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May the World Used to be Flat–How do they Dare to be so Arrogant?!

God touch will come and it will heal. That is what He said to the Centurion, when he asked the Lord to help His paralyzed servant; Matthew had the story correct (8.7). Out of your skin you may be, but God is not the cause. It is the grizzly temptation that bothers you, the groundless fear that dithers you. Why do you work now about what is going to happen in the future? That way you will be shedding tear after tear year after year! “Every day has its own malice,” or so that Great Matthew has pointed out (6.34). Useless, and less than useless, it is to feel puzzled or pleased about the future. Either way you have little to gain. That is because such wool-gathering rarely produces a cloak. However, it not that just Humankind, to play about with fanciful projects? Your spiritual progress has been modest, I must say, if you allow yourself to be dazzled by the Enemy. Why? One does not care a joy whether one’s illusions or deceptions are right or wrong. They cause prostration, all right, but one does not care a tittle whether it is out of love for the present or fear of the future; I say something about that in John (14.27). Humans can orient themselves in two contradictory modes: one’s main interest, love, concern—or as Dr. Freud puts it, one’s libido (energy dealing with pleasures of the flesh)—can either be directed toward oneself or toward the World outside: people, ideas, nature, humanmade things. Narcissism is a necessary intermediate stage between autoeroticism and “object-love.” It is not primarily a perversion of pleasures of the flesh, the passionate love for one’s own body, but it is a complement of the instinct of self-preservation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
The most important evidence of the existence of narcissism came from the analysis of schizophrenia. Schizophrenic patients were characterized by two features: megalomania and diversion of their interests from the external World—from people and things. The interest they had withdrawn from others they directed to their own person—and thus developed megalomania; the image of their own self as omniscient and omnipotent. This concept of psychosis as a state of extreme narcissism was one basis of the idea of narcissism. The other was the normal development of the infant. Dr. Freud assumed that the infant exists in a completely narcissistic state, at the moment of birth, as it had been in the intrauterine state. Slowly the infant learns to take an interest in people and things. This original state of “libidinal cathexis of the ego” fundamentally persists and is related to the object-cathexis “much as the body of an amoeba is related to the pseudopodia which it puts out. Dr. Freud’s discover of narcissism not only explained the nature of psychosis but it also showed that the same narcissism exists in the average adult as exists in the child; to put it differently, that the “normal person” partakes to some lesser or greater degree in that attitude which, when quantitatively stronger, constitutes psychosis. Narcissism plays a huge role in survival. While from a standpoint of values the maximal reduction of narcissism is desired, from the standpoint of biological survival narcissism is a normal desirable phenomenon. If humans did not put their own goals and needs before those others, how could they survive? One would lack the energetic qualities of egoism necessary to take care of one’s own life. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22

To put it differently: the biological interests of the survival of the race requires a certain amount of narcissism among its members; the ethico-religious goal of the individual, on the contrary, is the maximal reduction of narcissism toward the zero point. In Victorian times, love for most men did not exist expect as the attachment of the male to the feeding women. To be loved (the male by the conquered woman) gives strength, to love actively weakens. While it was presumed the male’s love was anaclitic, id est, it had its object the person who feeds him, it was assumed that woman’s love is narcissistic, that they only can love themselves, and cannot participate in that great “achievement” of men: to love the hand that feeds them. Several men in Victorian times were unaware that the woman of the elite class were cold precisely because their men wanted the cold, id est, to behave like property, and not even to grant them “separate but equal” role in the sleeping chambers. The bourgeois man got the woman as he imaged her and he rationalized his superiority by believing this limited female—limitations imposed by him—was only concerned with wanting to be fed and take care of. This is of course typical male propaganda in the war between the genders, another example of which is that woman are less realistic and less courageous than men. Indeed, this insane World which does not seem to stop running into catastrophe is governed by man, but would a society run by woman be any better? All dominant groups tend to be just as corrupt, if not more so than the processor. In fact, some even try to inflict the pain and oppression on purpose because they are hurting, even though people have been enlightened. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22

However. As to courage, many people know that in most cases of illness women are usually much better able to cope with difficulties than the typical male, who wants mother to help them. As to narcissism, women are forced to present themselves attractively, because they are exhibits on the slave market; but when they love they usually love more deeply and reliably than the average man, who is characterized as roaming around and trying to satisfy their narcissism, invested in their male organ of which they are so proud of. To narcissistic persons the only sector that seems fully real is their own person. Feeling, thoughts, ambitions, wishes, body, family, everything that they are or what is theirs. What they think is true, because they think it, and even their bad qualities are beautiful because they are theirs. Everything related to them has colour and full reality. Everybody and everything outside is gray, ugly, and without colour, hardly existing. Here is an example: A man called me to ask for a meeting. I answered that I had no free time in the week but could see him during the following week. He responded by pointing out that he lived very near to my office and hence it would take him little time to come over. When I answered that this was indeed convenient for him but it did not alter the fact that I had no free time, he was unimpressed and continued with the same argument. This is an example of a rather sever case of narcissism, because he was totally unable to distinguish between my needs and his. It is obvious that it makes a great difference how intelligent, artistically talented, knowledgeable a very narcissistic person is. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22

Many artists and creative writers, music conductors, dancers and politicians are extremely narcissistic. Their narcissism does not interfere with their art; on the contrary it often helps. They have to express what they subjectively feel, and the more important their subjectivity is to their performance, the better they perform. The narcissistic person is often particularly attractive for one’s very narcissism. Think for example of a narcissistic entertainer. One is filled with oneself; one exhibits one’s body and one’s wit with the pride of owning a rare jewel. One has no doubts about oneself as a less narcissistic person necessarily has. What one says, does, the way one walks and moves is enjoyed by oneself like a precious performance and one oneself is one of one’s greatest admirers. I assume that the reason for the attractiveness of the narcissistic person lies in the fact that one portrays an image of what the average person would to be: one is sure of oneself, has no doubts, feels always on top of the situation. The average person, in contract, does not have this certainty; one is often plagued by doubts, prone to admire others as being superior to oneself. One may ask why extreme narcissism does not repel people. Why do they not resent the lack of real love? This question is easy to answer: real love is so rare today as to be almost outside the field of vision of most people. In the narcissist one sees someone who at least loves one person, oneself. The completely untalented narcissist, on the other hand, may be only ridiculous. If the narcissistic person is extremely gifted, one’s success is virtually guaranteed. Narcissistic people are often to be found among successful politicians. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
Even if they are talented or gifted they would not be so impressive without the narcissism that, as it were, oozed out of them. Instead of feeling “How do they dare to be so arrogant?” many people are so attracted by the narcissistic self-image projected that they see in it nothing more than the adequate self-appreciation of a very talented person. It is important to understand that narcissism, which may be called “self-infatuation,” is in contrast to love, if we mean by love the fact of forgetting oneself and caring more for others than oneself. Of equal important is the contradiction between narcissism and reason. Since I have just talked about politician as examples of narcissistic personalities, a statement about the conflict between narcissism and reason seems absurd. However, I am not speaking of intelligence but of reason. Manipulative intelligence is the capacity to use thinking for manipulating the World outside for humans’ purposes. Reason is the faculty to recognize things as they are, regardless of their value or danger to us. Reason aims at the recognition of things and persons in their suchness, undistorted by our subjective interest in them. Cleverness is a form of manipulating intelligence, but wisdom is an outcome of reason. If one’s manipulative intelligence is, the narcissistic person can be extremely clever. However, one is apt to make sever mistakes, because one’s narcissism seduces one into overestimating the value of one’s own wishes and thoughts and into assuming that the result has already been accomplished, simply because it is one’s wish or one’s thought. Narcissism is often confused with egoism. An egoistic person may have an undistorted view of the World. One may not give to one’s thoughts and feelings a greater value than they have in the outside World. One may see the World, including one’s role in it, quite objectively. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22

Egoism is basically a form of greediness; the egoist wants everything for oneself, one does not like to share, one perceives others as threats rather than as possible friends. Self-interest prevails in them more or less completely; but the prevalence of self-interest does not necessarily distort the egoist’s picture of oneself and the World around one, as it does with the narcissistic person. Among all character orientations narcissism is by far he most difficult to recognize in oneself. To the extent to which a person is narcissistic one glorifies oneself and is unable to see one’s defects and limitation. One is convinced that the image one has of oneself as a wonderful person is correct, and since it is one’s image one sees no reason o doubt it. Another reason why narcissism is so difficult to detect in oneself is that many narcissistic persons try to demonstrate that they are anything but narcissistic. One of the most frequent examples of this is the attempt of narcissistic persons to hide their narcissism behind behaviour which is characterized by concern and help for others. They spend so much energy and time in helping others, even making sacrifices, being kind, ex cetera, all with the aim (usually unconscious) of denying this narcissism. The same goes, as we all know, for persons who are particularly modest or humble. Not only do such people often try to hide their narcissism, they satisfy it at the same time by being narcissistically proud of their kindness or modesty. A nice example of this is the joke about a dying man overhearing his friends who were at his bedside praise him—how learned he was, how intelligent, how kind, how concerned. The dying man listened and when they had finished praising he angrily shouted, “And you failed to mention my humility!” #RandolphHarris 7 of 22

Narcissism wears many masks: saintliness, obedience to duty, kindness and love, humility, pride. It ranges from the attitude of a haughty and arrogant person to that of a modest and unobtrusive one. Everybody has many tricks to disguise one’s narcissism and is hardly aware of them and their function. If the narcissistic person is successful in persuading others to admire one, one is happy and functions well. However, when one is without success in convincing others, if one’s narcissism is pricked, as it were, one many collapse like a deflated balloon; or one may be intensely furious, filled with unforgiving rage. To inflict a wound on a person’s narcissism may either produce a depression or an unforgiving hate. Therefore, have faith in God’s mercy. Often when you think that you have gone a step too far, you will find another chance for earning even more merit than before. When something bad happens to you, no, it is not a total loss. Do not make long-term commitments to do or not to do in the light of present pleasure or displeasure. Do not cling overlong to a mood or mode, no matter what its source; people will think it is chronic. If from time to time God’s sends one some tribulation or withdraws some consolation, do no think you are a derelict, a beached and abandoned hulk. After all, it all lead to the same destination, that is to say, to the Kingdom of Heaven. “It is You who blesses the righteous person, O LORD; You surround one with favour as with a shield,” reports 5.12. For me and the rest of the Devouts, it is more helpful to be exercised by adversity than entertained by prosperity. God knows our hidden thoughts and what is wrong with that? He finds it helpful in planning our salvation. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22

Doing without consolation for a while is not all that bad. It prevents us from feeling too good about the spiritual tracks one is making or the ladder of perfection one is climbing. What God has given, He can take back, and what God has taken back, He can give again. Whenever He wants. When God gives, it is His to give. When He takes it back, it is not really ours to keep. Every gift of God’s is good, and “all gifts are good,” at least according to the Letter of James (1.17). If God sends us a gift that hurts, do not get uppity, do not let one’s heart go pit-a-pat. God can soon lighten the load, and every burden will be changed into joy. As for God’s dealings with us, He trust we will find them satisfactory; that is to say, fair and just in every way, with a little mercy mixed in. So, we are right in recommended God to others. “When men began to increase in number on the Earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of human were beautiful, and they married any of hem they chose. Then the LORD said, ‘My Spirit will no contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years.’ The Nephilim were on the Earth in those days—and also afterward—when the son of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the Earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the Earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the LORD said, ‘I will wipe humankind, whom I have created, from the face of the Earth—humans and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and bird of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them.’ However, Noah found favour in the eyes of the LORD. This is the account of Noah,” reports Genesis 6.1-9. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Every time you encounter a road block on your spiritual journey, you should not go sit by the side of the road and be sad; rather, you should rejoice and give thanks. Why? God has afflicted us with woes, yes, but you are not the only one. Yes, God knows the lash of John has let this be known to us. “As the Father has loved Me, so I love you,” report John 15.9. That is a lot of comfort to many pour souls, seeing how things eventually get sorted out between God, Jesus Christ, and ourselves. “I will exalt You, O LORD, for you lifted me out of the depths and did not let my enemies gloat over me. O LORD my God, I called You for help and you healed me. O LORD, you brough me up from the grave; you spared me from going down into the pit. Sing to the LORD, you saints of His; praise His holy name. For His anger lasts a lifetime; weeping may remain for a nigh, but rejoicing comes in the morning,” reports Psalm 30.1-5. God has sent us off not to minor joys but to great battles; not to honour ceremonies but to contempt encounters; not to leisurely activities but to laborious exercises; not to relax without anxiety, but to endure with patience, like the seeds that fell on the good soil in His parable in Luke (8.15). As hey germinated, so should you. All words worth remembering. “The LORD is my portion; I have promised to keep Your words. I sought Your Favour with all my heart; be gracious to me according to Your word,” reports Psalm 119.57-58. We must wake up every morning and declare God’s favour in our lives. Every morning, thank God for opening doors of opportunity and brining success into your life. God will make people desire to help you because they can see His love and light in your soul. They know that there is something special about you. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Anytime you get into a hard situation, declare the favour of God in your business. Yet, I think it is important we remain rational because limitless expectations can breed endless frustrations. “Blessed is one who expects nothing, for one shall never be disappointed,” counseled the poet Alexander Pop in a 1727 letter. Life’s greatest disappointments, as well as its highest achievements, are born of the most optimistic expectations. In saying that, it is a balancing act to expect the most extraordinary things, but to also know life happens on God’s timeline and when He sees fit. Yet, it is important to remain optimistic and not be depressed. Meaning and purpose is derived from spiritual insight. Intellectual knowledge is inseparable from the emotional and spiritual. Forgiveness of others who cause distress (including parents) complete the therapeutic restoration of self. Therefore, even in the mundane aspects of life, we will not be imposing on God’s goodness by declaring His favour. He wants us to act on it. For example, maybe you are deciding between a Cresleigh Havenwood home, and there is someone else interested in the same lot you are. Simply declare, “Father, I thank You that I have Your favour, and that You are going to make a way for me where it appears that there is no way right now.” Then keep trusting God and looking for the opportunity to open. God is supreme. Humility, acceptance of (divine” authority, and obedience (to the will of God) are virtues. God has your best interests at heart, and He is working everything for your good. Like a good parent, Goes does not always give you what you want. However, He will always give you what you need. A delay may spare you from something you are not supposed to experience, or maybe something else is opening up for you that will encourage you even more. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22

Personal identity is eternal and derived from the divine. Relationship with God defines self-worth. When you live favour-minded, you will begin to see God’s goodness in the everyday, ordinary details of the architecture in your home, at work job, in the landscape, or in your soul. You may be at Cresleigh’s Design Center picking out the materials for your house and praying you get the lot someone else just purchased, when a sale agent taps you on the shoulder and says, “Come with me. I have this lot that would be perfect for you, and this particular house has a few incentives from the builder, which will cost you nothing.” When you are living in favour-minded, God’s blessings seem to chase you down and overtake you. Also, when you are a Christian, remember that your values may be quite different from those of other people. Many people expect psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers to be guided by value-free professionalism and objective science, but much of their research, theories, and techniques are implicit expression of humanistic and naturalistic belief system that dominate both psychology and American universities generally. So antireligious prejudice would not be surprising. To them, Christians are perceived as religious nuts. However, religious communities provide both a relief structure and loving, emotional support which often inhibits the manifestation of psychological and physical disorders. There is a code of self-control in terms of absolute values, strict morality, and universal ethics. Christian groups also often endorse high standards of impulse control and as a result have low rates of alcoholism, drug addition, divorce, and emotional instability. There tends to be a stable marriage and family life, which pays psychological and social dividends. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22

