Potency, Potency and Act—maybe the Schoolmen were on to something. Eternal and Immense God turns Infinite Potency into Great and Inscrutable Acts in Heaven and on Earth. Whatever, there just does not seem to be an intellectually satisfying way for you to study these Marvels; tht was Job’s conclusion too (5.9). If, therefore, there were a way to taxonomize and theologize the works of God, they would not be Marvels, would they? I expect the answer is no. Nor would there be words smart enough or tart enough to describe them, now would there? Again I expect the answer no. Again I say Amen. When Satan comes against you, use the name of Jesus, use the authority Jesus gave you. God is not going to do it for you. The power of binding and loosing is not in Heaven; it is on Earth—and it is yours. Jesus gave believers authority to preach the gospel, heal the sick, and cast out demons, and raise the dead. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
The Angels cannot preach the gospel. In the tenth chapter of Acts when Cornelius prayed, God sent an angel to talk to him. In this essence, this is what the Angel said to him: “I cannot preach the gospel to you, but I can tell you where there is a man that can preach the gospel. He is staying with Simon the tanner by the seashore. Go call for Peter. He will come preach the gospel to you and tell you what to do.” Have you ever wondered why the Angel did not preach the gospel to him? Because, in this dispensation, they do not have that authority. The authority in this Earth has been delivered to believers. We have the authority, but we have been praying for God to do the things He has told us to do, such as heal the sick, cleanse the leper, cast out demons, and raise the dead. (Matthew 10.1-8.) These things are as mountains before us, but God’s ability can perform them. Learn to release God’s ability. Death darers experience mixed feelings, or ambivalence, in their intent to die even at the moment of their attempt, and they show this ambivalence in the act itself. Although to some degree they wish to die, and they often do die, their risk-taking behaviour does not guarantee death. The person who plays Russian roulette—that is, pulls the trigger of a revolver randomly loaded with one bullet—is a death darer. Many death darers are as interested in gaining attention, making someone feel guilty, or expressing anger as in dying per se. Margaret and Bob had been going together for a year. It was Margaret’s first serious relationship; it was her whole life. Thus when Bob told her that he no longer loved her and was leaving her for someone else, Margaret was shocked and shaken. As the weeks went by, Margaret was filled with two competing feelings—depression and anger. Several times she called Bob, begged him to reconsider, and pleaded for a chance to win him back. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
At the same time, Margaret hated Bob for putting her though such misery. She did not deserve this treatment. Sometimes when she was talking to him, her pleas would change to demands, her cries to yells. Margaret’s friends became more and more worried about her. At first they sympathized with her pain, assuming it would soon lift. However, at time went on, her depression and anger worsened, and Margaret began to act strangely. She started to drink heavily and to mix her drinks with all kinds of pills. She seemed to be flirting with danger. One night Margaret went into her bathroom, reached for a bottle of sleeping pills, and much like Lily in then novel, The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, and swallowed a handful of them. She wanted to make her pain go away, and she wanted Bob to know just how much pain he had caused her. She continued swallowing pill after pill, crying and swearing as she gulped them down. When she began to feel drowsy, she decided to call her close friend Cindy. She was not sure why she was calling, perhaps to say good-bye, to explain her actions, or to make sure that Bo was told; or perhaps to be talked out of it. Cindy pleased and reasoned with Margaret and tried to motivate her to live. Margaret was trying to listen, but she became less and less coherent. Cindy hung up the phone quickly and called Margaret’s neighbour and the police. When reached by her neighbour, Margaret was already in a coma. Seven hours later, while her friends and family waited for news in the hospital lounge, Margaret died. Margaret might be considered a death darer. Although her unhappiness and anger were great, she was not sure that she wanted to die. Even while taking pills, she called her friend, reported her actions, and listened to her friend’s pleas. When individuals play indirect, covert, partial, or unconscious roles in their own deaths, they are classified in a suicide-like category called subintentional death. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Seriously ill people who consistently mismanage their medications may belong in the subintentional death category. There is also a category called chronic suicide. These people behave in life-endangering ways over an extended period of time, perhaps consuming excessive alcohol, abusing drugs, or indulging in risky activities or occupations. Although their deaths may represent a form of suicide, their true intent in unclear. It is impossible to separate how we communicate with other people from how we experience our relationships with them. There is no such thing as a high-quality interpersonal relationship based on bad communication. Effective interpersonal communication allows people to achieve their goals, to share information with other people, and to feel understood. Without effective interpersonal communication, even the most simple interactions with other people become an exercise in frustration—for both parties. The importance of effective communication skills is underscored by the pervasiveness of social skills deficits in the literature on interpersonal relations and mental health. The impact of social skills on interpersonal relationships, and in turn on mental health, simply cannot be overstated. Some very well-developed interpersonal theories of mental health stress the role of poor social skills in contributing to the development and course of such problems as depression, social anxiety, schizophrenia, loneliness, eating disorders, alcoholism, and other substance use problems. At the same time, effective social skills may play a prophylactic role by reducing the likelihood of mental health problems when faced with other stressors in life. The relationship between social skills deficits and mental health problems is manifold. Some people fail to develop adequate social skills for a variety of reasons, ranging from social isolation and minimal opportunity for the practice and development of such skills, to exposure to poor role models. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
Such individuals face an uphill struggle to develop rewarding interpersonal relationships, much less to execute successful interpersonal interactions. As a consequence, many of the issues already covered, such as interpersonal rejection, unavailability of personal relationships, loneliness, and perhaps even neglect from parents and others, follow. In this way, poor social skills can precipitate poor mental health. For such individuals, effective treatment of this condition will require at least some attention to their social skills. Alternatively, the symptoms of many different forms of psychopathology can interfere with effective social behaviour, corroding social skills. The psychotic symptoms schizophrenia or bipolar disorder can seriously damage one’s ability to communicate with others in a way that is appropriate and effective. Similarly, the difficulty in concentration, psychomotor delay, and sad affect of depression; the nervousness and preoccupation with failure in social anxiety; and the emotional liability and blunted cognition associated with substance dependence will all have deleterious effects on social communication skills. Even those with good premorbid social skills are prone to experiencing declines concomitant with episodes of psychopathology. As the symptoms of psychological problems continue to worsen, social skills will atrophy. In such cases, improvements in mental health are often accompanied by improvements in social skills. Many of the other, more specific problems with interpersonal communication that are evident in the mental health literature—such as excessive reassurance seeking, self-doubt about making a desired impression on others, attention seeking, and indirect attempts at communication—may all be secondary to social skills deficits, or circumscribed forms of such deficits. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Many of these interpersonal phenomena may reflect a deficit in motivation for deploying appropriate social behaviours. People may engage in these behaviours, or have these feelings, because they are otherwise unable to get what they are looking for from other people and from their relationships through more standard means of communication. Those with inadequate social skills may turn to more dramatic or histrionic forms of communication (such as excessive reassurance seeking on depression and attention seeking in personality disorders), or to more subtle means of expression (such as the indirect attempts at communication in somatoform disorders and perhaps eating disorders). Because they may lack the wherewithal for effective and direct interpersonal communication as a means of expressing their concerns, people with eating disorders and somatoform disorders use their symptoms to send “messages” or “signals” to other people. It is apparent that despite the ubiquity of this topic in the mental health literature, some people with psychological problems may have very well-developed social skills. In fact, their social skills may be so well developed and practiced that patients use them to manipulate and exploit other people. People with paranoid symptoms, certain personality disorders, bipolar disorder, and certain paraphilias often have very good social skills, especially perceptual skills. Such people may hone their social skills toward maladaptive and socially unacceptable ends. In such cases, the problem is not so much a social skills deficit as it is an irresponsible application and utilization of social skills. “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths,” reports Proverbs 3.5-6. Things may not be perfect in your life, but if one hopes to get to where one wants to go, one must be happy right where one is. Many people assume that they are not going to be happy until their circumstances change—until their spouse changes, or until they get a bigger Cresleigh Home, or until they get rid of all their problems. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Do not make that mistake. Enjoy your life right now where you are. Maybe you have some major obstacles in your path, but being discouraged is not going to make anything better. You need to realize that God is in control of your life. He is directing your steeps, and He has you exactly where He wants you. The apostle Paul said, “I have learned how to be content in every situation whether I am abased or abounding; whether I have got a lot of whether I do not have too much,” reports Philippians 4.11-12. He was saying, “I have made a decision that I am going to live my life happy.” Now “content” does not mean we do not want to see change. It does not mean we simply sit bac in neutral and accept everything as it comes. No, I like the way The Amplified Bible states Philippians 4.11: “I have learned to be content (satisfied to the point where I am not disturbed or disquieted) in whatever state I am.” That is the key. One does not have to get upset because one’s circumstances are not exactly what one wants them to be. Keep in mind that God will not allow difficulty to come into your life, unless He has a purpose for it. You may not understand His purpose right now, but that is okay. God’s ways are not our ways. If you will keep the right attitude, God has promised He will turn that situation around in your favour, and you will come out better off than you were before. We all go through dry seasons in our lives, times when we do not see anything happening. Maybe you have been praying and believing, but your prayers are not being answered; or you are giving, but you do not seem to be getting anything in return. Maybe you are doing your best to treat people right; you are going the extra kilometer to help others, but nobody is going out of their way to help you. What is going on? Is God’s Word a lie? Do these principles not work? #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
No, these dry seasons are proving grounds. God wants to see how you are going to respond. What kind of attitude will you have when you are doing the right thing, but the wrong thing keeps happening to you? God is preparing you for greater things. If you remain faithful in tough times, God will promote you. When you go through a dry season, a long period of time when you do not see anything good happening, just stay faithful; keep a smile on your face, and keep doing what you know is right. God is preparing you for great things. Often times these very successful people have to slave for over a decade to reach great success and some even longer. And they had meager living conditions and working conditions, but now are extremely successful because they kept faith in God. The center of healthy psychological and spiritual growth is the core, or innermost being, of the person. The core is not the raw, chaotic power of the unconscious that Dr. Freud portrayed. Rather, it is an innate guidance system energized by the power of God’s love. It is out of our core that dignity, courage, and love emerge that we might live life to the fullest. The subtle nuances of guidance that flow from the core enable a person to become truly human, and to fulfill one’s unique mission in life. We might understand the core as the place of divine support within the personality. God is always there, always available, and for everyone, both small and great, unbelievers as well as believers, rebels as well as those who obey Him. Our spirituality is our movement from and into the core. The core is the involuntary energy center into which flows the love of God and from which flows love for oneself and others. As Paul says, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit,” reports Romans 5.5. Thus, love is expressed through the core, and love becomes central to our understanding of the core. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
We see the see the verse “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself,” reports Luke 10.27 as the key to being an actualizing Christian. If we love God first, then God can work through us most profoundly at our cores to assist us in loving our neighbours as ourselves. The idea expressed in the verse is like a three-layer circle. The outside ring is G—for God. The second inner ring of O—for others, and at the core is D—for divine core of the personality. God, by His unmerited grace, expressed Himself to the Christian through the person’s core. One may then express what God is manifesting within oneself outward to others. We begin to understand the importance of the core, and why we call it a “divine core,” when we see it as our purest connection with God. The primary interpersonal method through which God expresses Himself is through the presence of the Holy Spirit. All the love our Father and Jesus Christ communicate to humanity is given through the Spirit. The Spirit is the Holy One in His infinite generosity, in His boundless self communication. He is divine sharing. Knowing Him is that quiet awareness of His touch, tender as the morning dew on the flowers opening up for the dawn. The will to power is that quality of a living thing that leads it to grab hold of its environment, to take in what nourishes it, as much as it can, to shoulder aside whoever is interested in the same thing, to trample whatever stands in its way, to grow, to become big and strong, and to multiply. There is no moderation; nothing is too much. The aim of the flower is to make more flowers, to transform the Universe into a flower. The drive is blind, knows no internal limit, will continue until stopped. For most of the duration of life on Earth, power was the ability to rend, to tear, to seize, to pin down, to destroy, to gobble up. Significant power in human affairs now, in essence unchanged, is in the form of money, property, position, acclaim, possessions, influence. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
The guises of power are so various, so dissembled, that power ceases to be recognized as such. We would have it that human life is discontinuous with life in the tide pools, in the jungle, that mind or spirit, something far removed from power, has come to be the essence of human life. We delude ourselves. The holders of great power may be physically frail, gentle in manner, tender in sentiment, Christian by possession, to overwhelm. Whatever appears in human life that seems unrelated to power, or even—like love, like charity, like self-sacrifice—contrary to it, is if it endures, but another mask of power. Observe the single free-floating cell. It moves about, this way and that, exploring, seeking. What does it want? It wants to seize the nutrient environment, take it in, grow bigger, stronger. It has heard God’s voice: Be fruitful and multiply. It comes about in time, in our remote evolutionary past that a number of such cells associate themselves into a community. Something new. Are not these several cells hampered in their competition with other cells by virtue of, as it were holding hands? Why, yes, very likely. And whenever so hampered, they perish. However, it comes about eventually, by chance, that some such association is not hampered but advantaged, finds itself the possessor of superior strength, greater than the summation of its constituent strengths, whereupon the association endures. The will to power of the individual cell comes to be not power but cooperation, faithful service in its subordinate place and function in life of the organism. It has become servant to the will of power of the whole. Consider a likely useful job. A youth who is alert and willing but not “verbally intelligent”—perhaps he has quit high school at the eleventh grade (the median), as soon as he legally could—chooses for auto science engineer. That is a good job, familiar to him, he watched them as a kid. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
It is careful and dirty at the same time to be an auto science engineer. In a small garage it is sociable; one can talk to the customers (women). You can please people in trouble by fixing their cars, and a man is proud to see rolling out of its own the car that limped in behind the tow truck. The pay is as good as the next fellow’s who is respected. So our young man takes this first-rate job. However, what when he learns that the transportation machines have a built-in obsolescence, that the manufacturers do not want them to be repaired or repairable? They have lobbied a law that requires them to provide spare parts for only five years (it used to be ten). Repairing the new cars is often a matter of cosmetics, not mechanics; and the repairs are pointlessly expensive—a tail fin might cost $3,000.00. The insurance rates therefore double and treble on old and new cars both. Gone are the says of keeping the jalopies in good shape, the artist-work of a proud mechanic. However, everybody is paying for foolishness, for in fact the new models are only trivially superior; the whole thing is a sell. It is hard for the young man now to maintain his feelings of justification, sociability, serviceability. If he quickly becomes cynical and time-serving, interested in a fast buck, it is not surprising. And so, on the notorious Reader’s Digest test, the investigators (coming in with a disconnected coil wire) found that 63 percent of auto science engineers charged for repairs they did not make, and if lucky they did not always take out the new fuel pump and replace it with a used one (65 percent of radio repair shops, but only 49 percent of watch repairmen “lied, overcharged, or gave false diagnoses”). There is an hypothesis that an important predisposition to juvenile delinquency is the combination of low verbal intelligence with high manual intelligence, delinquency giving a way of self-expression where other avenues are blocked by lack of schooling. A land so endowed might well apply himself to the useful trade of mechanical engineer. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
Must we remain forever trapped between two obsolete visions? In real life, few governments can afford to follow abstract theories, and we find many attempts to combine elements of both strategies. Yet the rise of the Third Wave strongly suggest that we no longer need to Ping-Pong back and forth between these two formulas. For the Third Wave has drastically altered everything. And while no theory emanating from the high-technology World, whether capitalist or Marxist in bias, is going to solve the problems of the “developing World,: and no existing models are wholly transferable, a strange new relationship is spring up between Third Wave societies and the fast-forming Fourth Wave civilization. More than once we have seen naïve attempts to “develop” a basically First Wave country by imposing on it highly incongruous Second Wave forms—mass production, mass media, factory-style education, Westminster-style parliamentary government, and the nation-state, to name a few—without recognizing that for these to operate successfully, traditional family and marriage customs, religion, and role structures would all have to be crushed, the entire culture ripped up by its roots. By astonishing contrast, Fourth Wave civilization turns out to many features—decentralized production, appropriate scale, renewable energy, de-urbanization, work in the home, tyranny, high levels of prosumption, rebellion, to name just a few—that actually resemble those found in First Wave societies. We are seeing something that looks remarkably like a dialectical return. This is why so many of today’s most startling innovations arrive with a comet’s tail of trace memories. It is this eerie sense of déjà vu which accounts for the fascination with the rural past that we find in the most rapidly emergent Third Wave societies. The Fourth and First Wave civilizations are congruous. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