Christian values are important and should be acknowledged more openly because they tend to strongly support humanistic values of love, freedom of choice, and honesty. Nevertheless, values that permeate psychotherapy should be openly acknowledged and tested; moreover, psychologists should consider the possibility that genuine spiritual-religious values may indeed have beneficial, health-promoting consequences. Therefore, when those kind things you have been praying for happen, be grateful. Be sure to thank God for His favour, and for His special assistance in your life. Do not take God’s favour for granted. When you are living favour-minded, God’s blessings seem to chase you down and overtake you. You will not be able to outrun the good things of God. Everywhere you, go things are going to change in your favour. Someone is going to want to share God’s blessings with you and they may not even know why. That is why one should get in the habit of consistently speaking God’s favour over our lives. And not simply over our own lives, but over our businesses, our employees, our children, our ultimate driving machine, and our families. “Father, I thank You my clients are loyal to me, and that this property is going to sell I thank You that Your favour is leading me to the right people. Your favour is causing people to want to buy this home.” That is why one must speak God’s favour over every area of one’s life. Remember, the more favour-minded you are, the more God’s favour you are going to experience. God sends His Disciples off not to minor joys but to great battles; not to honours ceremonies but to contempt encounters; not to leisurely activities but to laborious exercises; not to relax without anxiety, but to endure with patience, like the seeds that fell on the god soil in His parable in Luke (8.15). As they germinated, so should you. All words worth remembering. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
Thank You, Father, that You are opening doors for me that no one can shut. Thank You for causing people to be kind to me and to assist me. You make a way for me where it seems there is no way. The big corporation was the characteristic business organization of the industrial era. Today thousand such behemoths, both private and public, bestride the Earth, producing a large proportion of all the goods and services we buy. Seen from the outside, they present a commanding appearance. They control vas resources, employ millions of workers, and they deeply influence not merely our economies but our political affairs as well. Their computers and corporate jets, their unmatched ability to plan, to invest, to execute projects on a grand scale, make them seem unshakably powerful and permanent. At a time when most of us feel powerless, they spear to dominate our destinies. Yet that is not the way they look from he inside, to the men and women who run these organizations. Indeed, many of our top managers today feel quite as frustrated and powerless as the rest of us. For exactly like the nuclear family, the school the mass media, and the other key institutions of the industrial age, the corporation is being hurled about, shaken, and transformed by the Third Wave of change. And a good many top managers do not know what has hit them. The most immediate change affecting the corporation is the crisis in the World economy. For three years, the Second Wave civilization worked to create an integrated global marketplace. Periodically these efforts were set back by wars, depressions, or other disasters. However, each time the World economy recovered, emerging larger and more closely integrated than before. Today a new crisis has struck. However, this one is different. Unlike the crises during the industrial era, it involves not only money, but countless human lives and goods, services and supplies. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
The current pandemic is bringing inflation, unemployment, death, disability, lack of resources, surpluses of jobs openings, stagnant wages, immigration crisis, high demands of good and services, lack of supply, simultaneously, not sequentially. Unlike those of the past, it is directly linked to health care, housing shortages, low incomes, ecological problems, an entirely new species of technology, and to the introduction of a new level of communications into the production system. Finally, it most certainly is not, as Marxist’s claim, a crisis of capitalism alone, but one that involves socialist industrial nation as well. It is, in short, the general crisis of the age of information civilization as a whole. The upheaval in the World economy threatens the survival of the corporation as we know, it throwing its managers into a wholly unfamiliar environment. Thus from the end of World War II until the early 2000’s the corporation functioned in a comparatively stable environment. Growth was the key word. The dollar was king. Currencies remained stable for long periods. The current financial crisis from the government shutting the economy down and making people stay in their homes for months, threatened the escalator to affluence as it was still ascending, and economists were so confident of their ability to predict and control the economic machine that they spoke casually about “fine tuning’ it. Today the phrase evokes only derisive snorts. The President wisecracks that he knows a fortune-tell from Mexico who is a better forecaster then the economists. Secretary of the Treasury, says that “the economics profession is close to bankruptcy in understanding the present situation—before or after the fact. Standing in the tangled wreckage of economic theory and the middle of the rubble of the pandemic infrastructure, corporate decision-makers face rising uncertainties. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22

Interest rates zigzag. Currencies gyrate. Central banks buy and sell money by the carload to damp the swings, but the gyrations only grow more extreme. The dollar, yuan, yen and cryptocurrency perform a Kabuki dance, while people in the Middle East stock pile American weapons and military supplies, frantically off-load billions of dollars worth of American paper. God and silver prices break all records. While all of this is occurring, technology and communications restructure World markets, making transnational production both possible and necessary. And to facilitate such operations, a jet-age money system is taking form. A global electronic banking network—impossible before the computer and satellite—now instantaneously links Hong Kong, Manila, or Singapore with the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, and New York. This sprawling networks of banks, with its Citibanks and Barclays, its Sumitomos and Narodnys, not to mention Credit Suisse and the National Bank of Abu Dhabi, creates a balloon of “stateless currency”—money and credit outside the control of any individual government—which is really innovative in ways yet imagined. The bulk of this stateless currency consists of Eurodollars—dollars outside the United States of America. The accelerated growth of cryptocurrency is a wild card in the economic game. “Here the ‘Crypto’ contributes to inflation, there they shift the balance of payments, in another place they undermine the currency—as they stampede from place to place” across national boundaries. At this time there is a total value of $2.02 trillion in such cryptocurrencies. Bankers dealing with the supranational currency are free to issue unlimited credit and—not be required to hold any cash reserves—and are able to lend out at bargain-basement rates with no credit check, fast funding (as little as in a few hours) and choice of loan currency. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22

The Third Wave economic system in which the corporation grew up is based on national markets, national currencies, and national government. This nation-based infrastructure, however, is utterly unable to regulate or contain the new transnational and electronic “Crypto-bubble.” This is why China has made Cryptocurrencies illegal as well as the mining and trading of them to protect their own Yuan. The structures designed for a Third Wave World are no longer adequate. Indeed, the entire global framework that stabilized World trade relations for the giant corporations is rattling and in danger of coming apart. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the American Stock Market are all under heavy attack. Governments around the World scramble to bolt together a new structure to be controlled by them. The “less developed countries” n one side, and the Middle East brandishing their petrodollars on the other, clamour for influence in the financial system of tomorrow and speak of creating their own counterparts to the IMF. The dollar is being dethroned, and jerks and spasms rip through the World economy. All this is compounded by erratic shortages and gluts of energy and resources; by rapid changes in the attitude of consumers, workers, and managers; by rapidly shifting imbalances of trade; and above all by rising militancy of the non-industrial World. This is the volatile, confusing environment in which today’s corporations struggle to operate. The managers who run them have no wish to relinquish corporate power. They still battle for profits, production, and personal advancement. However, faced with soaring levels of unpredictability, with mounting public criticism and hostile political pressures, our most intelligent managers are questioning the goals, structures, responsibility, the very raison d’etre of their organizations. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22

Many of our biggest corporations are experiencing something analogous to an identity crisis as they watch the once stable introduction of the Third Wave framework disintegrate around them. Of particular interest is group narcissism. Group narcissism is a phenomenon of the greatest political significance. After all, the average person lives in social circumstances which restrict the development of intense narcissism. What should feed the narcissism of a poor human, who has little social prestige, whose children even tend to look down upon one? One has nothing—but if one can identify with one’s nation, or can transfer one’s personal narcissism to the nation or corporation, then one is everything. If such a person said, “I am the most wonderful person in the World; I am the cleanest, cleverest, most efficient, best educated of all people; I am superior to everybody in the World,” anybody who heard his would be disgusted and feel that the person was a bit crazy. However, when people describe their nation in these terms, nobody takes exception. On the contrary, if a person says, “My nation is the strongest, the most cultured, the most peace-loving, the most talented of all nations,” one is not looked upon as being crazy but as a very patriotic citizen. The same hold true for religious narcissism. That millions of adherents to a religion can claim that they are the only possessors of the truth, that their religion is the only way to salvation, is considered to be perfectly normal. Other examples of group narcissism are political groups and scientific groups. The individual satisfies one’s own narcissism by belonging to and identifying oneself with the group. Not one the nobody is great, but one the member of the most wonderful group on Earth. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
Someone will say to me that anyone who has humans to govern should not seek outside their nature a perfection of which they are incapable, that one should not desire to destroy their passions, and hat the execution of such a project should be no more desirable than it is possible. I will agree more strongly with all of this because a human who had no passion would certainly be a very bad citizen. However, one must agree that even though humans cannot be taught to love nothing, it is not impossible for them to learn to love one object more than another and what is truly beautiful more than what is deformed. If, for example, they are trained early enough never to consider their own persons except in terms of being related to the body of the state, and not to perceive their own existence except as part of the state’s existence, they will eventually come to identify themselves in some way with this larger whole, to feel themselves to be members of the country, to love it with that exquisite sentiment that every isolated human feels only for oneself, to elevate their soul perpetually toward this great object, and thus to transform into a sublime virtue this dangerous disposition from which arises all our vices. Not only does philosophy demonstrate the possibility of these new directions, but history furnishes us with a thousand striking examples. If they are so rare among us, it is because no one is concerned about whether there are any citizens, and sill less does anyone give any thought to take steps early enough to train them. It is too late to alter our natural inclinations when they have taken their course and habit has been joined with self-love. It is too late to draw us out of ourselves, once the human self concentrated in our hearts has acquires that disputable activity which absorbs all virtue and constitutes the life of mean-spirited people. RandolphHarris 19 of 22
How could love of country develop in the midst of so many other passions which choke it? And what is left for our fellow citizens of a heart already dividing its affections among greed, a mistress and vanity? One might object to the evaluation of one’s group and claim it is not realistically correct. For one thing, a group can hardly be as perfect as its members describe it; the more important reason, though, is that criticism of the group is responses to with intense rage, which is the reaction characteristic of one whose individual narcissism is wounded. In the narcissistic characteristic character of national, political and religious group reaction lies the root of all fanaticism. When the group becomes the embodiment of one’s own narcissism, any criticism of the group is felt to be an attack against oneself. In cases of cold or hot wars, the narcissism takes on a still more drastic form. My own nation is perfect, peace-loving, cultured, et cetera; the enemy’s is the contrary—vile, treacherous, cruel, et cetera. In reality most nations are equal in the overall balance of good and evil traits; however, virtues and vices are specific for each nation. What narcissistic nationalism does is to see only the virtue of one’s own and the vices of the enemy’s nation. The mobilization of group narcissism is one of the important conditions for the preparation of war; it must begin much earlier than the outbreak of the war, but it becomes reinforced the closer nations move towards war. The feelings at the beginning of the First World War are a god example of reason’s becoming silenced when narcissism rules. British war propaganda accused the German soldiers of bayoneting infants in Belgium (a complete lie but believed by many in the West); the Germans called the British a nation of treacherous traders while they themselves were heroes fighting for freedom and justice. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
Can this group narcissism ever disappear and with it one condition for war? Indeed, there is no reason to assume that it cannot. The conditions for its disappearance are manifold. One is that the life of individuals must be so rich and interesting that they can relate to others with interest and love. This in turn presupposes a social structure that engenders being and sharing and discourages having and possessing. With the development of interest in love for others, narcissism tends to be increasingly reduced. The most important and most difficult problem, however, is that group narcissism can be produced by the basic structure of society, and the question is how this happens. The first condition for the increasing development of narcissism in industrial society is the separateness and antagonism of individuals toward each other. This antagonism is a necessary consequence of an economic system that is built on ruthless selfishness and on the principle of seeking advantages at the expense of others. When sharing and mutuality are absent narcissism is bound to thrive. However, the more important condition for the development of narcissism, and one which has been given full measure only in the last decades, is the worship of industrial production. Humans have made themselves into a god. They have created a New World, the World of human-made things, using the old creation only as raw material. Modern humans have laid bare the secrets of the microcosmos as well as the macrocosmos; one has discovered the secrets of the atom and the secrets of the cosmos, relegating our Earth to an infinitely small entity among the galaxies. The scientists making these discoveries had to perceive things as they are, objectively and hence with little narcissism. However, the consumer, in the same way as the technicians and practitioners of applied science, has not had to have the scientist. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22

The overwhelming part of the human race has not had to devise the new technics; they have been able to build it according to the new theoretical insights and admire it. Thus it happens that modern human has developed an extraordinary pride in their creation; one has deemed oneself to be a god, one has felt one’s greatness in the contemplation of the grandeur of the human-made new Earth. Thus admiring one’s second creation, one has admired oneself in it. The World one has made, harnessing the energy of coal, of oil, and now of the atom, and especially the seeming limitless capacity of one’s brain, had become the mirror in which one can see oneself. Humans’ gaze into this mirror which reflects not one’s beauty but one’s ingenuity and power. Will one drown in this mirror as Narcissus drowned gazing at the picture of his beautiful body mirrored in the lake? God, please save us with Thy mighty hand. Please adorn us with the radiance of a victorious host. Please cause us to cleave close to Thee. Please bring us near to the time of redemption. Please lead us to Thy house with song and gladness. Please glorify us with salvation and joy Please bless us with ample substance and deliverance. Please hearten us with the rebuilding of Thy city to its former glory. Please exalt us to that we may merit respect everywhere. May we be remembered for gladness and rejoicing. Please cause us to lie down in a fertile valley, bright with Thy splendour, and do Thou save us. Please fortify us, O God of Jacob, and do Thou save us. We overcome this wind. We desire the rain to fall, that it be poured in showers quickly. Ah, thou rain, I adjure thee fall. If thou rainiest, it is well. A drizzling confusion. It rains and our food ripens, it is well. If the young men sing, it is well. A drizzling confusion. If our grain ripens, it is well. If our women rejoice, if the children rejoice, if the young men sing, if the aged rejoice, an overflowing in the granary, a torrent in flow, if the wind veers to the south, it is well. If the rain veers to the south, it is well. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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How I Overcame Anger, Selfishness, and Doubt!
Everyone wants peace and is willing to sweat a little for it; but not everyone cares to pay the ultimate price for the ultimate peace. “The Moses and Aaron fell facedown in front of the whole Israelite assembly gathered there. Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh, who were among those who had explored the land, tore their clothes and said to the entire Israelite assembly, ‘The land we passed through and explored is exceedingly good. If the LORD is pleased with us, He will lead us into that land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and will give it to us. Only do not rebel against the land, because we will swallow them up. Their protection is gone, but the LORD is with us. Do not be afraid of them.’ However, the whole assembly talked about stoning them. Then the glory of the LORD appeared at the Tent of Meeting to all the Israelites. The LORD said to Moses, ‘How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the miraculous signs I have performed among them? I will strike the down with a plague and destroy them, but I will make you into a nation greater and stronger than they.’ Moses said to the LORD, “Then the Egyptians will hear about it! By your power you brought these people up from among them. And they will tell the inhabitants of this land about it. They have already heard that you, O LORD, are with these people and that you, O LORD, have been seen face to face, that your cloud stays over them, and that you go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. If you put these people to death all at one time, the nations who have heard this report about you will say, ‘The Lord was not able to bring these people into the land He promised them on oath; so he slaughtered them in the desert.’ #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
“Now may the Lord’s strength be displayed, just as you have declared: ‘The LORD is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet He does not leave the guilty unpunished; He punished the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.’ In accordance with your great love, forgive the sin of these people, just as you have pardoned them from the time they left Egypt until now.” The LORD replied, “I have forgiven them, as you asked. Nevertheless, as surely as I live and as surely as the glory of the LORD fills the whole Earth, not one of the men who saw my glory and the miraculous signs I performed in Egypt and in the desert but who disobeyed me and tested me ten times—not one of them will ever see the land I promised on oath to their forefathers. No one who has treated me with contempt will ever see it. However, because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it. Since the Amalekites and Canaanites are living in the valleys, turn back tomorrow and set out toward the desert along the route to the Red Sea,” reports Numbers 14.5-25. This is a truly inspirational story. Where does God’s peace dwell? In the humble and gentle of heart; that is how His Matthew remembered God (11.29). Where does your peace reside? In deep patience. Hear God’s voice, follow His advice, and you will enjoy much peace. “If anyone is in Christ, one is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come,” reports 2 Corinthians 5.17. Fulfill your God given destiny. Be the person God wants you to be. Believe in bigger and better thing, and expect the supernatural favour of God. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

Develop a mentality of, “If there is a will, there is a way.” Everything counts. Do not be careless. Watch every word. Guard every step. All of which means, do not jump to conclusions about what others say or do. Stick to God’s monastic rule. And the result? You will discover that your rage erupts rarely, and when it does, does little damage. That does not mean you will not be thumped and thwacked from time to time—that is the way it is in the present life, but in the next? Ahhh, well! However, do not think you have found True Peace just because you find no hubbub in your heart! Do not think everything is good jus because you do no bump into the Devil on your daily rounds! Do not think you have arrived at monastic perfection just because your fellow Devouts have stopped annoying you to death! Do not think you are ready for sainthood just because you have had some fleeting moments of devotion and sweetness! Why all these “do nots”? Because in all of these behaviours I cannot for the life of godliness discover a true admirer of virtue! However, your best days are ahead of you. God wants to do more than you can even ask or think, so do not be satisfied with past glories, and do not get stuck in the rut of past failures. Begin believing for bigger and better things. If you do not think your dreams will ever come to pass, they will never. If you do not think you have what it takes to rise up and set that new standard, it is not going to happen. The barrier is in your mind. “The weapons we fight with are not weapons of the World. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete,” reports 2 Corinthians 10.4-6. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

And although many of us is doing so well, we wish God would tell poor souls like us just what spiritual progress and human perfection consists in? It is a wrong thinking pattern that keeps us imprisoned in defeat. And that is why it is so important that we think optimistic thoughts of hope, faith, and success. Reject the lies that tell you success is not in your future. After all, if God is for you, no one can be against you. Let go of the limitations and let your mind focus on fresh, beneficial attitudes of faith. By focusing on things that are of righteousness and success, you will change your life and the lives of your descendants. Your offspring will go further than people ever once believed, and it will because you were willing to walk by faith and not by sight, setting a new standard, and leading the future generations. The obstacle is in your mind. However, because of some people’s disobedience and lack of faith, they wander around in the wilderness, going around the same paths, time after time, not making any progress. How sad! Therefore, offer yourself from the bottom of your heart to the Divine Will. Do not seek out your own will, whether antsy or elephantine, in time or in eternity. For God has prepared a place of great abundance, a place of great freedom for His people. Do these, and nothing will ruffle your calm. And continue to give thanks, in prosperous times as well as desperate ones. Be stout of heart and long in hope. That way, when interior consolation vanished, your heart and soul can sustain a heavier load. Do not feel you have to justify yourself all the time; especially do not ask why you, of all people, should have to suffer all these things. Do justify God, in all your many moves and moods, and do praise God as holy. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

Then if your praise God, stay in faith, act righteously, and have a spirit of perseverance, you will walk the straight and narrow to the Land of Peace and Honey, where Hope and Doubt are no more; where, as Job put it to his Maker (33.26), you and I will be well met, finally, face to face, in dulci jubilo. But that is then, and this is now. In the unlikely event that you do arrive at complete contempt of self while there is still a breath in your, know that the peace of soul accompanying it is about as good as it gets, according to the Psalmist (72.7), at least on this side of the Final Veil. However, some people have been beaten down by their oppressors for so long—mistreated, used, abused, and taken advantage of—now, even though God wants a better life for each of them, they cannot conceive it. Rather than moving forward with an attitude of faith, expecting good things, they insist on going around with a poor, defeated mentality. Around and around they go, focusing on their problems, always complaining, fretting about the obstacles standing between them and their destiny. Yet, as we understand the Lord, He wants us to strive for perfection because He never relaxes His grip on the Celestial. Why? because in His daily round God has to step smartly around and through the many and varied dumpings and dumplings of the World without so much as soiling His sandal. And He has to do it as if He had not a care in the World, and not at the pace of a slug, but in the sprightly manner of a person with a free and bright mind. How? By allowing no creaturely affection to cling to His soul. There, God will jolt us out of our complacency. He will say to us, “You have stayed long enough at the mountain,” reports Deuteronomy 1.6. Therefore we cannot keep going in circles, doing the same thing year after year, and expect things to change. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

It is time to move on, to let go of past hurts, pains, or failures. It is time for increase, promotion, and favour. It is time to believe for the extraordinary and supernatural. Father, I do not want to be counted among the doubters; I am a believer. I trust You to lead me in the right direction as I break through the barriers of my past. Thank You, Father, that You have good things in store, not just for me, but for my entire family! I beseech You, Most Pious God of mine, preserver me from the care of this life lest I trip myself up; lest I be seized by the many necessities of the body; lest I seize up from too much pleasure; lest I become depressed by the universal obstacles of the soul, broken on the wheel of trouble. I am not talking about the clumsy imperfections that Worldly Vanity often causes, but about those miseries that result from the Primal Malediction of Mortality. These latter seriously affect the soul; that is to say, they weigh it down and slow it down. The result is that one has not had the strength to enter into the freedom of the spirit as often as one desired. O my God, Ineffable Sweetness, as far as I am concerned, turn bitter every carnal consolation that drags me from the love of Eternals. Why? Its allure is evil. It affects my intuition. It draws me to a delectable good of the present. Do not let it conquer me, my God, do no let the flesh and blood conquer me! Do not let the World and its brief glory deceive me! Do not let the Devil and his cleverness, his bag of tricks, overwhelm me! Please grant me the fortitude of resisting, the patience for enduring, the constancy of preserving. Please grant for all the consolations of the World the discreet yet manly cologne of Your spirit, and in place of carnal love, please flood me with the love of Your name. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

Just count them—food, drink, clothing, and the other innumerable articles that keep the body going—all these are necessary, or so they say, but they are also insufferable to the fervent spirit; so said the Great Bernard in his First Sermon for Septtaugesima. Grant that I may use as little of this excess baggage of the soul as possible; that is to say, do not let me spend all my time on baggage management to the detriment of daily prayer. Truly, I would like to ditch all these extras, but I cannot. Nature has its minimal claims, and it would be unwise to meddle with them. However, to rummage about in the things that dither the soul? Holy Law prohibits that. Why? Because the flesh has this sudden capacity of overpowering the soul with its fragrance. Because of all these, I beg You, O Lord, let Your hand direct me and protect me lest something catastrophic happen. Is Christianity beneficial or hazardous to your mental health? “Do not be anxious about your life,” reports Matthew 6.25. Consider Francis, the popular son of a wealthy textile merchant family who is known for his flashy dressing and his enthusiastic partying. After hearing a vice, which he believes to be that of God, Francis undergoes a religious transformation, forsakes partying, gives away his possessions, and even sells some of his father’s textiles, giving away the money. His father responds by confining the youth to he house and beating him to bring him to his senses, but Francis is unrepentant. Exasperated, the irate father takes Francis to court, which orders Francis to repay his father. In protest, Francis gives back everything his parents have given him, even the clothes off his back, and walks out of the court naked. He forms a religious sect whose members sleep in abandoned churches, possess nothing, and are not above begging for their food. Never does he return to a normal social life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
For Francis (to whom we will shortly return), is religion beneficial or hazardous to mental health? For you and me, is religious devotion good or bad for mental health? Our culture offers us, at the extremes, two sharply contrasting answers. Some televangelist have suggested that with sufficient faith, prayer, and positive thinking we can get Jesus to lift our burdens, to exorcise the demonic within us, to heal our emotional agonies, even to bless us with prosperity. Religious paperbacks have offered hopeful testimonies of how one can get God to give us happy homes, robust love lives, inner peace, or liberation from depression. In Christian inspirational magazines one can find ads for things such as the “Christian weight-loss plan,” which promises results superior to those of non-Christian weight-loss plans. Diametrically opposed to those who say that faith is the key to inner healing are those who say that religion erodes mental health or even that religion is a sickness—an “obsessional neurosis,” said Dr. Freud. Religion is said to promote neurotic guilt, repression of feelings for pleasures of the flesh, and suppression of negative emotions. Religion also impedes efforts to relieve human misery by teaching that people deserve their fate, that to believe that misfortune and suffering are divine judgments on sinners legitimates the blaming the depressed, the miserable, and the angry for their feelings. Who is right? Is religion more often beneficial or hazardous to mental health? Let us approach this question first scientifically, by looking at research on religion and mental health, and then theoretically, by reflecting on the likely emotional consequences of being a Christian disciple. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

Are there any links between people’s religiosity and their mental health? This question has no simple answer, because the answer depends on what we mean by religiosity (orthodoxy? Church attendance? Strength of religious feeling?) and what we mean by mental health (positive self-esteem? absence of mental illness? happiness?). Across many studies reported in the Oxford University Press Handbook of Religions and Health, religious beliefs and practices have, in more studies than not, been associated not only with greater self-reported happiness, but also with greater hope and optimism; greater purpose and meaning; higher self-esteem; better coping with bereavement; less loneliness; less depression; fewer suicides; less anxiety; less drug and alcohol abuse; less delinquency and crimes; and greater marital stability. A word of caution is in order: these studies merely establish a correlation between religion and mental health. It is a familiar lesson, but true: correlation does not indicate the direction of cause and effect. One’s mental health may affect one’s religion (some religious cults have been a haven for disturbed people). Or religiosity and mental health may be jointly influenced by underlying factors, such as one’s socioeconomic, or educational status. Will a real Christian ever act crazy? Indeed yes. If Christ’s followers march to the sound of a different drummer in what they regard as a crazed World, they may, at times, seem a little crazy. So it was with St. Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan order and a thirteenth-century missionary and religious pioneer. Francis dared to be different, to renounce his family’s materialism, to value higher things, and to suffer rejection for doing so. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

And so it was with Jesus and some of his early followers. They knew negative emotions—righteous anger in response to injustice, anxiety when confronted by danger, grief in the face of death. They willingly experienced humiliation, even death, as the price for not adjusting to their culture. For the heroes of the Bible, good adjustment—thinking well of oneself and feeling optimistic about the World—was not the aim of life. Adjusting (or conforming) to a sick society may itself be a sick response. Christ’s followers are offered the way of the cross, something that many who serve in war- and disease-ravaged lands know all too well. It is ironic that popular religion should promise its followers serenity and success when the Bible itself depicts its people as so imperfect. The heroes of the faith experienced more tribulation than triumph. In the Old Testament, Noah becomes a drunken fool, David commits homicide out of lust, and Jacob is a blasphemous, polygamous, ungrateful cheat. Likewise, in the New Testament we find the afflicted Paul struggling constantly to resist what he ought not to be doing and to do the good that he ought to be. Moreover, one doubts that any of the disciples could have offered persuasive testimonies of “how I overcome anger, selfishness, and doubt.” Peter loses his temper, is prejudiced against the Gentiles, and denies Christ. After almost three years with Jesus, Andrew cannot conceive of a miracle with loaves and fishes. The proud and prejudiced Nathaniel is skeptical that anything good could come out of Nazareth. Unless Jesus would “show us the Father,” Philip refuses to believe that Jesus and God are one. James and John, the sons of Zebedee, crave the highest-status positions for themselves in the kingdom. Thomas doubts Christ’s resurrection and is skeptical of Jesus’s promise to prepare a place in the Father’s house. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Simon the Zealot, Bartholomew, Matthew, and Jude cannot manage so much as to say awake during Jesus’ agony before his betrayal. The Bible makes no pretensions about the perfections of its people. Nor does it need to, for its hope rests not in the power of human faith but in the steadfast love of God. As the experience of Job reminds us, God’s people are not promised an Earthly haven from misery. Recent evidence indicates that people active in faith communities have longer life expectancies than others. Yet no matter how much faith we have, nor how many faith healers we visit, our mortality rate will still be 100 percent. It is easy to be tempted to the illusion that the child of God will be accorded special protection from the capricious forces of the natural World or a special immunity from the vindictive passions of angry humans. Any such faith is bound to suffer disillusionment. Better to root our faith in the hard truth than in temporarily comforting fantasies. If Christianity is untrue, then what honest person would want to believe it, however comforting it might be? And if it is true, even if it were not immediately comforting, what honest person would want to disbelieve it? Among the capricious forces of the natural World are oppressive environments (in which, at times, it is perfectly natural to feel depressed), biochemical and neurological deficits (for which schizophrenia may be a natural outcome), and genetic predispositions to respond maladaptively to stressful circumstances. Faced with psychological disorders such as depression and schizophrenia, Christians had therefore best respond not with simplistic snap judgments (as Job’s friends did in response to his misery) but with compassion and understanding. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

We should all do well to keep in mind the Christian psychologist Glenn Weaver’s documentation of the spiritual pilgrimage of a devout Christian woman suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. After a life of regular attendance at church services, where she was well known as a gentle Christian with deep concern for her fellow Christians, she began to develop telltale symptoms of increasing forgetfulness. She struggled with the problem in the way that many people do, but she was fighting a losing battle. She found that she could no longer remember the names of those she wanted to pray for, and her letters became verbose and lost much of their content. This is turn made her increasingly anxious; and anxiety led on to depression and the classic textbook description of Alzheimer’s disease, and more. She was also deeply troubled about her relationship with God. She felt that she was personally responsible for falling away from a former close walk with God, and that she was deserting her friends through her lack of friendship and prayers. She concluded that because of her lack of faith, God was setting her aside because she was no longer fit for His service. Eventually she lost all interest in her daily devotions and prayers. With neural changes there are psychological consequences, and these in turn affect spiritual awareness. Such is the unity of the human person, and we should never forget this. For some, a Christian response to such suffering may mean doing or supporting research. For others, it means entering a helpful profession as a clinician, counselor, or social worker. For many more it simply means being loving, caring, and patient. Although Christian faith does not promise escape from the stresses and woes of life, it can help us walk through the valley of deepest darkness. It does so first by offering us an identity—a knowledge of who we are, of our ultimate values, of our mission in life. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

Many patients, in the second half of life, are all struggling to find a religious outlook on life. More recent questionnaire studies confirm that adults who have a strong sense of purpose in life experience greater-well-being, live with less dread of death, and are less likely to abuse alcohol and other drugs. Second, religious communities offer social support in times of stress. Recent research indicates that people who are upheld by close relationships are less vulnerable to illness and premature death than are those who bear their stresses alone. When we are faced with a threat, caring friends can help us evaluate the problem, restore our self-esteem, reduce our anxiety, and confide our painful feelings—all of which can be good medicine. This helps explain the longer than average lives among those who in faith communities feel “blessed by the ties that bind.” Furthermore, religious experience has the potential to be therapeutic—at times by providing peak experiences of joy, peace, and enlightenment, but more often by reassuring us that, come what may, we are loved. Researcher have found that people’s God-concepts are linked with their self-concepts: those who view God as stern and punitive tend to have low self-images; those who view God as loving and accepting tend to express higher self-esteem. And that leads us to the experience of grace. We expect them to tell of a risen life which is purely “spiritual” in the negative sense of that word: that is, we use the word “spiritual” to mean not what it is but what it is not. We mean a life without space, without history, without environment, with no sensuous elements in it. We also, in our heart of hearts, tend to slur over the risen manhood of Jesus, to conceive Him, after death, simply returning into Deity, so that the Resurrection would be no more than the reversal or undoing of the Incarnation. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

That being so, all refences to the risen body make us uneasy: they raise awkward questions. For as long as we hold the negatively spiritual view, we have not really been believing in that body at all. We have thought (whether we acknowledged it or not) that the body was not objective: that it was an appearance sent by God to assure the disciples of truths otherwise incommunicable. However, what truths? If the truth is that after death there comes a negatively spiritual life, an eternity of mystical experience, what more misleading way of communicating it could possibly be found than the appearance of a human form which eats broiled fish? Again, on such a view, the body would really be a hallucination. And any theory of hallucination breaks down on the fact (and if it is invention it is the oddest invention that ever entered the mind of humans) that on three separate occasions this hallucination was not immediately recognized as Jesus (Luke xxiv. 13-31; John xx. 15, xxi. 4). Even granting that God sent a holy hallucination to teach truths already widely believed without it, and far more easily taught by other methods, and certain to be completely obscured by this, might we not at leas hope that He would get the face of the hallucination right? Is He who made all faces such a bungler that He cannot even work up a recognizable likeness of the Man who was Himself? It is at this point that awe and trembling fall upon us as we read the records. If the story is false, it is at least a much stranger story than we expected, something for which philosophical “religion,” psychical research, and popular superstition have alike failed to prepare us. If the story is true, then a wholly new mode of being has arisen in the Universe. The body, which lives in that new mode is like, and yet unlike, the body His friends knew before the execution. It is differently related to space and probably to time, but by no means cut off from all relation to them. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

The body is so related to mater, as we know it, that it can be touched, though at first it had better not be touched. It has also a history before it which is in view from the first moment of the Resurrection; it is presently going to become different or go somewhere else. That is why the story of the Ascension cannot be separated from that of the Resurrection. All the accounts suggest that the appearances of the Risen Body came to an end; some describe an abrupt end about six weeks after the death. And they describe this abrupt end in a way which presents greater difficulties to the modern mind than any other part of the Scripture. For here, surely, we get the implication of all those primitive crudities to which I have said that Christians are not committed: the vertical ascent like a balloon, the local Heaven, the decorated chair to the right of the Father’s throne. “He was caught up into the sky (ouranos),” says St. Mark’s Gospel, “and sat down at the right hand of God.” “He was lifted up,” says the author of Acts, “and a cloud cut Him off from their sight.” It is true that if we wish to get rid of these embarrassing passages, we have the means to do so. The Marcan one probably formed no part of the earliest text of St. Mark’s Gospel: and you may add that the Ascension, though constantly implied throughout the New Testament, is described only in these two places. Can we then simply drop the Ascension story? The answer is that we can do so only if we regard the Resurrection appearances as those of a ghost or hallucination. For a phantom can just fade away; but an objective entity must go somewhere—something must happen to it. And if the Risen Body were not objective, then all of us (Christian or not) must invent some explanation for the disappearance of the corpse. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