Will this strange congruity make it possible for many of today’s First Wave countries to take on some of the features of Fourth Wave civilization-without swallowing the whole pill, without totally surrendering their culture or passing through the “stage” of Second and Third Wave development? Will it, in fact, be easier for some countries to introduce Fourth Wave structures than to industrialize in the classic manner? It is now possible, moreover, as it was not in the past, for a society to attain a high material standard living without obsessively focusing all its energies on production of exchange? Given the wider range of options brought by the Third Wave, cannot a people reduce infant mortality and improve life span, literacy, nutrition, and the general quality of life without surrendering its religion or values and necessarily embracing the New World materialism that accompanies the Second Wave civilization? Tomorrow’s “development” strategies will come not from Washington or Moscow or Paris or Geneva but from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. They will be indigenous, matched to actual local needs. They will not overemphasize economics at the expense of ecology, culture, religion, or family structure and the psychological dimensions of existence. They will not imitate any outside model, First Wave, Second Wave or, for that matter, Third. However, the ascent of the Third Wave places all our efforts in a new perspective. For it provides the World’s poorest nations, as well as the richest, with wholly new opportunities. The catch-up effect says, these poor nations may surpass the current World powers because our cities are archaic, while these developing nations will have to start from scratch, they have no infrastructure, no do they have the costs of coming up with the new technology. It is already there, all they need is the capital to make new and advanced cities, and their youth cherish education and are really striving to learn and overcome poverty, and they will create inventions many never dreamed of. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
So long as several humans together consider themselves to be a single body, they have but a single will, which is concerned with their common preservation and the general well-being. Then all the energies of the state are vigorous and simple; its maxims are clear and luminous; there are no entangled, contradictory interests; the common good is clearly apparent everywhere, demanding only good sense in order to be perceived. Peace, union, equality are enemies of political subtleties. Upright and simple humans are difficult to deceive on account of their simplicity. Traps and clever pretexts do not fool them. They are not even clever enough to be duped. When, among the happiest people in the World, brands of peasants are seen regulating their affairs of state under an oak tree, and always acting wisely, can one help scoring the refinements of other nations, which make themselves illustrious and miserable with so much art and mystery? A state thus governed needs very few laws; and in proportion as it become necessary to promulgate new ones, this necessity is universally understood. The first to propose them merely says what everybody has already felt; and there is no question of either intrigues or eloquence to secure the passage into law of what each has already resolved to do, once one is sure the others will do likewise. What misleads argumentative types is the fact that, since they take into account only the states that were badly constituted from the beginning, they are struck by the impossibility of maintaining such an administration. They laugh when they imagine all the foolishness a clever knave or a sly orator could get the people of Paris or London to believe. They do not know that Cromwell would have been sentenced to hard labour by the people of Berne, and Duc de Beaufort imprisoned by the Genevans. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
However, when the social bond begins to relax and the state to grow weak, when private interests begin to make themselves felt and small societies begin to influence the larger one, the common interest changes and find opponents. Unanimity no longer reigns in the votes; the general will is no longer the wall of all. Contradictions and debates arise, and the best advice does not pass without disputes. Finally, when the state, on the verge of ruin, subsists only in an illusory and vain form, when the social bond unit is broken in all the hearts, when the meanest interest brazenly appropriates the sacred name of the public good, then the general will becomes mute. Everyone, guided by secret motives, no more express their opinions as citizens than if the state had never existed; and iniquitous decrees having as their sole purpose the private interest are falsely passed under the name of laws. Does it follow from this that the general will is annihilated or corrupted? No, it is always constant, unalterable and pure; but it is subordinate to other wills that previa over it. Each human, in detaching ones interest from the common interest, clearly sees that one cannot totally separate oneself from it; but one’s share of the public misfortune seems insignificant to one compared to the exclusive good one intends to make one’s own. Apart from this private good, one wants the general good in one’s own interest, just as strongly as anyone else. Even in selling one’s vote for money one does not extinguish the general will in oneself; one evades it. The error one commits is that of changing the thrust of the question and answering a different question from the one one was. Thus, instead of saying through one’s vote it is advantageous to the state, one says it is advantageous to this person or that party that this or that view should pass. Thus the law of the public order in the assemblies is not so much to maintain the general will, as to bring it about that it is always questioned and that it always answers. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
I could present here a number of reflections about the simple right to vote in every act of sovereignty, a right that nothing can take away from the citizens; and on the right to state an opinion, to offer proposals, to divide, to discuss, which the government always takes great care to allow only to its members. However, this important subject would require a separate treaties, and I cannot say everything in one. It is easy for those who are addicted to the worship of force and violence to misread history and fall into partial or complete error. They do not understand why an individual or a nation must become and stay strong if victories are not to turn into whips which one day lash back at the victor. The Roman Eagle flew high into the sky of power but in the end fell inglorious to Earth. The Indian Lotus flourished long before yet lives today still. Why? A civilization based on higher laws will always survive where on based on violence will not. The crushing of finer moral qualities like mercy, pity, calmness, and forgiveness, which war brings about, helps to inaugurate a more materialistic period after the war. War always beings about the brutalization of most humans who fight in it and yet, paradoxically, the spiritualization of a minority. The member of slain relatives and the sight of crippled ones teaches terrible lessons. Only the fanatic or the ruthless will refuse to absorb these lessons and will see in those very sufferings a stimulant to revenge, an inducement to plot for further war. Although war ennobles many people by providing them with larger motives and wider outlooks through the union of all individuals in a common aim, although it forces them to make persona aims secondary and subordinate to the common welfare, it still brutalizes them. It arouses bestial passions and forms evil character. It is still in evil and destructive enterprise which takes away more than it gives, lowers more than elevates. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
The bitter lessons of war may be learned aright but they may also be soon forgotten. What humans, what country can feel safe so long as thermonuclear weapons remain in existence? However, if they are banned what of the lesser horrors which War Department have developed—germs, gases, rays, and other obscene nightmarish things? We give-away thanks to the Earth which gives us our home. We give-away our thanks to the rivers and lakes which give-away their water. We give-away our thanks to the trees which give-away fruit and nuts. We give-away our thanks to the wind which brings rain to water the plants. We give-away our thanks to the sun who gives-away warmth and light. All beings on Earth: the trees, the animals, the wind and the rivers give-away to one another so all is in balance. We give-away our promise to begin to learn how to stay in balance with all the Earth. Please remember us this day, O Lord our God, for our good, and be mindful of us for a life of blessing. With Thy promise of salvation and mercy, please deliver us and be gracious unto us, have compassion upon us and save us. Unto Thee do we lift our eyes for Thou are a gracious and merciful God and King. O may our eyes witness Thy return to America. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who restorest Thy divine presence unto America. We thankfully acknowledge Thee, O Lord our God, our Fathers’ God to all eternity. Our Rock art Thou, our Shield that saves through every generation. We give Thee thanks and we declare Thy praise for all Thy tender care. Our lives we trust into Thy loving hand. Our souls are ever in Thy charge; Thy wonders and Thy miracles are daily with us, evening, morn and noon. O Thou who are all-good, whose mercies never fail us, Compassionate One, whose lovingkindness never ceases, we ever hope in Thee. We thank Thee also for the miraculous and mighty deeds of liberation wrought by Thee, and for Thy victories in the battles our forefathers fought in days of old, at this season of the year. Dear Lord in Heaven, it is relatively easy to be happy when everything is going well in our lives. Please help us to be just as happy and optimistic in our outlook when things are not going so well. Please bring us through the dry wilderness experiences having learn the lessons You want us to know. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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This is a World of Struggle—We Live in a State of Perpetual War!