And all Christians must explain why God sent or permitted a “vision” or “ghost” whose behaviour seems almost exclusively directed to convincing the disciples that it was not a vision or a ghost but really a corporeal being. If it were a vision, then it was the most systematically deceptive and lying vision on record. However, if it were real, then something happened to it after it ceased to appear. You cannot take away the Ascension without putting something else in its place. Rich diversity of family forms will not come into being without pain and anguish. For any change in family structure also forces change in the roles we live. Every society, through its institutions, creates its own architecture of roles or social expectations. The corporation and trade union between them more or less defined what was expected of workers and bosses. Schools fixed the respective roles of teachers and pupils. And the Second Wave family allocated the roles of breadwinner, housekeeper, and child. As the nuclear family goes critical, so to speak, the roles associated with it begin to shiver and crack—with excruciating personal impact. From the day that Betty Friedan’s bombshell book, The Feminine Mystique, launched the modern feminist movement in many nations, we have seen a painful struggle to redefine the roles of humans in terms appropriate to a postnuclear-family future. The expectations and the behaviour of both genders have shifted with respects to jobs, legal and financial rights, household responsibilities, and even performance dealing with pleasures of the flesh. “Now,” write Peter Knobler, editor of Crawdaddy, a rock music magazine, “a guy’s got to contend with women breaking all the rules…Many regulations need breaking,” he adds, “but that does not make it much easier.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Roles are shaken by the battle over ending a pregnancy, for instance, as women insist that they—not politicians, not priests, not doctors or even husbands—have a right to control their bodies. Gender roles are further blurred as homosexuals demand and win “gay rights.” Even the role of the child in society is changing. Suddenly advocates spring up to lobby for a Children’s Bill of Rights. Courts are swamped by cases involving role redefinition, as alternatives to the nuclear family multiply and gain acceptability. Do unmarried spouses have to share their property after they break up? Can a couple legally pay a woman to bear a child for them by artificial insemination? (Costa Rican courts have said no—but for how long?) Can a lesbian be a “good mother” and retain custody of her child after a divorce? (An American court say yes.) What is meant by being a good parent? Nothing underlines the changing role structure more than the lawsuit filed in Boulder, Colorado USA, by an angry twenty-four-year-old named Tom Hansen. Parents can make mistakes, Mr. Hansen’s lawyer argued, but they must be held legally—and financially—responsible for the result. Thus Mr. Hansen’s court action claimed $350,000 in damages on an unprecedented legal ground: parental malpractice. It is one of the most important items of business for the government to prevent extreme inequality of fortunes, not by appropriating treasures from their owners, but by denying everyone the means of acquiring them, and not by building hospitals for the poor but by protecting citizens from becoming poor. Humans unequally distributed over the territory and crowded into one place whole other areas are underpopulated; arts of pleasure and pure industry favored over useful and demanding crafts; agriculture sacrificed to commerce; the publican made necessary by the bad administration of state funds. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

Finally, venality pushed to such excess that esteem is measure in gold coins and the virtues themselves are sold for money: such are the most readily apparent causes of opulence and poverty, of the substitution of private interest for public interests, of the mutual hatred of citizens of their indifference to the common cause, of the corruption of the people, and of the enfeebling of all of governmental power. Such, as a consequence, are the ills that are difficult to treat once they make themselves felt, but which a wise administration ought to prevent in order to maintain, along with good mores, respect for the laws, love of the country and the vitality of the general will. However, all these precautions will be insufficient without going further still. A country cannot subsist without liberty, nor can liberty without virtue, nor can virtue without citizens. You will have everything if you train citizens; without this you will merely have wicked slaves, beginning with the leaders of the state. However, training citizens is not to be accomplished in one day, and turning them into adults requires that they be taught as children. Cover my Earth mother four times with many flowers. Let the Heavens be covered with the banked-up clouds. Let the Earth be covered with fog; cover the Earth with rains. Great waters, rain, cover the Earth. Lightning cover the Earth. Let thunder be heard over the Earth; let thunder be heard; let thunder be heard over the six regions of the Earth. Save the Earth from the curse, our cattle from sterility, our threshing-floor from the locust, our corn from fire, our substance from catastrophe, our feed from destruction. Please guard the olives from falling, and save the wheat from the grasshopper. Please protect our granaries from the worm, our vines from the caterpillar, the vineyard from the cankerworm, the autumn-fruit from blight. O protect our produce from the devouring locust, our souls from terror, our plenty from the winged-locust. Please keep our flocks from ravaging disease, our fruits from the blasting wind. Please shield our sheep from the plague, our harvest from ruin, our abundance from leanness. Please save the barley from mildew, the field’s increase from the palmer-worm. O do Thou save us, we beseech Thee. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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New Creation—A New Chapter in Cosmic History Has Opened!

Do not go poking your nose into the virtues that may be found in the lives of your fellow Devout. And do not sniff about the laundry of their vices. Why? Because your path is in the opposite direction. “Just follow Me.” That was the Evangelist John’s answer, as it was Jesus’ before him (21.22). If one person is a such-and-such or another person says one thing but does another, what business is it of yours? You do not need to be responsible for yourself; that is how Paul put it to the Romans (14.12). And that, believe me, is more than you can handle. Beyond that, you quickly get out of your depth. And before you smack me in the face with that mullet, let me assure you God knows everyone and God see everything that happens under the sun; that is what the Preacher wrote about Him (1.14). Each person God knows inside and out, that is to say, what one thinks, what one wants, and where one is heading; that is how God’s John described Him (2.25). And that includes you. “Truly, truly, I say to you, one who believes in Me, the works that I do, one will do also; and greater works than these one will do; because I go to the Father,” reports John 14.12. So what can God do for you? Everything, if you putt it all into His hands. God wants each generation to go further than the previous generation. He wants each generation to be more blessed, to experience more of His love, goodness, and His influence in the World. He does not want you to stay where you are. What can you do for yourself? Keep the peace. That is to say, forgive the agitator one’s agitation; one stirs the pot against you, but one cannot bring it to a boil. Eventually one will find oneself in a broth of one’s own juices. One cannot deceive God. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
God did not desire one generation to shine, and then the next generation to fade into obscurity. God wants each generation to increase. “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. When the LORD your God brings you into the land He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you—a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant—then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful that you do no forget the LORD, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. Fear the LORD your God, serve Him only and take your oaths in His name. Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you; for the LORD your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and His anger will burn against you, and He will destroy you from the face of the land. Do not test the LORD your God as you did at Massah. Be sure to keep the commands of the LORD your God and the stipulations and decrees He has given you. Do what is right and good in the LORD’s sight, so that it may go well with your and you may go well with you and your may go in and take over the god land that the LORD promised on oath to your forefathers, thrusting out all your enemies before you, as the LORD said. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

“In the future, when your son asks you, ‘What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the LORD our God has commanded you?’ tell him: ‘We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Before our eyes the LORD sent miraculous signs and wonders—great and terrible—upon Egypt and Pharaoh and his whole household. However, He brought us out from there to bring us in and give us the land that He promised on oath to our forefathers. The LORD commanded us to obey all these decrees and to fear the LORD our God, so that we might always prosper and be kept alive, as is the case today. And if we are careful to obey all this law before the LORD our God, as He has commanded us, that will be our righteousness,” reports Deuteronomy 6.5-25. Some things are not worth worrying about. Swanning about in a sphere of influence. Being on a first-name basis with Worldly notables. Dispensing tokens of affection to every outstretched hand. Why? Because these activities, harmless as they may seem, do have a tendency to distract the soul and clutter the heart. I speak God’s words of wisdom and reveal God’s hidden thoughts to you, my beloved friend, but on one condition only. You must keep a weather eye open for His coming and leave the door of your heart unlocked; that is one of God’s instructions in the Last Book of His New Testament (3.20). That is to say, be on the lookout, pray while you watch, and think humble thoughts. You, too, can be so much more than your predecessors, passing on a legacy of Godly attitudes, blessings, and success to your children. Do not ever get satisfied with where you are. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
Maybe you come from a family that is not affluent. Or perhaps you come from a family with riches untold. Regardless, you can experience more than the generation preceding you. The adult has—nobody. Indeed one may have friends, a wife, a certain amount of social security, yet even so the possibility of defending oneself and of acquiring what one needs is very fragile. Even if your life and full of hardship, lack and limitation, oppression, poor health, do not pass these negative attitudes down to your children. Break the cycle and change your expectations. Trust and believe that God can make the impossible possible. Thank You, Father, that I am part of a family with a future; no longer will I be limited by my past, but I will trust You today to do things in and through my life that are even greater than the wonderful things You have done previously. The procession of the Word in God is called generation. In proof whereof we must observe that generation has twofold meaning: one common to everything subject to generation and corruption; in which sense generation is nothing but change from non-existence to existence. In another sense it is proper and belongs to living things; in which sense it signifies the origin of a living being from a conjoined living principle; and this is properly called birth. Not everything of that kind, however, is called begotten; but, strictly speaking, only what proceeds by way of similitude. Hence a hair has not the aspect of generation and sonship, but only that has which proceeds by way of a similitude. Nor will any likeness suffice; for a worm which is generated from animals has not the aspect of generation and sonship, although it has a generic similitude; for this kind of generation requires that there should be a procession by ways of similitude in he same specific nature; as human proceeds from a human, and a horse from a horse. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

So in living things, which proceed from potential to actual life, such as humans and animals, generation includes both of these kinds of generation. However, if there is a being whose life does not proceed from potentiality to act, procession (if found in such a being) excludes entirely the first kind of generation; whereas it may have that kind of generation which belongs to living things. So in this manner the procession of the Word in God is generation; for He proceeds by way of intelligible action, which is a vital operation:—from a conjoined principle (as above described):—byway of similitude, inasmuch as the concept of the intellect is a likeness of the object conceived:—and exists in the same nature, because in God the act of understanding and His existence are the same, as shown above. Hence the procession of the Word in God is called generation; and the Word Himself proceeding is called the Son. The act of human understanding in ourselves is not the substance itself of the intellect; hence the word which proceeds within us by intelligible operation is not of the same nature as the source whence it proceeds; so the idea of generation cannot be properly and fully applied to it. However, the divine act of intelligence is the very substance itself of the one who understands. The Word proceeding therefore proceeds as subsisting in the same nature; and so is properly called begotten, and Son. Hence Scripture employs terms which denote generation of living things in order to signify the procession of the divine Wisdom, namely, conception and birth; as is declared in the person of the divine Wisdom. “The depths were not as ye, and I was already conceived; before the hills, I was brought forth,” reports Proverbs 8.24. In our way of understanding we use the word “conception” in order to signify that in the word of our intellect is found the likeness of the thing understood, although there be no identity of nature. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

Not everything derived from another has existence in another subject; otherwise we could not say that the whole substance of created beings comes from God, since there is no subject that could receive the whole substance. So, then, what is generated in God receives its existence from the generator, not as though that existence were received into matter or into a subject (which would conflict with the divine self-subsistence); but when we speak of His existence as received, we mean that He Who proceeds receives divine existence are contained both the Word intelligibly proceeding and the principle of the Word, with whatever belongs to His perfection. The Resurrection was not regarded simply or chiefly as evidence for the immortality of the soul. It is, of course, often so regarded today: I have heard a man maintain that “the importance of the Resurrection is that it proves survival.” Such a view cannot at any point be reconciled with the language of the New Testament. On such a view Christ would simply have done what all humans do when they die: the only novelty would have been that in Hs case we were allowed to see it happening. However, there is not in Scripture the faintest suggestion that the Resurrection was new evidence for something that had in fact been always happening. The New Testament writers speak of as if Christ’s achievement in rising from he dead was the first event of its kind in the whole history of the Universe. He is the “first fruits,” the “pioneer of life.” He has forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and beaten the King of Death. Everything is different because He has done so. This is the beginning of the New Creation: a new chapter in cosmic history opened. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

I do not mean, of course, that the writers of the New Testament disbelieved in “survival.” On the contrary they believed in it so readily that Jesus on more than one occasion has to assure them that He was not a ghost. From he earliest times the Jewish people, like many other nations, had believed that humans possessed a “soul” or Nephesh separable from the body, which went at death into the shadowy World called Sheol: a land of forgetfulness and imbecility where none called upon God any more, a land half unreal and melancholy like the Hades of the Greeks or the Niflheim of the Norsemen. From it shades could return and appear to the living, as Samuel’s shade had done at the command of the Witch of Endor. In much more recent times there had arisen a more cheerful belief that the righteous passed at death to “Heaven.” Both doctrines are doctrines of “the immortality of the soul” as a Greek or modern Englishman understands it: and both are quite irrelevant to the story of the Resurrection. The writers look upon this event as an absolutely novelty. Quite clearly they do no think they have been haunted by ghost from Sheol, nor even that they have had a vision of a “soul” in “Heaven.” It must be clearly understood that if the Psychical Researchers succeeded in proving “survival” and showed that the Resurrection was an instance of it, they would not be supporting the Christian faith but refuting it. If that were all that had happened to the original “gospel” would have been untrue. What the apostles claimed to have seen did not corroborate, nor exclude, and had indeed nothing to do with, either the doctrine of “Heaven” or the doctrine of Sheol. Insofar as it corroborated anything it corroborated a third Jewish believe which is quite distinct from both these. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

This third doctrine taught in “the day of God” peace would be restored and World dominion given to America under a righteous King: and that when this happened the righteous dead, or some of them, would come back to Earth—not as floating wraiths but as solid humans who cast shadows in the sunlight and made a noise when they tramped the floors. “Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust,” said Isaiah, “And the Earth shall cast out the dead,” (xxvi. 19). What the apostles thought they had seen was, if not that, at any rate a lonely first instance of that: the first movement of a great wheel beginning to turn in the direction opposite to that which all humans hitherto had observed. Of all the ideas entertained by humans by death it is this one, and this one only, which the story of the Resurrection tends to confirm. If the story is true, then it is this Hebrew myth of resurrection which begot it. If the story is true, then the hint and anticipation of the truth is to be found not in popular ideas about ghosts nor in eastern doctrines of re-incarnation nor in philosophical speculations about the immortality of the soul, but exclusively in the Hebrew prophecies of the return, the restoration, the great reversal. Immortality simply as immortality is irrelevant to the Christian claim. There are, I allow, certain respects in which the risen Christ resembles the “ghost” of popular tradition. Like a ghost He “appears” and “disappears”; locked doors are no obstacle to Him. On the other hand He Himself vigorously asserts that He is corporeal (Luke xxiv. 39-40) and eats broiled fish. It is at this point that the modern reader becomes uncomfortable. He becomes more uncomfortable still at the words, “Don’t touch me; I have not yet gone up to the Father” (John xx. 17). For the voices and apparitions, we are, in some measure, prepared. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

However, what is this that must not be touched? What is all this about going “up” to the Father? Is He not already “with the Father” in the only sense that matter? What can “with the Father” in he only sense that matters? What can “going up” be except a metaphor for that? And if so, why has He “not yet” gone? These discomforts arise because the story the “apostles” actually had to tell begins at this point to conflict with the story we expect and are determined beforehand to read into their narrative. It seems that the sentiment of humanity evaporates and weakens in being extended over the entire World, and that we cannot be affected by the calamities in America or Japan the way we are by those of a European people. Interest and commiseration must somehow be limited and restrained to be active. For since this inclination in us can be useful only to hose with whom we have to live, it is a good thing that the humanity concentrated among citizens takes on a new force through the habit of seeing each other and through the common interest that unites them. It is certain that the greatest miracles of virtue have been produced by the love of the country. In joining together the force of self-love and all the beauty of virtue, this sweet and lively sentiment takes on an energy that, without disfiguring it, makes it the most heroic of all the passions. This is the passion that produced so many immortal actions whose radiance dazzles our feeble eyes, and so many great humans whose ancient virtues were thought to be fables once the love of country because the object of derision. We should not find this surprising. The ecstasies of tender hearts appear utterly fanciful to anyone who has not felt them. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

And the love of country, a hundred times more ardent and delightful than that of a mistress, likewise cannot be conceived except by being felt. However, it is easy to observe, in all the hearts it inflames and in all the actions it inspires, that fiery and sublime ardor which the purest virtue is lacking when it is separated from the love of country. Let us dare to compare Socrates oneself to Cato. The one was more a philosopher; the other more a citizen. Athens was already lost, and Socrates had no other country but the whole World. Cato always carried his country in the bottom of his heart. He lived only for it and could not outlive it. The virtue of Socrates is that of the wisest of men. However, compared with Caesar and Pompey, Cato seems like a god among mortals. One teaches a few individuals, combats the sophist and dies for the truth. The other defends the state, liberty and the laws against the conquerors of the World, and finally leaves the Earth when he no longer sees as country to serve. A worthy student of Socrates would be the most virtuous of his contemporaries. A worthy imitator of Cato would be the greatest. The virtue of the first would constitute his happiness; the second would seek one’s happiness in that of others. We ought to be taught by the one and led by the other, and that alone would decide our preference. For a people consisting of wise humans never been produced; however, it is not impossible to make a people happy. Do we want people to be virtuous? Let us begin then by making them love their country. However, how can they love it, if their country means nothing more to them than it does to people who are not native to their lands, allotting to them only what it cannot refuse to anyone? #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

It would be worse still if they did not enjoy even civil welfare, and if their goods, their life or liberty were at the discretion of powerful humans, without it being possible or permitted for them to dare to invoke the laws. In such circumstances, subjected to the duties of the civil state without enjoying even the rights of the state of nature and without being able to use their strength to defend themselves, they would as a result be in the worst condition in which free humans can find themselves, and the word “country” could have only an odious or ridiculous meaning for them. There is no point to believing that one can strike or cut off an arm without pain being transmitted to the head. And it is no more believable that the general will would permit a member of the state, whoever one might be, to injure or destroy another member than that the fingers of a human in one’s right mind would put out one’s eyes. Individual welfare is so closely linked to the public confederation that, were it not for the attention one should pay to human frailty, this convention would be dissolved by right if just one citizen were to perish who could have been saved, if jus one citizen were wrongly held in prison, and if a single litigation were to be lost because of an obvious injustice. For when these fundamental conventions are violated, it is no longer apparent what right or what interest could maintain the populace in the social union, unless it is restrained by force alone, which bring about this dissolution of the civil state. In effect, is it not the commitment of the body of the nation to provide for the maintenance of the humblest of its members with as much care as for that of all others? #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
And is the welfare of a citizen any less the common cause than the welfare of the entire state? If someone were to tell us that it is good that one person should perish for all, I would admire this saying when it comes from the lips of a worthy and virtuous patriot who dedicates oneself willingly and out of duty to die for the welfare of one’s country. However, if this means that the government is permitted to sacrifice an innocent person for the welfare of the multitude, I hold this maxim to be one of the most despicable that tyrant has ever invented, the most false that one might propose, the most dangerous one might accept, and the most directly opposed to the fundamental laws of society. For far from it being the case that one individual should die for all, all have committed their goods and their lives in defense of each of them, so that individual weakness would always be protected by public force, and each member by the entire state. After conjuring up an image of the attrition of the people, one after another, press the partisans of this maxim to explain better what they mean by body of the state, and you will see that eventually they will reduce it to a small number of human who are not the people, but the officers of the people, and who, having obliged themselves by a personal oath to perish for its welfare, maintain they prove by this that it is the people’s place to die for them. Does anyone want to find examples of the protection that the state owes its members, and of the respect it owes their persons? These examples are to be found only among the World’s most illustrious and courageous nations, and it is exclusively among free peoples where one knows what a human is worth. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

It is commonly known how great was the perplexity in which the whole republic in Sparta found itself, when there arose the question of punishing a guilty citizen. In Macedonia, a human life was such an important matter that, in all his grandeur, Alexander, that powerful monarch, would not have dared to put to death in cold blood a Macedonian criminal unless the accused had appeared to defend oneself before one’s fellow citizens and had been condemned by them. However, the Romans were preeminent among all the peoples of the Earth for the government’s deference toward private individuals and for its scrupulous attention to respecting the inviolable rights of all the members of the state. Nothing was as sacred as the life of the simple citizens. There needed to be no less than the assembly of the entire people in order to condemn one of them. Neither the senate itself nor the consuls, in all their majesty, had the right to do this. And among the most powerful people in the World the crime and punishment of a citizen was a public affliction. It also appeared so harsh to shed blood for any crime whatever, that by the Lex Porcia the death penalty converted to exile for all those who wished to outlive the loss of so sweet a country. Everything in Rome and in the armies betokened that love of a fellow citizen for one another, and that respect for whoever had the honor to bear it. That hat of a citizen free from slavery, the civic crown of one who had saved the life of another: these were things that were viewed with the greatest pleasure in the midst of the celebrations of their military triumphs. And it is worth noting that of the crowns with which in time of war one honors noble actions, only the civic crown and that of victors were made of grass and leaves, all the rest being made of gold. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

Thus is was that Rome was virtuous and became the mistress of the World. Ambitious leaders! A shepherd governs one’s dogs and one’s flocks, and one is but the humblest of humans. If it is a fine thing to command, it is when those who obey us can honour us. Therefore respect your fellow citizens and you will make yourselves respectable. Respect liberty and your power will increase daily. Never go beyond your rights, and eventually they will be limitless. Let the homeland, therefore, show itself as the common mother of all citizens. Let the advantages they enjoy in their homeland endear it to them. Let the government leave them a large enough part of the public administration so that they can feel that they are at home. And let the laws be in their sight merely the guarantees of the common liberty. These rights, fine as they are, belong to all humans. However, without appearing to attack them directly, the bad will of the leaders easily reduces their effect to nothing. The law that is abused at the same time serves the powerful as an offensive weapon and as a shield against the weak, and the pretext of the public good is always the most dangerous scourge of the people. What is most necessary and perhaps the most difficult in the government is rigorous integrity in dispensing justice to all and especially in protecting the poor against the tyranny of the rich. The greatest evil is already done when there are poor people to defend and rich ones to keep in check. It is only at intermediate levels of wealth that the full force of the laws is exerted. Laws are equally powerless against the treasures of the rich and against the wretched state of the poor. The first eludes them; the second escapes them. The one breaks the webbing and the other slips through. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

Beyond this, one can easily imagine the work-at-home household becoming something radically different: an “electronic expanded family.” Perhaps the most common family form in First Wave societies was the so-called extended family, which brought several generations together under the same roof. There were also “expanded families” which, in addition to the core members, included an unrelated orphan or two, an apprentice or additional farm hand, or others. One can likewise picture the work-at-home family of tomorrow inviting an outsider or two to join it—for example, a colleague from the husband’s or wife’s firm, or perhaps a customer or supplier engaged in related work, or, for that matter, a neighbour’s child who want to learn the trade. One can foresee the legal incorporation of such a family as a small business under special laws designed to foster the commune-cum-corporation or the cooperative. For many the household would become an electronic expanded family. It is true that most of he communes formed in the 1960’s and 1970’s fell rapidly apart, seeming to suggest that communes, as such, are inherently unstable in high-technology societies. A closer look reveals, however, that the ones that disintegrated most rapidly were those organized primarily for psychological purposes—to promote interpersonal sensitivity, to combat loneliness, to provide intimacy, or the like. Most had no economic base and saw themselves as utopian experiments. The communes that have succeeded over time—and some have—are, by contrast, those that have had a clear external mission, an economic base, and a practical, rather than purely utopian, outlook. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

An external mission welds a group together. It may, indeed, provide the necessary economic base. If this external mission is to design a new product, to handle the “electronic paperwork” for a hospital, to do the data processing for an insurance company department, to set up the scheduling for a commuter airline, to prepare catalogs, or to operate a technical information service, the electronic commune of tomorrow may, in fact, turn out to be a quite workable and stable family form. Moreover, since such electronic expanded families would not be designed as a rebuke to everyone else’s lifestyle or for demonstration purposes but rather as an integral part of the main wiring of the economic system, the chances for their survival would be sharply improved. Indeed, we may find expanded households linking up to form networks. Such networks of expanded families could supply some needed business or social service, cooperating to market their work or setting up their own version of a trade association to represent them. Internally, they might or might not share pleasures of the flesh across marriage lines. They might or might not be heterosexual. They might be childless or child-ful. In brief, what we see is the possible resurrection of the expanded family. Today some 6 percent of American adults live in ordinary extended families. One might easily imagine a doubling or tripling of this number in the next generation, with some unis expanding to include outsiders. This would be no trivial even but a movement involving millions in the United States of America alone. For community life, for patterns of love and marriage, for the reconstitution of friendship networks, for the economy and the consumer marketplace, as well as for our psyches and personality structure, the rise of the electronic expanded family would be momentous. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
This new vision of the extended family is not presented here as inevitable, not as better or worse than some other type of family, but simply as one example of the many new family forms likely to find viable niches in the complex social ecology of tomorrow. Sometimes I go about pitying myself while I am carried by the wind across the sky. It is the wind that gave them life. It is the wind that comes out of our mouths now that gives us life. When this ceases to blow we die. In the skin at the tips of our fingers we see the trail of the wind; it shows us the wind blew when our ancestors were created. O Lord and Redeemer, beside Thee there is none to save. Thou art mighty and redeemest. I was brought low, but Thou didst save me. O God of salvation who deliverest and savest, save Thy supplicants, save them that hope in Thee. Sustain thy lambs; increase the Earth’s riches. Cause to flourish and save each shrub, and condemn not the Earth to infertility, but sweeten and save its fruits. Urge on the rain-mists that they discharge their showers, and hold not back the clouds. Thou who openest Thine hand to sustain Thy creatures, satisfy the thirsty with water. Save them that call on Thee at morn, yea, do Thou save them. Save Thy whole-hearted servants, yea, save them, we beseech Thee. O save human and beast; save one who is flesh, sprit and soul; sinew, bone and skin; form and image of wondrous frame; beauty akin, alas, to vanity, and like the beasts that perish; radiance and glorious stature. Renew the face of the Earth and cause trees to sprout from the arid soil. Bless the vine-press and the corn, vineyards and sycamores upon he fair-bounded Earth. Please grant that the reviving rains send forth their fragrance to make fertile the Earth, to nurture the green herbs, to foster the pleasant fruits, and to strengthen the bubs. Send rain upon the tender shoots, and let cool waters flow, supplementing with the latter rain. Sustain the World which Thou hast founded, yea, save our Earth, suspended in space. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

Cresleigh Homes

Can you imagine holidays here? Birthdays? Christmas celebrations with all this counter space; the formal dining room, with the kitchen opening up to the living room.
That huge sliding glass door, which allows light to flood in and extends the living space into the backyard with the option built-in exterior fireplace that allows rooms for entertaining a large family all year around!

The Brighton Station Residence 4 model has space for all of it, and then some. Residence Four at Brighton Station is one of the largest homes available in the market! At 3,501 square feet we are sure you’ll have enough room for the entire family here! The open concept design includes four bedrooms, three and one half bathrooms and a three car garage.

When entering this expansive home, take note of the two story ceiling height at the entry. There is a bedroom on the first floor, located off the entry, with its own bathroom making it ideal for a guest suite or multigenerational living. https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/residence-4/

When the Dead are Raised, it is a Miracle of Reversal!
When you are driving, your behaviour at intersections is controlled by the red or green light. In a similar fashion, many of the stimuli we encounter each day act like stop or go signals that guide behaviour. To state the idea more formally, stimuli that consistently precede a rewarded response tend to influence when and where the response will occur. This effect is called stimulus control. A discriminative stimulus that most drivers are familiar with is a police car on the freeway. This stimulus is a clear signal that a specific set of reinforcement contingencies applies. As you have probably observed, the presence of a police car brings about rapid reductions in driving speed, lane changes, tailgating, and in Los Angeles, California, gun battles. Another familiar example is the beep on telephone answering machines. The beep is a signal that speaking will pay off (your message will be recorded). Most of us are well conditioned to “wait for the beep” before talking. One cannot express the principle more adequately than through the sentence of the Gospels “And the truth shall make you free,” reports John 8.32. Indeed, the idea that the truth saves and heals is an old insight which the great Masters of Living have proclaimed—nobody perhaps with such radicalism and clarity as Jesus Christ. If one does not want to remain in a state of craving which necessarily causing suffer, illusion (ignorance) is, together with hate and greed, one of the evils of which humans must rid themselves. The greedy person cannot be a free person and cannot be a happy human. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
Greed humans are slaves of things which rule them. The process of waking up from illusions is the condition of freedom and of liberation from suffering which greed necessarily produces. Disillusion (Ent-tauschung) is a condition for leading a life which comes closet to the fully development of humans, to the model of human nature. The human being who is carried away by irrational drives (“passive affects”) is necessarily one who has inadequate idea about oneself and the World—that is to say, one who lives with illusions. Those who are guided by reason are the ones who have ceased to be seduced by their senses and follow the two “active affects,” reason and courage. Those who have faith in Jesus Christ are those whom truth is the condition for salvation. The works of Christ was not primarily that of showing a picture of how the good society would look, but was relentless gospel of showing humans how to build a good society. One must love God in order to change circumstances which require sin. Truth refers not only to what one believes to be the truth, but the way to the truth les in insight into one’s own mental structure and thereby in “de-repression.” We are all so blinded and upset by self-love that everyone imagines one has a just right to exalt oneself, and to undervalue all others in comparison to self. If God has bestowed on us any excellent gift, we imagine it to be our own achievement, and we swell and even burst with pride. It is widely believed that most of us suffer the “I am not OK—you are OK” problem of low self-esteem, the problem that the comedian Groucho Marx had in mind when he declared, “I would not want to belong to any club that would accept me as a member.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

The humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers asserted this low self-image problem when objecting to the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s idea that original sin is self-love, pretension, and pride. No, said Dr. Rogers: people’s problems arise because “they despise themselves, regard themselves as worthless and unlovable.” A half century after the Niebuhr-Rogers exchange, the self-image issues remains alive. Ironically, many Christian preachers and writers are echoing the teachings of humanistic psychology by telling us that the fundamental human problem is low self-esteem. Meanwhile, research psychologists have been amassing new findings concerning the pervasiveness of pride. Indeed, it is the older theologians such as Niebuhr, not the humanistic psychologists and their Christian popularizers, who seem best to have anticipated a phenomenon uncovered by recent research. As the writer William Saroyan put it, “Every human is a good human in a bad World—as one oneself knows.” Researchers debate the sources of this self-serving bias phenomenon but agree that various streams of data merge to confirm its pervasiveness. Consider: Accepting more responsibility for success than failure, for good deeds than bad. Time and again, experimenters have found that people readily accept credit when told they have succeeded (attributing the success to their ability and effort), yet they attribute failure to external factors such as bad luck or the problem’s inherent “impossibility.” These self-serving attributions have been observed not only in laboratory situations, but also with athletes (after victory or defeat), students (after high or low exam grades), drivers (after accidents), and married people (among whom conflict often derives from perceiving oneself as contributing more and benefitting less than is fair). The self-concept research Anthony Greenwald summarizes: “People experience life through a self-centered filter.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

Favourable biased self-ratings: Can we all be better than average? In virtually any area that is both subjective and socially desirable, most people see themselves as beer than average. Most businesspeople see themselves as more ethical than the average business person. Most community residents see themselves as less prejudiced than their neigbhours. Most people see themselves as more intelligent and as healthier than most other person. When the College Board asked high school seniors to compare themselves with others their own ages, 60 percent reported themselves better than average in athletic ability, and only 6 percent below average. In leadership ability, 70 percent rated themselves above average, 2 percent below average. In ability to get along with others, zero percent of the 829,000 students who responded rated themselves below average, while 60 percent saw themselves in the top 10 percent and 25 percent put themselves in the top 1 percent. If Elizabeth Barrett Browning were still writing she would perhaps rhapsodize, “How do I love me? Let me count the ways.” The Barnum Effect. “There is a sucker born every minute,” said the showman P.T. Barnum. A number of experiments have given us a psychological version of the maxim. The procedure is simple: people are shown statements such as those in horoscope books (“You have a strong need for other people to like you and for them to admire you…While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them….At times you are extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved”). If told that the description is designed specifically for them on the basis of their psychological tests or astrological data, people usually say the description is remarkably accurate, especially when it is favourable. Negative assessments are judged less valid than flattering ones. “The Arch-Flatterer,” noted Plutarch, “is a man’s self.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

A turn at last, my Long-winded if Lofty-minded Friend. I go lost somewhere in Your rhetoric. Now tell me if I have You right. Roll Your thunderous judgments over me, O Lord! Shiver my timbers with fear and trembling! Scarify my soul! I stand astounded, as the words of Job come tumbling into my mind. “The Heavens are no clean in Your sight” (15.15). Bu “if You found depravity among the Angels” (4.18) and You did not spare them, what will become of me? “They have fallen like the stars from the Heavens,” wrote John in Revelations (6.13). I have read all those passages in Second Peer (2.4), Job (4.18), Revelation (6.13), Psalm (78.25), and Luke (15.16). In them the Angels, some of the best and brightest who lauded You to the highest, fell to the lowest. And so it is, then that some of the Notables of our land who used to receive the Bread of Angels have fallen afoul of You, O Lord. Now they delight in the swill of he swell-fed, if forbidden, pig. If that is what happened to them, what do I, a simple man of dust, a collector of garbage, have to look forward to? No sanctity, O Lord, if You withdraw Your hand. No wisdom, O Lord, if you stop governing the Universe. No fortitude, O Lord, if You stop conserving. No chastity, O Lord, if You do not protect it. No self-control, O Lord, if Your sacred vigilance is absent; the Psalmist knew that the Lord guarded the city, not the sentinels (127.1). “Leave us behind, O Lord, and we will be swamped and die”—the Disciples shouted that to You when the storm rose, or so Matthew report (8.25). Stay with us, and we rise to he surface and live. We are up and down, but we are confirmed through You. Hot, we grow cool. Cold, we grow warm. Yes, You are our fuel, our fervour, forever. Here are a few somethings about nothings; that is to say, a few thoughts of my own. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