Always do the right thing. We are drowning in information and starving for knowledge. Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. As a ruling scheme of things is modified by inroads from outlying existence, it loses authority, is less able to banish dread; its adherents fall away. Eventually it fades, exists only in history, becomes quaint or primitive, becomes finally, a myth. Our myths were once blueprints of the architecture of reality. The Church, as defender of the regnant scheme of things, was right to stop Galileo; activities such as his import into the social order new orientations will destroy that order. For some, asceticism was a magnetic attraction because, carried to extremes and combined with proofs of divine favour, it could lead to sainthood. For the religious celibate who was exceedingly ambitious, this spiritual route had infinitely more appeal than that of complaint parenthood in a marriage. Some determined people indulged in marathon bouts of asceticism, fasting to starvation, mortifying their flesh, depriving their senses, even devising humiliations so repulsive that they could be assured few could replicate them. However, no individual would dream of drinking cancerous pus or the wash water of rotting, leprous limbs. Achieving sainthood was a serious business. Only 3,276 people who died from the beginning of Christianity to 1500 became saints, with only 87 successful candidates from 1350 to 1500. On the plus side for women, in that same period the male-to-female ratio of saints went from five to one to about two and a half to one. From 1350 to 1500—and this statistic is the most pertinent here—laywomen saints overtook males, though the greater number of clerical males gave male saints a clear lead over women in orders. For aspiring female saints, this was the most promising era ever. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Sainthood was that era’s great challenge, akin to aspiring to the Olympics or a Noble Prize today. For women severely limited in vocations other than drudging labour or motherhood, the stretch to being the very best practitioner of religion was appealing, especially to highly intelligent perfections such as Catherine of Siena, whose brief, bursting life won her the eternity of sainthood. I think these days we must particularly insist on that of the eyes. “The eye is the lamp of the body,” Jesus Christ says. “Now if your eye is clear, your whole body will be filled with light. But if your eye is not, your whole body will be darkness,” reports Matthew 6.22-23. In a civilization dominated by images, as our is today, images have become the privileged vehicle of ideology of a World saturated with sensuality, which has made human pleasures of the flesh its favourite theme, detaching it completely from the original meaning given to it by God. Today, healthy fasting from images has become more important than fasting from food. Food and drink, in itself, is never impure, but certain pictures and images are. St. John places “disordered desires of the eyes,” reports 1 John 2.16, among the three fundamental appetites, and St. Paul in turn exhorts us to “keep our eyes on what is seen rather than on what can be seen, for what can be seen is transitory but what is unseen is eternal,” reports 2 Corinthians 4.18. Visible things exert their formidable power of seduction over us precisely by making us forget that they are transitory. Their beauty is such that they appear, to a spirit still enslaved by matter, to be everlasting, although we can see with our own eyes that they wither and decay from one day to the next. St. Augustine, who was all too familiar with this struggle against the lure of material things and of deceptive beauty, can help us with his testimony. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
“Behold, You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for You. In my unloveliness, I plunged into the lovely things which You created. You were with me, but I was not with You. Created things kept me from You; yet if they had not been in You, they would not have been at all. I resist the allurements of my eyes, lest they entangle my feet. What countless seductions have men added to the things which entice the eyes, through the various arts and the works of craftsmen, in the form of clothes, shoes, vessels, and other artefacts of this kind, even in paintings and all sorts of representations—these things far overreach the bounds of necessary utility, moderation and faithful representation. Now I, who am speaking and seeing things clearly, get my steps entangled in these beautiful things…yet You pluck me out in Your mercy.” The best way to overcome the seductive power of images is not to “fix our gaze” on them, not to become “enchanted” by them. If you look at them, they have already won a victory over you. That, in fact, was all they wanted from you: that you would look at them. “Avert my eyes from pointless images,” we are taught to pray by one of the psalms (Psalms 119.37). The benefit derived from such mortification of the eyes is wonderful indeed! Through it we can experience something of tht ideal, so dear to the Fathers of the Church, of a “return to paradise,” to a time when all was pure and fresh and crystal-clear, as on a summer’s morning, “and the youthful body was so chaste that its manly gaze had the depths like a lake.” The motivation “for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven” is precisely the reason why we—especially we priests—are required to have this commitment to keep our eye and our whole body “in the life,” as Jesus Christ says. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
When brothers or sisters come to us, struggling, weak, and tempted by the flesh, they expect to find a safe hand to help them out of the quicksands of sensuality. However, to do this we need to have our feet on solid ground, otherwise we will tend to be drawn in after them ourselves. We are now seeing the spread of a repulsive impurity that threatens the very sources of human life. The Church, today as in the past, needs people who are austere with themselves, humble but sure of the inherent strength of grace, to oppose this flood of “debauchery, desire, revelry, carousing, and disgusting idolatry,” as Scripture calls in in 1 Peter 4.4, which is rushing the World to ruin. Today this is one of the most urgent services we must render, not only to the Kingdom of Heaven but to society itself. The “quality of life” truly is at stake! However, if we ourselves are defiled, or worse still engulfed and inflamed, by those quicksands, what help can we give? I believe that no motives of prudence or closing of ranks should silence the cry that is rising from the heart of our Mother the Church. If we have no qualms about denouncing the sins of others and of society, we should be equally frank in denouncing our own. There are too many priestly lives compromised, too many failures, too much depletion of energies in the Church, caused by the weaknesses of priests in this area! My brother priests, we with fear and trembling act quickly to put things right, as far as is necessary, because great is God’s pain and anger over these things. It is written that our God is a “jealous God,” reports Exodus 20.5. Who are we to defy God’s jealousy? We are the “friends of the Bridegroom,” and this title should fill us with joy, but also with a holy trepidation and with infinite respect for souls. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
It is a kind of blessed mortification of the flesh, that gains for us, with the Holy Spirit’s help, the grace of being truly “fathers,” our hearts free to love everyone without wanting to possess anyone. No price should seem to high to us, for a vocation that someone has summarized in the following words: “To live in the midst of the World, with no desire for its pleasures; to be a member of every family, yet belong to none; to share all sufferings, to penetrate all secrets, to heal all wounds; to go daily from men to God, to offer Him their homage and petitions, to return from God to men, to being them His pardon and His hope; to have a heart of iron for chastity and a heart of flesh for charity; to teach and to pardon, console and bless and to be blessed forever. O God, what a life is this, and it is thine, O priest of Jesus Christ.” When the ruling scheme of things comes to seem untrue or unimportant, one’s efforts within it become meaningless. One’s whole life becomes meaningless. The Heavenly City falls into ruins. The avenue to immortality ends on an abyss. One is cast back on one’s individual life, stares ahead through a transparence of days to death, which stands at the end. One enters a state of dread. Life then is borne forward on waves of cynicism and despair. One seeks distraction, death-defying games perhaps which invoke the specter from which one flinches. By surviving the heightened risk, one may achieve briefly the illusion of mastery. However, not for long. Within the confines of a single life death is unmasterable. Sometimes the distraction is less desperate and may contain creative possibilities. What began as a distraction from the loss of meaning and the dread of death may come to itself to have meaning and to protect against dread. The distraction, that is, becomes a new scheme of things. A committed chess player may finally lose awareness that life contains anything other than chess. A new defense against Ruy Lopez may be monument enough. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
In such a recovery one may move to a scheme of things larger than the one that has crumbled; the crumbling itself may then be seen in a perspective that makes it meaningful, perhaps even inevitable. So the Marxists of the thirties become the Freudians of the forties, and the politics is subsumed under psychology. A. A. Brill was able to comprehend the rash of strikes during the Depression as rebellious sons acting out their defiance of fathers. For a thousand years Christianity was for the New World the scheme of things organizing man’s Worldview. It stood at the apex of a hierarchy within which were included all other schemes, fraternal, artistic, scholastic, political. That World order is now irretrievably lost. I come back to Eliot’s dictum that culture is the incarnation of religion. If that is true—and I believe it is true—a culture cannot forever survive the loss of its religion; for the lesser scheme of things which that culture will still be able to offer will, whatever their merits, lack that element of the sacred which previously had derived from religion, and without which no one of the lesser schemes will be able to achieve the unification of the whole. Science, like religion, is a scheme of things hierarchically ordered, including many subordinate schemes. The compelling paradigm of one age may, like phlogiston, be but a quaint superstition for the next, without disturbing the overriding rational-scientific scheme of things of which the varying paradigms are subordinate schemes. However, science has never, not even in its greatest ascendancy, claimed such cosmic scope as Christianity. Some of the joys and sorrows of man’s condition have not, within science, found a place or an accounting. Most particularly now do they find no place; for the rational-scientific scheme of things is itself on the decline. Fewer people now see it as coextensive with reality. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
More and more frequently people look away from science, or around its edges, in search of some new vision, some new scheme of things with which to order their lives. When there is not enough man’s work, it is hard to grow up. There is “nearly full employment” (with highly significant exceptions), but there get to be fewer jobs that are necessary or unquestionably useful; that require energy and draw on some of one’s best capacities; and that can be done keeping one’s honour and dignity. In explaining the widespread troubles of adolescents and young men, this simple objective factor is not much mentioned. Let us here insist on it. By “man’s work” I mean a very simple idea, so simple that it is clearer to ingenuous boys than to most adults. To produce necessary food and shelter is man’s work. During most of economic history most men have done this drudging work, secure that it was justified and worthy of a man to do it, though often feeling that the social conditions under which they did it were not worthy of a man, thinking, “It is better to die than to live so hard”—but they worked on. When the environment is forbidding, as in the Swiss Alps or the Aran Islands, we regard such work with poetic awe. In emergences it is heroic, as when the bakers of Paris maintained the supply of bread during the French Revolution, or the milkman did not miss a day’s delivery when the bombs recently tore up London. Many also for get about the labour of the enslaved Africans. For some reason, they are always depicted working in the hot sun, as if they only had to do forced labour during the summer, but they also had to work in the winter without shoes or shirts. Just something to consider. At present there is little such subsistence work. In Communitas my brother and I guess that one-tenth of our economy is devoted to it; it is more likely one-twentieth. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Production of food is actively discouraged. Farmers are not wanted and the young men go elsewhere. (The farm population is now less than 15 percent the total population.) Building, on the contrary, is immensely needed. California needs 200,000 new units each year to keep up with expected population growth and prevent prices from further increasing, and needs increase that rate of production to 400,000 new units of housing production over the next seven years in order for prices to decline. However, because of rising house costs, the California population is seeing a decline. From 2020 to 2021, California lost 350,000 people. One would think that ambitious boys would flock to work. However, here we find that building, too, is discouraged. In a great city, for the last twenty years, hundreds of thousands in Sacramento have been ill housed, yet we do not see science, industry, and labour enthusiastically enlisting in finding the quick solution to a definite problem. The promoters are interested in long-term investments, the real estate men in speculation, the city planners in votes and grafting. The building craftsmen cannily see to it that their own numbers remain few, their methods antiquated, and their rewards high. None of these people is much interested in providing shelter, and nobody is at all interested in providing new manly jobs. Once we turn away from the absolutely necessary subsistence jobs, however, we find that an enormous proportion of our production is not even unquestionably useful. Everybody knows and also feels this, and there has recently been a flood of books about our surfeit of honey, our insolent chariots, the follies of exurban ranch houses, our hucksters and our synthetic demand. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Many acute things are said about this useless production and advertising, but not much about the workmen producing it and their frame of mind; and nothing at all, so far as I have noticed, about the plight of young fellow looking for a manly occupation. The eloquent critics of the American way of life have themselves been so seduced by it that they think only in terms of selling commodities and point out that the goods are valueless; but they fail to see that people are being wasted and their skills insulted. (TO give an analogy, in the many gleeful onslaughts on the Popular Culture that have appeared in recent years, there has been little thought of the plight of the honest artist cut off from his audience and sometimes, in public arts such as theater and architecture, from his medium.) What is strange about it? American society has tried so hard and so ably to defend the practice and theory of production for profit and not primarily for use that now it has succeeded in making its jobs and products profitable and useless. Faced by the failures of the Second Wave strategy, rocked by angry demands by the poor countries for a total overhaul of the global economy, and deeply worried about their own future—the rich nations hammered out a new strategy. Almost overnight many governments and “development agencies,” including the World Bank, the Agency for International Development, and the Overseas Development Council, switched to what can only be called a First Wave strategy. This formula is almost a carbon copy reverse of the Second Wave strategy: Instead of squeezing the peasants and forcing them into the overburdened cities, it calls for a new emphasis on rural development. Instead of concentrating on cash crops for export, it urges food self-sufficiency. Instead of striving blindly for higher GNP (Gross National Product) in the hopes that benefits will trickle down to the poor, it calls for resources to be channeled directly into “basic human needs.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
That makes sense because if the poor have no cash, they need an infusion of money, over a short-term duration, not just sporadically, and then a percentage increase to sustain them over the long term. It is the say way a trickle charger/battery maintainer works. Instead of pushing for labour-saving technologies, the new approach stresses labour-intensive production with low capital, energy, and skill requirements. Instead of building giant steel mills or large-scale urban factories, it favours decentralized, small-scale facilities designed for the village. Turning Second Wave arguments upside down, the advocates of the First Wave strategy were able to show that many industrial technologies were a disaster when transferred to poor communities. Machines broke down and went unrepaired. They needed high-cost, often raw materials. Trained labour was in short supply. Hence, the new argument ran, what was needed were “appropriate technologies.” Sometimes called “intermediate,” “Soft,” or “alternative,” these would lie, as it were, “between the sickle and the combine harvester.” Many less affluent communities actually preferred low technology equipment. Farmers and trucking companies still reeling from oil and fertilizer price hikes and from disappointments with supply chain shortages and the pandemic, actually banded further expansion into new industries and regions and urged increased production of products they knew how to produce and handle well. The intent was not merely to increase employment but to stifle urbanization by favouring rural cottage industry. There is much about this new formula that admittedly makes excellent sense. It confronts the need to slow down the massive migration to the cities. It aims to make the villages—where the bulk of the World’s less affluent live—more livable. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