Toad I must be, O Lord, and toad I must remain. Why? Because I toed the mark and failed. Of course, I could have toadied up to You, Lord God of all amphibians, but even in this I failed. Think it nothing when something good is associated with my name! O Lord, I cannot sound the depths of Your profoundest judgments, as the Psalmist called them (36.6). Lured by the deep, I dove. All I could see was nothing, and worse than nothing, and worse than nothing. My God, You are the Inconsiderable Consideration, the Impassable Archipelago! In traversing Your vastness, I leave not a trace or wake! What can I do to prevent my pride from being discovered? Where can I discover the confidence I thought I had? Your judgments have sopped up all this idiotic gloriation of mine, leaving not a stain behind. What does all the Flesh in the World amount to in Your sigh, O Lord? That is the sort of question the Great Paul asked the First Corinthians (1.29). Not a great deal, I should think. As the Prophet Isaiah asked it, “Can the pot glory more than the potter who made it?” (29.16). I think not, but what precisely does this mean? I think I can give some examples of the pot and the potter from my own monastic experience. A Devout wants to be one’s own chief praiser and appraiser, but why, when one’s heart has already been verified by God? A devout is toasted by the whole World for all of one’s wonderful qualities, but why, when one has already been credentialed by Truth herself? A Devout is moved to tears by a choir of voices chanting one’s praises, but why, when one is already confirmed one’s hope in God? These silly Devouts who speak such nonsense, take a close look at them; they are nothing to write home about. Their verbiage fails even as their voices fade. However, “the truth of the Lord,” as the Psalmist has sung, “remains in tune for ever and ever” (117.2). #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

Whether one thinks that one has strayed by chance into this starry World or believes that God’s grace has fallen upon one, one feels its beauty and peace. The encounter with Overself may be hushed and gentle or thrilling and dramatic. However, it will certainly be absorbing. In that beautiful mood, one is wafted upward because one’s mind turns away from the Earth, is interests and desires which ordinarily hold one down. The glimpse is unquestionably a sort of spell put upon the mind encircling the self, benign and healing and protective. It imparts a feeling of well-being. How inadequate are constructed sentences to tell anyone the total wonder of a glimpse, of the I’s department and the Overself’s arrival! The peace descends, the cares are gone, the fears are shed, the avid desires enfeebled. The experience of liberation yields a peace which lifts one into a detachment from the World never felt before, untouched by sights, persons, incidents, which hitherto produced repulsions, irritations, or rage. Joy glows quietly on the face of one who is experiencing a glimpse. The experience will flood one’s whole day with sun. One will experience a profound sense of release, a joyous exaltation of feeling, and a lofty soaring of thought. It would not be wrong o use a word from gustatory experience and describe these moments as delicious. It is almost entirely an intense and internal experience. The glimpse carries either a quiet intellectual rapture with it or a seething emotional one. In such a benignant mood, it is easy to forgive one’s enemies their vile conduct or to look at faithless friend n a kindlier light. It lifts the egoistic out of their egoism for a while, the fearful out of their fears. When we turn inwards, we turn in the direction of complete composure. It is the first streak of sunrise on one’s inner life. The discovery of the soul’s truth carries with it an excitement which only those who spend their lives seeking it know. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

The glimpses have various qualities—religious, aesthetic, perceptive, and so on. In such moments of intimacy with the Overself, as we let go of our pettiness, we feel enlarged. It gives one, for short while, an equanimity which one does not have at other times. One’s heart is filled with the sense of this Presence and, for the few or many minutes this lasts, one is a changed person. Some persons get their first glimpse by surprise, quite unexpectedly, and from then begins their quest. However, others get it during the onward course of their quest, while searching or waiting for it, and hopefully expectant of it. When the mind moves inward from everyday consciousness to mystical being, the benedictory change is both ennobling and sublime. During these short glimpses no anxiety and uncertainty can affect one. It is but a pause in the constant oscillation of life, a stilling of the ego’s pursuits. However, first a hush of peace, a soundless calm descends; the struggle of distress and fierce impatience ends; mute music soothes my breast—unuttered harmony that I could never dream till Earth was lost to me. Then dawns the invisible, the Unseen its truth reveals; my outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels—its wings are almost free, its home, its harbour found; measuring the gulf it stoops and dares the final bound! In these hushed moments a happiness steals over one, a glory is felt all around him. This is one’s real being. One sought for it, prayed to it, and communed with it in the past as if it were something other than, and apart from, oneself. Now one knows that it was oneself, that there is no need for one to do any of these things. All one needs is to recognize what one is and to realize it at every moment. The miracles of Healing, to which we turn next, are now in a peculiar position. Humans are ready to admit that many of them happened, but are inclined to deny that they were miraculous. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

The symptoms of very many diseases can be aped by hysteria, and hysteria can often be cured by “suggestion.” It could, no doubt, be argued that such suggestion is a spiritual power, and therefore (if you like) a supernatural power, and that all instances of “faith healing” are therefore miracles. However, in our terminology they would be miraculous only in the same sense in which every instance of human reason is miraculous: and what we are now looking for is miracles other than that. My own view is that it would be unreasonable to ask a person who has not yet embraced Christianity in its entirety to allow that all the healings mentioned in the Gospels were miracles—that is, that they go beyond the possibilities of human “suggestion.” It is for the doctors to decide as regards each particular case—supposing that the narratives are sufficiently detailed to allow even probable diagnosis. We have here a good example to what was said in the past. So far from belief in miracles depending upon ignorance of natural law, we are here finding for ourselves that ignorance of law makes miracle unascertainable. Without deciding in detail which of the healings must (apart from acceptance of the Christian faith) be regarded as miraculous, we can however indicate the kind of miracle involved. Its character can easily be obscured by the somewhat magical view which many people still take of ordinary and medical healing. There is a sense in which no doctor ever heals. The doctors themselves would be the first to admit this. The magic is not in the medicine but in the patient’s body—in the vis medicatrix naturae, the recuperative or self-corrective energy of Nature. What the treatment does is to simulate Natural functions or to remove what hinders them. We speak for convenience of the doctor, or the dressing, healing a cut. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
However, in another sense every cut heals itself: no cut can be healed in a corpse. That same mysterious force which we call gravitational when it steers the planets and biochemical when it heals a live body, is the efficient cause of all recoveries. And that energy proceeds from God in the first instance. All who are cured are cured by Him, not merely in the sense that His providence provides them with medical assistance and wholesome environments, but also in the sense that their very tissues are repaired by the far-descended energy which following from Him, energizes the whole system of Nature. However, one He did it visibly to the sick in Palestine, a Man meeting with men. What in its general operations we refer to laws of Nature or once referred to Apollo or Aesculapius thus reveals itself. The Power that always was behind all healings puts on a face and hands. Hence, of course, the apparent chanciness of the miracles. It is idle to complain that He heals those whom He happens to meet, not those whom He does not. To be a man means to be in one place and not in another. The World which would now know Him as present everywhere was saved by His becoming local. Christ’s single miracle of Destruction, the withering of the fig-tree, has proved troublesome to some people, but we think its significance is plain enough. The miracle is an acted parable, a symbol of God’s sentence on all that is “fruitless” and specially, no doubt, on the official Judaism of that age. That is its moral significance. As a miracle, it again does in focus, repeats small and close, what God does constantly and throughout Nature. We have seen in the past how God, twisting Satan’s weapon out of his hand, had become, since the Fall, the God even of human death. However, much more, and perhaps ever since the creation, He has been the God of the death of organisms. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
In both cases, though in somewhat different ways, He is the God of death because He is the God of Life: the God of human death because through it increase of life now comes—the God of merely organic death because death is part of the very mode by which organic life spreads itself out in Time and yet remains new. A forest a thousand years deep is still collectively alive because some trees are dying and others are growing up. His human face, turned with negation in its eyes upon that one fig-tree, did once what His unincarnate action does to all trees. No tree died that year in Palestine, or any year anywhere, except because God did—or rather ceased to do—something to it. All the Miracles which we have considered so far are Miracles of the Old Creation. In all of them we see the Divine Man focusing for us what the God of Nature has already done on a larger scale. In our next class, the Miracles of Dominion over the Inorganic, we find some that are of the Old Creation and some that are of the New. When Christ stills the storm, He does what God has done before. God made Nature such that here would be both storms and calms: in that way all storms (except those that are still going on at this moment) have been stilled by God. If you have once accepted the Grand Miracle, it is unphilosophical to reject the stilling of the storm. There is really no difficulty about adapting the weather conditions of the rest of the World to this one miraculous calm. I myself can still a storm in a room by shutting the window. Nature must make the best she can of it. And to do her justice she makes no trouble at all. The whole system, far from being thrown out gear (which is what some nervous people seem to think a miracle would do) digests the new situation as easily as an elephant digest a drop of water. She is, said before, an accomplished hostess. However, when Christs walks on the water, we have a miracle of the New Creation. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
God had not made the Old Nature, the World before the Incarnation, of such a kind that water would support a human body. This miracle is the foretaste of a Nature that is sill in the future. The New Creation is just breaking in. For a moment, it looks as if it were going to spread. For a moment, two men are living in that new World. St. Peter also walks on the water—a pace of two: then his trust fails him and he sinks. He is back in Old Nature. That momentary glimpse was a snowdrop of a miracle. The snowdrops show that we have turned the corner of the year. Summer is coming. However, it is a long way off and the snowdrops do not last long. The Miracles of Reversal all belong to the New Creation. When the dead are raised, it is a Miracle of Reversal. Old Nature knows nothing of this process: it involves playing backward a film that we have always seen played forwards. The one or two instances of it in the Gospels are early flowers—what we call spring flowers, because hey are prophetic although they really bloom while it is still winter. And the Miracles of Perfecting Glory, the Transfiguration, the Resurrection, and the Ascension, are even more emphatically of the New Creation. These are the true spring, or even summer, of the World’s new year. The Captain, the forerunner, is already in May or June, though His followers on Earth are still living in the forests and east winds of Old Nature—for “spring comes slowly up this way.” None of the Miracles of the New Creation can be considered apart from the Resurrection and Ascension: and that will require another essay. The healing of disease was well identified with Jesus’ work, with Aesculapian Greek sanctuaries, with Egyptian exorcism, with many a mystic throughout the Orient, and even with a number in the modern World, Eastern and Western. How, then, with such a religious background, can it be fair to deny divine inspiration to the Man who performs healing, while allowing such inspiration to the Man who only preaches? #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

Vedantic thought usually regards the siddhis—occult powers—as obstacles to attaining truth. Among them the healing of the body’s sicknesses and the mind’s disorders is included. That some persons are usually in being born with the gift of healing the sick is a historic fact. Why reject the talent or power as being unworthy of a true sage or of those who seek to become such a one? In what way is this form of serving humanity unethical, unsafe, inconsistent with the highest? Remember that Jesus started His work by an act of healing a sick person. The results of their use of healing powers cannot ordinarily be predicted, much less guaranteed, but must be left to the Higher Power. Spiritual healing is drawing much attention but the subject is involved in much confusion. Even the healers themselves hold contradictory theories about it. Some use prayer to get their cures; others deny that prayer is of any avail. Some practice mediation alone; others combine meditation with the laying-on of hands. Some deny that there is anything more than the power of suggestion behind the healings; others find in them evidence of God’s presence. Are there any spiritual laws which will scientifically explain the healings? Is the Hindu wisdom always wise? There is the warning of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras against the occult powers that might be acquired by yoga: they are to be shunned because they obstruct further advance towards the high plane. Healing is one of these listed powers. Must we accept such an attitude and reject the gift of healing, if it comes? Is good health so great an evil that disease is to be accepted dutifully? On this point a Westerner might rebel. In ancient and orthodox Hinduism, the profession of healer was regarded unfavourably, for the strange reason that it brought the healer and the sick together! #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
Sarah Pardee Winchester was known in France as a poetess. Quite late in life she became aware of certain radiations and found herself capable of healing sick people by using these radiations. Out of these experiences with people, she wrote a booklet entitled La Survie du Tuberculosis (Victory over Tuberculosis) in 1897, but it is no longer in print and has never been translated and this booklet is now one of two of the most rare and sought-after pieces of all Winchester literature. Devoted to healing work until she gave it up, saying that is exhausted her too much, she passed away in her sleep 5 September 1922. What she regarded as her major contribution to the healing art was the discovery from this experience of hers that tuberculosis has its seat “in the pithy tissues of the lungs” no matter where the infection is. She could not find a publisher for this book in France, but it was published here in Switzerland and will not, it is said, be reprinted now that she has passed. In fact, she was her own publisher. At the time of her retirement, she explained that vital energy would pass from her to the patient. It is known that some of her cures were spectacular, and even in most cases where she failed to save the life of the patient, she brought about passing without suffering. The confusion of thought concerning spiritual healing is tremendous. William Wirt Winchester asserts that the practice of falling into spiritual trance aggravated the tuberculosis which finally killed him. Yet this is the very method and practice used by some healers to heal their patients, because, they believed, it releases divine energies. What the healer does is to release, stimulate, or add energy to the sufferer’s own natural recuperative forces. The difference between healers are differences of techniques, personal fitness, and spiritual degree. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
The power to heal the sick is a latent gift deliberately brought out by development or spontaneously released by illumination. Spiritual healing is a gift which is innate in certain individuals and very difficult to acquire by others. It may, however, exist latently, and could show itself only after a certain degree of spiritual development has been attained. Bernard of Clairvaux cured hundreds of the blind, deaf, and paralyzed during the twelfth century simply by making the sign of the cross over the affected body part. Olcott in Ceylon, eight centuries later cured dozens of cases of scorpion bite and even snake bite by making the sign of the pentagram over the part. Does this not show that the healing power may lay in the healer oneself, even more than in one’s method? There are many puzzling cases of healers, like Saint Paul in ancient times, Saint Catherine of Siena in medieval ties, and Father Matthew of Ireland in modern times, who cured the ills of many people but did not or could not cure their own. This is a paradox that is hard to resolve. All healers lose their power after a time. This is to lead them to a higher level. Doctors who can keep us well, long-lived, and capable of functioning properly are more needed than those who cure our diseases. If words have any meaning at all, Christ’s words have meant that personal sacrifice is the cost of spiritual growth. For eighteen hundred years, humans of every kind—scholars, mystics, priests, laymen, ascetics, and saints—agreed on that. Then arose a new group of cults—faith-healers—which not only gave a new meaning to those words but a directly opposite meaning. Success and prosperity, they tried to use spiritual forces solely for their own personal purposes and material benefits, instead of trying to surrender to those forces and submit to higher purposes. The denied—contrary to the experience of all religious history—that material loss and personal failure could ever be the working of such purposes. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
Healing exists on all these different levels, which means its power comes from difference sources. However, it is believed that all healers should know their limits, their limitations, and it is feared that many of them do not simply because they are carried away by their enthusiasm. Secondly, I believe that all healers would not only be none the worse for some knowledge of anatomy and physiology and the commoner maladies, but they should even attempt to acquire some of this knowledge. Otherwise many errors, many false or exaggerated claims, are made by the healers. We are not questioning their honesty; we believe most of them are honest. However, we are questioning their lack of knowledge and fuller knowledge. On the other hand, we criticize the medical profession for failing to enter into dialogue with the healers; for if they adopted a humbler attitude towards the unorthodox healers, they would learn much to their own profit and to the improvement of their professional help. Before the healing process can come into operation, the patient must be brought into a receptive state; otherwise one will unconsciously obstruct them. Faith is the first requisite. By working a muscle group against resistance, one will build up willpower as well as muscle power. Holding the spine properly allows the flow currents of this Spirit Energy to circulate properly. The benefit of a specific exercise is to be measured by the warmth, or kundalini, it creates—not by the time it takes. Those who have seldom or never done bodily exercises may find it hard to start or, if started, to finish the complete daily period. If they gave up before sufficient time had passed to feel the benefits of the work, it would be a pity. Merely to lie down reduces the heartbeats by no less than ten each minute, thus saving this ever-working organ some of its heavy labour. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

The simple exercise of stretching helps to counter the congestions, compressions, and adhesions which obstruct the flow of the vital force through the spina column with its sixty-two branching nerves and thus to regain energy. This truth of the need of spine-loosening movement is instinctively known by every dog and car, every lion and tiger, for they apply it immediately after awakening from sleep. The back, the legs, and even paws are bent and stretched and even rolled by them in this natural exercise. To make the spinal column flexible and serviceable for these purposes, it must be both loosened and stretched. The day we die, the wind comes down to take away our footprints. The wind makes dust to cover up the marks we left while walking. For otherwise, the things would seem as if we were still living. Therefore the wind is he who comes to blow away our footprints. I will make my supplication in this, my house of prayer. On the Fast Day I revealed my transgression. Thereon I besought Thee to save me. Hearken to the voice of my cry; arise and save me. Remember and have compassion, my Redeemer. Comfort me with Thy solaces, O living God. O Thou good God, heed my prayer. Hasten the coming of my redeemer and destroy my evil desires so that Thou condemn me not again. Hasten, O God of my salvation, to save me for eternity. Forgive the stain of my wickedness and pass by mine iniquities, and turn, I pray Thee, to save me. O my Rock, my righteous Redeemer, accept my supplication; grant me my deliverance. Almighty, my Redeemer, save me now. Shine forth to save, yea, save, I beseech Thee. One enters into a sate which is certainly not a disappearance of the ego, but rather a kind of divine fellowship of the ego with its source. There is still a center of consciousness in one, still a voice which can utter the words or hold that thought “I am I.” The ego is lost in an ocean of being, but the ego’s link with God, the Overself, still remains. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

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He Was Haunted By an Invisible Presence!