This method is more sensitive to ecological factors. It stresses the use of inexpensive local resources rather than expensive imports. It challenges conventional, all-too-barrow definition of “efficiency.” It suggests a less technocratic approach to development, taking local customs and culture into account. It emphasizes improving the conditions of the poor rather than passing capital through the hands of the rich in the hopes some will trickle down. Yet after all due credit is given, the First Wave formula remains just that—a strategy for ameliorating the worst of the First Wave conditions without ever transforming them. It is a Band-Aid, not a sure, and it is perceived in exactly these terms by many governments around the World. The sudden love affair with labour-intensivity is also subject to the charge that it is self-serving for the rich. The longer the poor countries and communities remain under First Wave conditions, the fewer competitive goods they are likely to shove onto an overloaded World market. The longer they stay down on the farm, so to speak, the less oil, gas, and other scare resources they will siphon off, and the weaker and less troublesome they will remain politically. There is also, built deep into the First Wave strategy, a paternalistic assumption that while other factors of production need to be economized, the time and energy of the labourer need not be—that unrelieved backbreaking toil in the field or rice paddies is fine—so long as it is done by somebody else. Labour-intensive techniques have suddenly been rendered attractive, thanks to a medley of hippie ideology, return to the myth of the golden age and noble savage, and criticism of the reality of the capitalist World. Much of what we now call “advanced science” was developed by scientists in rich countries to solve the problems of the rich countries. Precious little research has been addressed to the everyday problems of the World’s poor. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Nonetheless, any “development policy” that begins by blinding itself to the potentials of advanced scientific and technology knowledge condemns hundreds of millions of desperate, hungry, toiling peasants to perpetual degradation. In some places, and at certain times, the First Wave strategy can improve life for large numbers of people. Yet there is painfully little evidence to show that any sizable country can ever produce enough, using premechanized First Wave methods, to invest in change. Indeed, a mass of evidence suggests the exact opposite. However, the World already has 8 billion people. If we are having problems feeding and housing all these people, perhaps more communities and countries need to promote abstinence and celibacy. We want to reduce everything from having a strain on the planet, from cows to automobiles, but maybe humans need to practice self-control and realize it is a good idea to stop reproducing because they are fruitful, but no longer prospering. In a World of exploding diversity we shall have to invent scores of innovative strategies and stop looking for models ether in the industrial present—or in the preindustrial past. It is time we began to look at the emergent future. Once the legislative power has been well established, it is a matter of establishing the executive power in the same way. For this latter, which functions only by means of particular acts, not being of the essence of the former, is naturally separate from it. Were it possible for the sovereign, considered as such, to have the executive power, right and fact would be so completely confounded that we would no longer know what is law and what is not. And the body of politic, thus denatured, would soon fall prey to the violence against which it was instituted. Since the citizens are all equal by the social contract, what everyone should do can be prescribed by everyone. On other hand, no one has the right to demand that someone else do what one does not do for oneself. Now it is precisely this right, indispensable for making the body politic live and move, that the sovereign gives the prince in instituting the government. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Several people have clamed that this act of establishment was a contract between the populace and the leaders it gives itself, a contract by which are stipulated between the two parties the conditions under which the one obliges itself to command and the other to obey. It will be granted, I am sure, that this is a strange way of entering into a social contract! However, let us see if this opinion is tenable. First, the supreme authority cannot be modified any more than it can be alienated; to limit it is to destroy it. It is absurd and contradictory for the sovereign to acquire a superior. To obligate oneself to obey a master is to return to full liberty. Moreover, it is evident that his contract between the people and some or other persons would be a particular act. Whence it follows that this contract could be neither law nor an act of sovereignty, and that consequently it would be illegitimate. It is also clear that the contracting parties would, in relation to one another, be under only the law of nature and without any guarantee of their reciprocal commitments, which is contrary in every way to the civils state. Since the one who has force at one’s disposal is always in control of its employment, it would come to the same thing if we were to give the name contract to the act of a human who would say to another, “I am giving you all my goods, on the condition that you give me back whatever you wish.” There is only one contract in the state, that of the association, and that alone excludes any other. It is impossible to imagine any public contract that was not a violation of the first contract. The act that institutes the government is not a contract but a law. The trustees of the executive power are not the masters of the populace but its officers; the populace can establish and remove them when it pleases; for them there is no question of contracting, but of obeying; and in taking on the functions the state imposes on them, they merely fulfill their duty as citizens, without in any way having the right to dispute over the conditions. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
Thus, when it happens that the populace institutes a hereditary government, whether it is monarchial within a single family or aristocratic within a class of citizens, this is not a commitment it is entering. It is a provisional form that it gives the administration, until the populace is pleased to order it otherwise. It is true that these changes are always dangerous, and that the established government should never be touched except when it becomes incompatible with the public good. However, this circumspection is a maxim of politics and not a rule of law [droit], and the state is no more bound to leave civil authority to its leaders than it is to leave military authority to its generals. Again, it is true that in such cases it is impossible to be too careful about observing all the formalities required in order to distinguish a regular and legitimate act from a seditious tumult, and the will of an entire people from the clamour of a faction. And it is here above all tht one must not grant anything to odious cases except what cannot be refused according to the full rigour of the law [droit]. And it is also from this obligation that the price derives a great advantage in preserving his power in spite of the people, without anyone being able to say that he has usurped it. For in appearing to use only his rights, it is quite easy for him to extend them, and under the pretext of public peace, to prevent assemblies destined to reestablish good order. Thus he avails himself of a silence he keeps from being broken, or of irregularities he causes to be committed, to assumes that the opinion of those who are silenced by fear is supportive of him, and to punish those who dare to speak. This is how the decemvirs, having been first elected for one year and then continued for another year, tried to retain their power in perpetuity by on longer permitting the comitia to assemble. And it is by this simple means that all the governments of the World, once armed with the public force, sooner or later usurp the public authority. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