The facts which I am about to relate happened to myself some sixteen or eighteen years ago, at which time I was still young enough to enjoy a life of constant travelling. There are, indeed, many less agreeable ways in which an unbeneficent parson may contrive to scorn delights and live laborious days. In remote places where strangers are scarce, his annual visit is an important evet; and though at the close of a long day’s work he would sometimes prefer the quiet of a Victorian mansion, he generally finds himself the destined guest of the rector or the squire. It rests with himself to turn these opportunities to account. If he makes himself pleasant, he forms agreeable friendships and sees Victorian home-life under one of its most attractive aspects; and sometimes, even in these days of universal common-placeness, he may have the luck to meet with an adventure. My first appointment was to Llanda Villa ; which was largely peopled with my personal friends and connections. It was, therefore, much to my annoyance that I found myself, after a could of years very pleasant work, transferred to a new teaching position. I now spent half my time in hired vehicles and lonely country inns. I had been in possession of this position for some three months or so, and winter was near at hand, when I paid my first visit of inspection to the Winchester mansion. It was a dull, raw afternoon of mid-November, growing duller and more raw as the day waned and the east wind blew keener. I found the foot path without difficulty. It led me across a barren slope divided by stone fences, with here and there a group of smaller Victorian houses and gazebos. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14

A light fog, meanwhile, was creeping up from the east, and the dusk was gathering fast. Now, to lose one’s way on such an expansive ranch and at such an hour would be disagreeable enough, and the footpath—a trodden track already half obliterated—would be indistinguishable enough in the course of another ten minutes, but the nine story look out tower, a top the mansion, stood erect as a compass guiding visitors to the bizarre and beautiful rambling mansion. Looking anxiously ahead, up to this moment, I had not met a living soul. However, then I saw a man emerging from the fog and coming along the path. As we neared each other—I advancing rapidly; he slowly—I observed that he dragged the left foot, limping as he walked. It was, however, so dark and so misty, that not till we were within half a dozen yards of each other could I see that he wore a dark suit and an Anglican felt hat, and looked something like a dissenting minister. As soon as we were within speaking distance, I addressed him. “Can you tell me, I said, about how much longer it will take to get to the Winchester mansion?” He came on, looking straight before him; taking no notice of my question; apparently not hearing it. “I beg your pardon,” I said, raising my voice; “but how much longer will it take on this path to get to the Winchester?” He had passed on without pausing; without looking at me; I could almost have believed, without seeing me! I stopped, with the words on my lips; then turned to look after—perhaps, to follow—him. But instead of following, I stood betwixted. What had become of him? #RandolphHarris 2 of 14

And what lad was that going up the path by which I had just come—that tall lad, half-running, half-walking, with a fishing-rod over his shoulder? I could have taken my oath that I had neither met nor passed him. Where then had he come from? And where was the man to whom I had spoken not three seconds ago and who, at his limping pace, could have made more than a couple of yards in the time? My stupefaction was such that I stood quite still, looking after the lad with the fishing-rod till he disappeared in the gloom under the park-palings. Was I dreaming? Darkness, meanwhile, had closed in apace, and, dreaming or not dreaming, I must push on, or find myself benighted. So I hurried forward, turning my back on the last gleam of daylight, and plunging deeper into the fog at every step. I was, however, close upon my journey’s end. The path ended at a turnstile; the turnstile opened upon a steep lane; and at the bottom of the land, down which I stumbled among stones and ruts, I came in sight of the welcome glare of a blacksmith’s forge. Here, then, was the Winchester. I found myself at the door of the Winchester mansion. When I was sitting in the cozy drawing room, I saw Mrs. Winchester, and she looked like an angel. Spreading loveliness everywhere, over all with whom she came in touch, over good and evil. When a small number of people often come together in the same room, a tradition readily develops as to where each individual has one’s place, one’s station; it becomes a kind of picture a person can unroll for oneself when one so desires, a map of the terrain. So it is also with us in the Winchester mansion—together we form a picture. We were to drink tea here this evening. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
Mrs. Winchester strives for an air of mystery. She wants to whisper and usually does it so well that she becomes entirely mute; I make no secret of my effusions to Merriam, her niece, an estimate of how many quarts of milk it takes for one pound of butter through the medium of cream and the dialectic of the butter churn. Indeed, it is not only something any young girl can listen to without hard, but, what is far more unusual, it is a solid and fundamental and edifying conversation that is equally ennobling to the head and the heart. And is no nature magnificent and wise in what she produces, what a precious gift is butter, what a glorious accomplishment of nature and art! It is a curious picture we make together. Mrs. Winchester almost vanishes before our eyes in pure agronomy; we go into the kitchen and the cellars, up into the attic, look at the chicken and ducks, geese et cetera. This was fascinating to me. But it could just be that I was the kind of young man who became old prematurely; it is possible. I sat late over the fire, and by the time I went to bed, I had well nigh forgotten my adventure with the man who vanished so mysteriously and the boy who seemed to come from nowhere. Next morning, finding I had abundant time at my disposal. What a reinvigorating power I felt from the Winchester—not the freshness of the morning air, not the sighing of the wind, not the coolness of the sea, not the fragrance of wine, its aroma—nothing in the World has this reinvigorating power. In this way the days go by. Mrs. Winchester seemed perfect happy in her mansion. Her bedroom faced the courtyard. Sometimes she stands on the balcony for a moment, and at night she looks up at the stars, unseen by all. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14

In these nocturnal hours, I walk around like a ghost. Then I forget everything, have no plans, no reckonings, cast understanding overboard, expand and fortify my chest with deep sighs, a motion I need in order not to suffer from my systematic conduct. Others are virtuous by day, sin at night; I am dissimulation by day—at night I am sheer inspiration. When I notice it, far off on the horizon there comes a flashing intimation from a quite different World, to the astonishment of Mrs. Winchester as well as Merriam. Mrs. Winchester sees the lightning but hears nothing; Merriam hears the voice but sees nothing. However, at the same moment everything is in its quiet order; the conversation between Mrs. Winchester and me proceeds in its uniform way, like post horses in the stillness of the night the; the sad hum of the samovar accompanies it. At such moments, it can sometimes be uncomfortable in the drawing room, especially for Merriam. She has no one she can talk with or listen to. I can well understand that it must seem to Merriam as if Mrs. Winchester were bewitched, so perfectly does she move to the tempo of my rhythm. She cannot participate in this conversation either, because one of the means I have also used to outrage her is that I allow myself to treat her just like a child. It is not as if I for that reason would allow myself any liberties whatever with her, far from it. I well know the upsetting effects such things can have, and the point is that her womanliness must be able to rise up pure and beautiful again. Because of my intimate relationship with Mrs. Winchester, it is easy for me to treat her like a child who has no understanding of the World. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14

Her womanliness is not insulted thereby but merely neutralized, for the fact that she does not know market prices cannot insult her womanliness, but the supposition that this is the ultimate in life can certainly be revolting to her. With my powerful assistance on this scored, Mrs. Winchester is out doing herself. She has become almost fanatic—something she can thank me for. The only thing about me that she cannot stand is that I have no position. Now I have adopted the habit of saying whenever a vacancy in some office is mentioned: “There is a position for me,” and thereupon discuss it very gravely with her. Merriam always perceives the irony, which is precisely what I want. The butler came in with more tea. I saw that he was lame. In the moment I remembered him. He was the man I met in the fog. “I met you yesterday afternoon, Mr. Brunton,” I said, as we went into the library. “Yesterday afternoon, sir?” He repeated. “You did not seem to observe me,” I said, carelessly. “I spoke to you, in fact; but you did not reply to me.” “But—indeed, I beg your parson, sir—it must have been someone else,” said the butler. “I did not go out yesterday afternoon.” How could this be anything but a falsehood? I might have been mistaken as to the man’s face; though it was such a singular face, and I had seen it quite plainly. However, how could I be mistaken as to his lameness? Besides, that curious trailing of the right foot, as if the ankle was broken, was not an ordinary lameness. I suppose I looked incredulous, for he added, hastily. “Even if I had not been preparing dinner for inspection, sire, I should not have gone out yesterday afternoon. It was too damp and foggy. I am obliged to be careful—I have a very delicate chest.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 14

My dislike to the man increased with every word he uttered. I did not ask myself with what motive he want on heaping lie upon lie; it was enough that, to serve his own ends, whatever those ends might be, he did lie with unparalleled audacity. “We will proceed to the examination, Mr. Brunton,” I said, contemptuously. He turned, if possible, a shade paler than before, bent his head silently, and called up the cuisine in their order. Profusely apologizing, he begged leave to occupy five minutes of my valuable time. He wished, under correction, to suggest a little improvement to many the menu more festive. “Under other circumstances…” I stopped and looked round. The butler repeated my last words. “You were saying, sir—under other circumstances?” I looked around again. “I seemed to me that there was someone here,” I said; “some third person, not a moment ago.” “I beg your pardon, sir—a third person?” “I saw his shadow on the ground, between yours and mine.” The mansion faced due north, and we were standing immediately behind it, with our backs to the sun. The place was bare, and open, and high; and our shadows, sharply defined, lay stretched before our feet. “A—a shadow?” he faltered. “Impossible.” There was not a bush or a true within half a mile. There was not a could in the sky. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that could have cast a shadow. I admitted that t was impossible, and that I must have fancied it; and so went back to the matter of the menu. “Should you see Mrs. Winchester,” I said, “you are at liberty to say that I thought it a desirable improvement.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 14

“I am much obliged to you, sir. Thank you—thank you very much,” he said, cringing at every word. “But—but I had hoped that you might perhaps use your influence”—“Look there!” I interrupted. “Is that fancy?” We were now close under the blank walls of the kitchen. On this wall, laying to the full sunlight, our shadows—mine and the butler’s—were projected. And there too—no longer between his and mine, but a little way apart, as if the intruder were standing back—there, as sharply defined as if cast by line-light on a prepared background, I again distinctly saw, though but for a moment, that third shadow. As I spoke, as I looked round, it was gone! “Did you not see it?” I asked. He shook his head. “I—I saw nothing” he said, faintly. “What was it?” His lips were white. He seemed scarcely able to stand. “But you must have seen it!” I exclaimed. “It fell just there—where that bit of ivy grows. There must be some boy hiding—it was a boy’s shadow, I am confident. “A boy’s shadow!” he echoed, looking round in a wild, frightened way. “There is no place—for a boy—to hide.” “Place or no place,” I said, angrily, “if I catch him, he shall feel the weight of my cane!” I searched backwards and forwards in every direction, the butler, with his scared face, limping at my heels; but, rough and irregular as the ground was, there was not a hole in it big enough to shelter a rabbit. “But what was it?” I said, impatiently. “An—an illusion. Begging your pardon, sir—and illusion.” He looked so like a beaten hound, so frightened, so fawning, that I felt I could with lively satisfaction have transferred the threatened caning to his own shoulders. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14

“But you saw it?” I said, impatiently. “No, sir. Upon my honour, no, sir. I saw nothing—nothing whatever.” His looks belied his words. I felt certain that he had not only seen the shadow, but that he knew more about it than he chose to tell. I was by this time really angry. To be made the object of a boyish trick, and to be hoodwinked by the connivance of the butler, was too much. It was an insult to myself and my office. I scarcely knew what I said; something short and stern at all events. Then, having said it, I turned my back upon Mr. Brunton and the mansion, and walked rapidly back to the village. As I was leaving the Winchester, it was a gloomy evening. I was standing high in the midst of a somber deer-park some six or seven miles in circumference. An avenue of palm trees, which led up to the house looked so lonely. The butler said, “If you would but be persuaded to say a day longer, a new experience awaits you. I will take you down the Winchester shaft, and show you the home of the gnomes and trolls. I am the king of Hades, and rule the under World as well as the upper. There is gold everywhere underlying this mansion. The whole place is honeycombed with shafts and galleries. One of our richest seams runs under this house, and there are upwards of forty men at work in it a quarter of a mile below our feet here every day. Another leads right away under the park, Heaven only knows how far! My father began working it five-and-twenty years ago, and we have gone on working it ever since; yet it shows no sign of failing. That is why Mrs. Winchester is rich enough to commit whatever design follies she pleases; and that is saying a good deal. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
“But then, to be always squandering money—always building a rambling mansion—always gratifying the impulse of the moment—is that happiness? Mrs. Winchester has been experimenting for several decades; and with what result? Would you like to see?” He snatched up a lamp and led the way through a long suite of unfinished rooms, the floors of which were piled high with packing cases of all sizes and shapes, labelled with the names of various foreign ports and the addresses of foreign agents innumerable. What did they contain? Precious marbles from Italy and Greece and Asia Minor; priceless paintings by old and modern masters; antiquities from the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates; enamels from Persia, porcelain from China, bronzes from Japan, strange sculptures from Peru; arms, mosaics, ivories, wood-carvings, skins, tapestries, old Italian cabinets, painted bride-chess, Etruscan terracottas; treasures of all countries, or all ages, never even unpacked since they crossed that threshold which the mistress’s foot had crossed but twice during the ten years it had taken to buy them! Should she ever open them, ever arrange them, every enjoy them? Perhaps—if she becomes weary of wandering—if she remarried—if she built a gallery to receive them. If not—well, she might found and endow a museum; or leave the things to the nation. What did it matter? Collecting was like fox-hunting; the pleasure in the pursuit, and ended with it!” Breakfast over, we went around the mansion, and saw the men working. Just as we were about to enter an underground tunnel—a tall, slender lad, with a fishing rod across his shoulder, came out rom one of the side doors of the mansion, crossed the open at field, and disappeared among the tree-trunks on the opposite side. I recognized him instantly. It was the boy whom I saw the other day, just after meeting the butler in the meadow. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
“If the boy think he is going fishing in a fruit orchard,” I said, “he will find out his mistake.” “What boy,” asked Mr. Brunton, looking back. “That boy who crossed over yonder, a minute ago.” “Yonder!—in front of us?” “Certainly. You must have seen him?” “No I.” “You did no see him?—a tall, thin boy, in a grey suit, with a fishing-rod over his shoulder. He disappeared behind those nectarine trees.” Mr. Brunton looked at me with surprise. “You are dreaming!” he said. “No living thing—not even a rabbit—has crossed our path since we left the mansion.” “I am not in the habit of dreaming with my eyes open,” I replied, quickly. He laughed, and put his arm through mine. “Eyes or no eyes,” he said, “you are under an illusion this time!” An illusion—the very word made use of by the butler! What did it mean? Could I, in truth, no longer rely upon the testimony of my senses? A thousand half-formed apprehensions flashed across me in a moment, I remembered the illusions of Nicolini, the bookseller, and other similar cases of visual hallucination, and I asked myself if I has suddenly become afflicted in like manner. “By jove! This is a queer sight!” exclaimed Mr. Brunton. And then I found that we had emerged from the fruit orchard, and were looking down upon the bed of what yesterday was a lake. It was indeed a queer sight—an oblong, irregular basin of the blackest slime, with here and there a sullen pool, and round the margin an irregular fringe of bulrushes. At some little distance along the bank—less than quarter of a mile from where we were standing—a gaping crowd had gathered. All the foremen seemed to turn out to stare. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14