The periodic assemblies I have spoken of earlier are suited to the prevention or postponement of this misfortune, especially when they have no need for a formal convocation. For then the prince could not prevent them without openly declaring himself a violator of the laws and an enemy of the states. The opening of these assemblies, which have as their sole object the preservation of the social treaty, should always take place through two propositions which can never be suppressed, and which are voted on separately: The first: Does it please the sovereign to preserve the present form of government? The second: Does it please the people to leave its administration to those who are now in charge of it? I am presupposing here what I believe I have demonstrated, namely that in the state there is no fundamental law that cannot be revoked, not even the social compact. For if all the citizens were to assemble in order to break this compact by common agreement, no one could doubt that it was legitimately broken. Grotius even thinks that each person can renounce the state of which one is a member and recover one’s natural liberty and one’s goods by leaving the country. (On the understanding that one does not leave in order to evade one’s duty and to be exempt from serving the homeland the moment it needs us. In such circumstances, taking flight would be criminal and punishable; it would no longer be withdrawal, but desertion.) However, it would be absurd that all the citizens together could not do what each of the can do separately. Looking at Census facts, what I found interesting were the demographics. In California, 72 percent of the population is White alone, 6.5 percent is Black, alone. 1.6 percent is American Indian. 15.5 percent is Asian alone. Less than 1 percent is Native Hawaiian. 4 percent is two or more races. 40 percent is Hispanic. We have seen a huge decline in the Black population. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Psychological problems are entangled with interpersonal problems beyond those in the family of origin or orientation. This is a point that is sadly overlooked by those who seek to explain psychopathology by looking back to early childhood experiences with parents. For example, young adults who are unmarried place a great deal of importance on dating/romantic relationships and platonic friendships. For such people, social support from family members can do little to minimize their loneliness; what they seek are rewarding relationships with dating/romantic partners and friends. When these relationships are unavailable or distressed, psychological problems are often evident. The ill effects of conflict on personal relationships are well established. The experience of excessive and hostile conflict can have equally severe intrapersonal consequences. Themes of destructive conflict are evident in the findings on eating disorders, personality disorders, alcoholism, schizophrenia, psychogenic sexual dysfunction, and somatoform disorders. Conflict is an interpersonal phenomenon that appears heightened in both family and other relationships. In a very fundamental way, most people appear to seek and desire some form of harmony with at least a few other people with whom they share their lives. When this harmony is corroded by conflict, mental health problems often emerge. At the same time, the experience of a mental healthy problem such as alcoholism or a personality disorder can also disrupt the harmony inherent in close personal relationships. This itself has the potential to propagate intense interpersonal conflict. Interpersonal rejection is a social phenomenon that purses most mental health problems. Although depression is one of the problems that has focused most attention on interpersonal rejection, thanks to Coyne’s interactional theory, this phenomenon is evident among people with schizophrenia, eating disorders, and personality disorders. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Human beings can be remarkably intolerant of those who present a less than “normal,” competent, or personal image. The social-interactional goals of most people leave little room for significant communication with others who have obvious symptoms of psychopathology. Consequently, psychologically distressed individuals are often shunned and rejected by others—even those with whom they have share close relationships. The phenomenon of interpersonal rejection can be devastating to one’s sense of self-worth. The realization that others do not like, care for, or want to spend time with the self is profoundly distressing for all but the most pathologically avoidant individuals. The anguish that is perpetuated by interpersonal rejection can exacerbate minor psychological frailty into full-blown mental disorder. Of course, as the symptoms of poor mental health become more prominent, the likelihood of eliciting further rejection is increased. Again, the potential for a vicious cycle between psychological and interpersonal problems is clearly evident. Interpersonal rejection may play a role in more macroscopic interpersonal issues, such as availability of close relationships. One of the most fundamental and basic interpersonal problems associated with psychopathology is a lack of general personal relationships. The social networks of people with schizophrenia, depression, social anxiety, and eating disorders, for example, are notoriously impoverished. Once again, there is reason to suspect that this interpersonal problem is both a cause and a consequence of psychological problems. By their social nature, most humans have a very basic need to seek out and form relationships with others. Mental health appears to deteriorate in parallel with the disappearance of opportunities for experiencing the pleasures of personal relationships. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
Like interpersonal rejection, experiencing the unavailability of personal relationships can lead to feelings of worthlessness, despair, and grief. Over time, situational attributions for such a state of affairs may be difficult to sustain and eventually give way to feelings of personal blame and responsibility. A deficiency in personal relationships may be taken as evidence of personal deviance or defectiveness. This mental anguish—coupled with the absence of opportunities to share optimistic or negative affective states with other people, and to enjoy their company and social support—is a potent recipe for serious psychological problems. Certain interpersonal processes that have been implicated in mental health problems, such as rejection and conflict, are fairly ubiquitous in that they occur in both family and other relationship context. However, other processes, such as unavailability of personal relationships and loneliness, appear to be largely unrelated to family issues. In many cases, these processes are present in the lives of people with psychological problems, maintaining, prolonging, and exacerbating their condition. The fears which war engenders and the deprivations which it causes are painful. Yet for those who are too attached to outward things they are often necessary teacher. Out of the fears, great heroism has been learned; out of the deprivations, great unselfishness; but those who respond to such lessons are too few, the influence of the lessons themselves too ephemeral. When it is said that way is a purifying agent, it is not meant that our morals are purified; on the contrary, war notoriously makes them temporarily worse. By enthroning passion and displacing reason, by generating wild fears and brutal hatreds, the very smoke of war tends to smother those civilized self-disciplines which make for a decent living during the normal times of peace. This is a World of struggle. The word “peace” has only a relative meaning. The notion that a society, a civilization, or an individual can exist in a continuously inert state is an illusory one. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
As soon as one kind of war ends, another kind of war begins. A peace of endless stagnation is impossible. That last kind of peace is that wherein the forces which must inevitably contend against each other are properly balanced. A great war brings humanity to an emotional crisis. Such a crisis shakes it out of complacency and indifference toward religious values. War, with its frightful threat to life and possessions, its dreadful menace to personal relations, forces humankind to revise long-established attitudes for better or worse. If it opens one door to atheism, it also opens another door to religion and still another to mysticism. We live in a state of perpetual war. Like the Winchester Mansion, back and forth go the ghostly armies of construction and destruction. Sometimes one and sometimes the other holds the field in triumph. Death seekers clearly intend to end their lives at the time they attempt suicide. This singleness of purpose may last only a short time. It can change to confusion the very next hour or day, and then return again in a short order. Dave, a middle-aged executive, was a death seeker. He was devoted to his wife and two teenage sons who respected him. They lived in an upper-middle-class neighbourhood, had a spacious house, and enjoyed a life of comfort. He had many misgivings about suicide and was ambivalent about it for weeks, but on Tuesday night he was a death seeker—clear in his desire to die and acting in a manner that virtually guaranteed a fatal outcome. Death ignorers do not believe that their self-inflicted death will mean the end of their existence. They believe they are trading their present lives for a better or happier existence. Billy never truly recovered from his mother’s death. He was only 7 years old and unprepared for such a loss. His father sent him to live with his grandparents for a time, to a new school with new kind and a new way of life. In Billy’s mind, all these changes were for the worse. He missed the joy and laughter of the past. He missed his home, his father, and his friends. Most of all he missed his mother. He did not really understand her death. His father said that she was in Heaven now and at peace, happy; that she has not wanted to die or to leave Billy; that an accident had taken her life. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
Billy’s unhappiness and loneliness continued day after day and he began to put things together in his own way. If he could join his mother, Billy believed that he could be happy again. He felt she was waiting for him, waiting for him to come to her. These thoughts seemed so right to him; they brought him comfort and hope. One evening, shortly after saying good night to his grandparents, Billy climbed out of bed, went up the stairs to the roof of their apartment house, and jumped to his death. In his mind, he was joining his mother in Heaven. Billy was a death ignorer, like many other adult believers in a hereafter who experience death by suicide to reach another form of life. To further highlight this illustration, in 1997, the World was shocked to learn that 39 members of an unusual cult named Heaven’s Gate had experienced death by suicide at an expensive house outside San Diego, California. It turned out that these members had acted out of the belief that their deaths would free their spirits and enabled them to ascend to a “Higher Kingdom.” It is a simple yet profound truth: Happiness ins a choice. When you get up in the morning, you can choose to be happy and enjoy that day, or you can choose to be unhappy and go around with a sour attitude. It is up to you. If you make the mistake of allowing your circumstances to dictate your happiness, then you risk missing out on God’s abundant life. You might as well choose to be happy and enjoy your life! When you do that that, not only will you feel better, but your faith will cause God to show up and work wonders. God knows that we have difficulties, struggles, and challenges. However, it was never His intention for us to live one day “on cloud nine,” and the next day down in the dumps, defeated and depressed because we have problems. God want us to live consistently. He wants us to enjoy every single day of our lives. To do so, one must learn to live in today, one day at a time; better yet, make the most of this moment. It is good to have a big picture outlook, to set goals, to establish budgets and make plans, but if you are always living in the future, you are never really enjoying the present in the way God wants you to. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
When we focus too much on the future, we are often frustrated because we do not know what is coming. Naturally, the uncertainty increases our stress level and creates a sense of insecurity. We need to understand, though, that God has given us the grace to live today. He has not yet given us tomorrow’s grace. When we get to tomorrow, we will have the strength to make it through. God will give us what we need. However, if we are worried about tomorrow right now, we are bound to be frustrated and discouraged. By an act of your will, choose to start enjoying your life right now. Learn to enjoy your family, your friends, your health, your work, the blue sky, green grass, and trees; enjoy everything in your life. Happiness is a decision you make, not an emotion you feel. Certainly there are times in all our lives when bad things happened, or things do not turn out as we had hoped. However, that is when we must make a decision that we are going to be happy in spite of our circumstances. God would not let us go through something that is too difficult to handle. And if your desire is great enough, you can stay calm and cool no matter what comes against you in life. God gives us His peace on the inside, but it is up to us to make use of that peace. Especially in the pressure points of life, we have to learn how to tap into God’s supernatural peace. The way you do that is by making a conscious choice, a calculated decision if you will, choosing to stay happy. Life is flying by, so do not waste another moment of your precious time being angry, unhappy, or worried. “This is the day which the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it,” reports Psalm 118.24. When we are blessed with grace, we find ourselves loved and affirmed in such a way that we love God and others more than ever. The Christian may receive this grace through prayer, inspiration from the Scriptures, meditation, church services, or daily Spirit-led interactions with others. However, the essential ingredient, which then becomes an irreversible aspect of our own core, is that such love is by nature unmerited—we are loved by the grace of God, not because of our achievements or what we do. We are simply loved. And such love radiates outward in the same way. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
Others need not merit our love—we simply love them, too. One is most grace-full when one experiences others in their essential core, loving them as purely as God does. God has the power to do anything. He has the ability to destroy the devil, but He cannot do it now because of His Word. His Word is out and He will not go against it. We know what the end is going to be because the overall picture is in the Bible. Read the back of the book—we win! The devil will be put in the pit for a thousand years, then loosed for a little time, and finally cast into the lake of fire. However, until that time, God has done all He is going to do about the devil. It is your responsibility to take care of him. You have dominion. You are to cast him out. God’s Word gives us instructions on how to use our authority to defeat satan: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you,” reports James 4.7. “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: whom resist steadfast in the faith,” reports 1 Peter 5.8-9. God walks in His garden still, not necessarily with soupy intellectuals from the University, but with salt-of-the-Earth people from everyday life. He reveals Himself as a long-lost friend to the Humble. He teaches the Terrible Tots their Aleph-Beth’s, as He taught the Psalmist his (119.130). He filters human knowledge for the Pure of Mind, as Luke recorded (24.25). The Curious and the Proud—well, they require special attention. He gives them grace, yes, but He just makes it harder for them to find. In conclusion—and I do have a conclusion—Human Reason is frail and fallible; True Faith, however, never fails, never falls. Every ratiocination and investigation into the nature and work of the Sacrament ought to follow the guidelines established by Faith. That is to say, they should preempt Faith’s prerogatives; nor should they infringe on any Faith’s boundaries. Why? In the realm of this Most Holy Superexcellent Sacrament, Faith and Love rule. And it is quite clear to Me that not all of their machination are clear to you. “Peace I leave you; My peace I give to you; not as the World gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful,” reports John 14.27. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Dear Lord in Heaven, when things happen that would normally bother me, please help me to put my foot down and says, “No, I am not going to let that take my peace. I am not going to rule over my emotions. I am not going to allow myself to get upset and aggravated. I am going to choose to be happy.” The completeness of the mystic experience is proportionate to and measurably by, intensity. So long as it remans a passing and temporary state, so long ought it be regarded by the human who has had it as affording an incomplete enlightenment. The mystic experience is not necessarily complete in itself when it happens to a human for the first time—or for the fourth time. Nor are its effects necessarily permanent. They may disappear even after a whole year’s existence. Unless the personal human has matured in brain and heart and balance, the efforts to transcend ego will necessarily be premature and the glimpse, if it happens, will be of a mixed character. We return thanks to our mother, the Earth which sustains us. We return thanks to the rivers and streams, which supply us with water. We return thanks to all the herbs, which furnish medicines for the cure of our aliments. We return thanks to the corn, and to her sisters, the beans and squashes, which give us life. We return thanks to the wind, which moving the air has banished diseases. We return thanks to the moon and stars, which have given us their light when the sun was gone. We return thanks to the sun, that he has looked upon the Earth with a beneficent eye. Lastly, we return thanks to the Great Spirit, in whom is embodies all goodness, and who directs all things for the good of His children. O Lord our God, please be gracious unto Thy people America and please accept their prayer. Restore the worship to Thy sanctuary and receive in love and favour the supplication of America. May the worship of Thy people be ever acceptable unto Thee. Our God and God of our Fathers, may our remembrance and the remembrance of our forefathers comes before Thee. Please remember the Messiahs of the house of America, Thy servant, and Thy Holy City, and all Thy people, the house of America. Please grant us deliverance and well being, lovingkindness, life and pace on this day of the New Moon; the Feast of Unleavened Bread; the Feast of Tabernacles. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
MILLS STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH
Rancho Cordova, CA |
Now Selling!
Yesterday you came my way, and when your smiled at me, in my heart I felt a thrill to see this Cresleigh Homes at Mills Station was meant to be. Mills Station at Cresleigh Ranch is Rancho Cordova’s newest home community! This charming neighborhood offers an array of home types with eye catching architecture styles such as Mission, Mid-Century Modern, California Modern, and Contemporary Farmhouse.
Located off Douglas Road and Rancho Cordova Parkway, the residents of Cresleigh Ranch will enjoy, being just minutes from shopping, dining, and entertainment, and quick access to Highway 50 and Grant Line Road providing a direct route into Folsom.
Residents here also benefit from no HOA fees, two community parks and the benefits of being a part of the highly-rated Elk Grove Unified School District. https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/
Randolph Harris II International Institute 