Hats were pulled off and curtsies dropped at Mr. Brunton’s approach. He, meanwhile, came up smiling, with a pleasant word for everyone. “Well,” he said, “are you looking for the lake, my friends?” “I see a log of rotten timber sticking half in and half out of the mud,” one of the men said, “and something—a long reed, apparently…by Jove! I believe it is a fishing rod!” “It is a fishin’ rod, squire,” said the blacksmith with rough earnestness; “an” if yon rotten timber bayn’t an unburied corpse, mun I never stroike hammer on anvil agin!” There was a buzz of acquiescence from the bystanders. ‘Twas an unburied corpse, such enough. Nobody doubted it. “It must have come out, whatever it is, Mr. Brunton said presently. “Five feet of mud, do you say? Then here is a sovereign apiece for the first two fellows who wade through it and bring that object to land!” It was, in truth, an unburied corpse; part of the trunk only above the surface. They tried to life it; but it had been so long under water, and was in so advanced a stage of decomposition, that to bring it to shore without a shutter was impossible. Being cross-questioned, they thought, from the slenderness of the form, that it must be the body of a boy. “There’s the poor chap’s rod, anyhow,” said the blacksmith, laying it gently down upon the turf. Mrs. Winchester was summoned and told of the news. That night she rushed to her blue séance room and demanded the spirits tell her what happened to the boy. “I invoke thee, and move thee, and stir thee up O Spirit Leraikha,” said Mrs. Winchester. “From the 30 Legions of Spirits, appear unto my eyes before the circle in the likeness of a man in and tell me what has happened to this boy!” #RandolphHarris 12 of 14

“The words Adam spoke to God, and all things of water were as blood,” replied the Spirit Leraikha. “In the names Alpha and Omega, I am the God of Secret Truth who liveth forever, the All-Powerful. It is to I, to whom all creatures are obedient and in the Extreme Justice and Anger of God that I withdrawal this veil that is before the glory of God, might; and by the creatures of living breath before the Thone whose eyes are east and west; by the fire in the fire of just Glory of Mine Throne; by the Holy ones of Heaven; and by the secret wisdom of God, I, exalted in power, has been stirred up to cast a vision of the past and make clear the present! The secrets of truth in voice and understanding comes: This is the corpse of a boy of perhaps ten and four or ten and five years of age. There was a fracture three inches long at the back of the skull, evidently fatal. This might, of course, have been an accidental injury; but when the body came to be raised from where it layeth, it was found to be pinned down by a pitchfork, the handle of which had been afterwards whittled off, so as not to show above water, a discovery tantamount to evidence of murder. The features of the victim were decomposed beyond recognition; but enough of the hair remained to show that it has been short and sandy. He had a passion for fishing and was in the habit of slipping away at school-hours, and showed himself the more cunning and obstinate more he was punished. At last there came a day when the butler tracked him to the place his rod was concealed and beat the miserable lad about the head and arms with a heavy stick. Pin through hand and blood was running out of his mouth until he fell insensible and ceased to breathe. He dragged the body among the bulrushes by the water’s edge, and there concealed it as well as he could. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14

“At night, when the neighbours and staff were in bed asleep, he stole out by starlight, taking with him a pitchfork, a coil of rope, a couple of iron-bars, and a knife. He weighted and sunk the corpse, and pinned it down by the neck with his pitchfork. He then cut away the handle of the fork; hid the fishing-rod among the reeds; and believed, as murderers always believe, that discovery was impossible. His dreadful secret had of late become intolerable. He was haunted by an invisible Presence. That Presence sat with him at table, followed him in his walks stood behind him in the mansion, and watched by his side. He never saw it; but he felt that it was always there. Sometimes he raves of a shadow on the walls of this mansion. I have now told you all that there is at present to tell.” When a community looks only for evidence of guilt and ignores or suppresses all contradictory evidence, the result is a witch hunt. Witch hunts are often used to conceal more heinous crimes. And when a witch hunt occurs, which is the very opposite of what was going on in the case of the murdered boy, the community feels itself so beset by evil that it is no longer capable of perceiving the good. The primary causes of witch hunts are clear. It is usually due to corruption, an outbreak of epidemic hysteria which usually ordinates in experiments with the occult. And the hysterical hallucinations of the afflicted persons are confirmed by some concrete evidence of actual witchcraft and by many confessions, the majority of them hysterical. A number of other explanations have been offered, but most of them are more or less unconvincing. It has been argued that the outbreak is usually due to some new religion. Typically a kind of insanity resulting from sexual repression or denying one’s true sexual nature. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14

Winchester Mystery House

It’s a beautiful day for a stroll through the gardens. Today, Winchester Mystery House marks 99 years since our lady of mystery, Sarah Winchester passed away peacefully in her bedroom of Llanda Villa. We mark her passing with the ringing of the bell 13 times as is our tradition. Thank you Sarah for creating this iconic home that we continue to share with guests from around the world.
🎟️ Link in bio.

A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
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In a Nightmare of Supernatural Terror—Afraid to Move Hand or Foot II!

Immediately after I sat down…and did see a black thing jump into the window. And it came and stood just before my face. The body of it looked like a monkey, only the feet were like a cock’s feet with claws, and the face somewhat more like a man’s than a monkey’s. And I being greatly affrighted, not being able to speak or help myself by reason of fear, I suppose, so the thing spoke to me and said, “I am a messenger sent to you. For I understand you are troubled in mind, and if you will be ruled by me you shall want for nothing in this World.” I would have cried out—would have shrieked, if every never had not been paralyzed. I could not doubt the evidence of my sense—if I could have done so the cold, unearthy horror which sicked my very soul would have borne its undeniable testimony that I had behold the impersonation of the hidden curse that rested on this dwelling. I stood there rigid and immovable, as if that blighting Medusa-glance had indeed changed me into stone. It may have been but a very few minutes—it seemed to me a cycle of painful ages, when the light of a brightly burning lamp shone before me, and I heard the cheerful sounds of the new nurse’s voice in my ears: “Come along, cook. Bless your heart, my dear! you need not be nervous; there is no occasion. Mrs. Winchester, ma’am, are you not well, ma’am? “No,” I said faintly, staggering to the woman’s outstretched hands. “Not down there—upstairs to the children.” She turned as I bade her, and supported me up the stairs and into the nursery, the cook following close at my skirts, muttering fervent prayers and chants. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13

The sight of the peacefully sleeping little ones did far more to restore me than all the essences and chafing and unlacing which the two women busily administered. I had got suddenly ill when coming upstairs was the explanation I gave, which the cook, plainly perceived, most thoroughly doubted, at least without the cause she suspected being assigned, which, even in the midst of my terror-stricken condition, I refrained from giving, I did not speak to the nurse either of what had happened, but I felt that she knew as well as if she had been by my ide all the time. However, when William returned I told him. Distressed and alarmed on my account though he was, yet he did not, as before, refuse credence to my story. “We must leave the house, William. I should die here very soon,” I said. “Yes, Sarah; of course we must leave if you have anything to distress or terrify you in his manner, though it does seem absurd to be driven out of one’s house and home by a thing of this kind. Someone’s practical joke, or a trick prompted by malice against the owner of the property in order to lessen its value. I have heard of such things often.” “William, it is nothing of the kind,” I said earnestly; “you know it is not.” “No, I do not,” said William shortly and grimly, as he opened his case of revolvers, “and I wish I did.” The night passed away quietly, to our ears at least; but next morning when William had concluded the usual morning prayers, instead of the usual move of the servants, they remained clustered at the door, Jansen with an exceedingly elongated visage standing slightly in advance of the group as a spokesman. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13

“Please, sir and ma’am, we cannot tell you what to do.” “Why, go and do your work,” retorted William, with a nervous tug at his moustache and an uneasy glance at me. Jansen shook his head slowly. “It cannot be done, sir—cannot be done, ma’am. Why, no living Christian, not to speak of humble, but respectable servants,” said Jansen with a flourish, quite unconscious of the nice distinction he had made, “could stand it any longer.” “What is the matter, pray?” said my husband. “Ghosts, sir—spirits—unclean spirits,” said Charles, in an awestruck whisper which was re-echoed in the cook’s “Lor” “a” mercy!” as she dodged back from the doorway with the housemaid holding fast to one of her ample sleeves, and the lady’s maid holding fast to the other. The New nurse, quietly dandling the baby in her arms, was alone unmoved. “What stories have you been listening to now?” said their master, what a slight laugh and a frown. “No stories, sir; but what we have seen with our eyes and understanded with our ears, and—and—comprehended with our hearts,” said Jansen, with an unsuccessful attempt at quoting Scripture. “What was it as walked the floors last night between one and two, sir? What was it as talked and shrieked and run and raced? What was it as frightened the mistress on the stairs last evening?” And the whole posse of them turned to me, triumphantly awaiting my testimony. I was feeling very ill, and looking so, I daresay, having struggled downstairs in order to prevent the servants having any additional confirmation of their surmises. “That is no affair of yours,” said William gravely; “your mistress is in delicate health, and was feeling unwell all day.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 13

“Will you allow me to speak, please, sir?” said the nurse, and, as her maser nodded assent, she turned to the frightened group with a pleasant smile. “You have no cause to be afraid, cook, or Mr. Jensen, or any of you,” said she, addressing the most important functionary first—“not in the least. I am only a servant like the rest, and here a shorter time than any one; but I think you are very foolish to unsettle yourself in a good situation and frighten yourselves. You need not think they will harm you. Fear God and do your duty, and you need not mind wandering, poor, lonely souls—-” “Lor” “a” mercy! ‘ow you talk, Mrs. Lewis!” said the coo indignantly. “I have seen them more times than one—many and many a time, Mrs. Cook; and they never harmed a hair of my head,” said the nurse, “nor they will ever harm your.” “Well, then,” said the cook, packing into the hall, followed by her satellites, “not to be made Cleopatra, nor the Virgin Mary neither, would I stay to be frighted out of my seven senses, and made into a lunatic creature like poor Linda was!” “Please to make better omelettes for luncheon, cook, than you did yesterday,” said William calmly, though he looked pale and angry enough, “and leave me to deal with the ghost—I will settle accounts with them!” The nurse turned quickly and looked earnestly at him: “I would not say that, sir—God forbid,” said she in an undertone, and the next moment was singing softly and blithely as she carried the children away to their morning bath. William and I looked at each other in silence. “I wish we have never come into this house, dear,” I said. “I wish from my heart that we never had, Sarah,” he responded; “but we must manage to stay the season out, at all events. It would be too absurd to run away like frightened hares, not to speak of the expense and trouble we have gone through expanding the mansion to four floors with a nine-story tower.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 13

“We can may get it taken off our hands with a substantial loss, perhaps,” I suggested. “See the house-agent, William.” “I have seen him, but we have one of the largest, and most expansive estates in the country. No one can afford it,” he replied. “He deeply regretted that we should have any occasion to find fault, especially after our huge investment in expanding the estate, and it is not even completed yet. The agent also said he was happy to do anything in the way of clearing up this little mystery, et cetera. Of course he was laughing at me in his sleeve.” Again, as after our previous alarms, says passed on and lengthened into weeks in undisturbed quietude. William had a good many business matters to arrange; the children looked as rosy and healthy as in their country home, from their constant walking and playing in the airy, pleasant parks. My own health was not every good; and Dr. Winchester, William’s cousin, was kindest and wisest of grave, gentlemanly doctors; so, all thing considered, we stay at the Winchester mansion we have build into a 600 room Queen Anne Victorian mansion from an 18-room farmhouse. Only on my husband’s account, I wished for any change. Something seemed to affect his health strangely, although he never complained of anything beyond the usual lassitude and want of a tone which a gay Santa Clara season might be expected to bequeath him. He was sleepless, frequently depressed, nervous, and irritable; and still he vehemently declared he was quite well, and seemed almost annoyed when I urged him to put his business aside for the present and leave town. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13

He had been induced to enter into a large “Highly Finished Arms” promotion and sales of deluxe Winchesters, and had, besides, some heavy money matters to arrange, connected with his sister’s marriage settlements, which he expected would be required about Christmas. So, all things considered, he had some cause for feeling as haggard as he did. “It will be as well for William to leave Santa Clara, Mrs. Winchester, as soon as he can, said his cousin Dr. Winchester at the close of one of his pleasant “run-in” visits. “His nerves are shaky. We men get nervous nearly as often as the ladies, though we do not confess to the fact quite so openly. A little unstrung, you know—nothing more. A few weeks in sea or mountain air will quite brace him up again.” And as I dressed for dinner that evening, I determined that if wifely entreaties, and arguments, and authority, should not fail for the first time in our wedded life, William should have the sea or mountain air without another week’s delay; and, of course I determined, likewise, to back up entreaties, arguments, and authority with the prettiest dress I could put on. I cannot tell why wives, and young wives too, will neglect their personal appearance when “only one’s husband” is present. It is unpolitic, unbecoming, and unloving; and men and husbands do not like neglect—direct or implied, be sure of that, ladies—young, middle-aged, or old. “Your brown silk, ma’am?—it is rather cold this evening for that cream-coloured grenadine,” said Agnus, rustling at my wardrobe. “No, Agnus, I will not have that brown, I am tired of it,” I replied. If so happened that it was this dress which I had worn on the three occasions when I had been terrified by the strange occurrences in this house; and I had acquired a superstition aversion for this particular robe. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13

So Agnus arrayed me in a particularly charming demi-toilette of pale yellow silk grenadine and white lace; and I felt myself to be a most amiable and affectionate little wife, as I went downstairs to await William’s return for dinner. I never sat in my pretty dressing-room alone. Truth to tell, I disliked the apartment secretly and intensely, and only for fear of troubling and displeasing George I would have shut it up from the first evening I spent in it. He was late for dinner, and I was quite shocked to see how thin and ill he looked by the gas-light; and, as soon as it was concluded, and that by the assistance of excellent coffee and a vast amount of petting, I had coaxed him into his usual smiles and good-humour, I began my petition—that he would leave town for his own sake. He listened to me in silence, and then said, “Very well, Sarah, we will go as soon as we can board up the east wing; I suppose you may come back here. “Oh! yes, I think so,” I replied, “maybe someone attracted these bad spirits and we need to let things cool off again. We shall spend Winter in New Haven, in our dear old house, William.” “Very well,” he said wearily, “though you must know, Sarah, I am not going on account of this one thing. I would hardly quit my house, indeed, because of ghostly or bodily sights or sounds.” He started up from the couch on which he was lying, flushed and excited as he always was when the subject was mentioned, his eyes gleaming as brightly as the flashing scabbard which hung on the wall before him. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13

“Certainly not, dearest,” I said soothingly. “I wish I could solve the mystery,” he pursued, more excitedly; “I would make somebody suffer for it! One’s peace destroyed, and people terrified, and servants driven away, as if one was living in the dark ages, with some cursed necromancer next door!” “Oh! well, it is some time ago now, and the servants have got over their fright. Pray, do not distress yourself about it, dear William.” “Ah, well—you do not—never mind,” he muttered; “but I mean to have tangible evidence before ever I leave this house—I have sworn it!” He was not easily roused, and I felt both surprise and alar to see him so now, and for so inadequate a cause. I had almost fancied he had forgotten the matter, as we, by tacit consent, never alluded to it. “Do not you allow yourself to be alarmed, Sarah, that is all I care about,” he went on, pacing the floor. “I have been half mad with anxiety on your account, for fear those idiotic servants should manage to startle you to death some dark evening-cowards, every one of them; but I mean to have someone to stay here and sit up—-” He paused suddenly, and listened, then stepped noiselessly to the door, and opening it, listened again intently. “William,” I whispered. He took no heed of me; but rapidly unlocking a cabinet drawer, he drew out a thirty-shooter, loaded and capped, and with his finger on the trigger stole softly to the door and into the hall, whither I followed him. Everything was silent, and the hall and stairs lamps were burning clear and high. I could hear the throbbing of my own heart as I stood there watching. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13

Suddenly we both heard heavy rapid footsteps, seemingly overhead; and then confused noises, as of struggling, and quarrelling, and sobbing, mingled in a swelling clamour which sounded now near, deafeningly near, and then far, far away; now overhead, now beside us, now beneath, undistinguishable, indescribable, and unearthly. Then the rushing footsteps came nearer and nearer. And, clenching his teeth, while his face grew rigid and white in desperate resolve, William sprang up the staircase with a bound like a tiger. It has all passed in less than half the time I have taken to relate it, and while I yet stood breathless and with straining eyes, William had nearly reached the last step when I saw him stagger backwards, the thirty-shooter raised in his hand. There was a struggle, a rushing, swooping sound, two shots fired in rapid succession, a floating cloud of white smoke, through which I saw the streaming yellow hair and steel-blue eyes flash downward, and then a shriek rang out—the dreadful cry of a man in mortal terror—a crashing fall, beneath which the house trembled to its foundations, and I saw my husband’s body stretched before the conservatory door, whither he had toppled backwards—whether dead or dying I knew not. I remember dimly hearing my own voice in agonized screams, and the terror-stricken servants hurrying from the kitchens below. I remember the kind of face of my new nurse as she bravely rushed down and dispatched someone for the doctor, and made others help her to carry the senseless figure, with blood slowly dripping from the parted lips and staining the snowy linen shirt-front in great gouts and splashes, up to the chamber, where they laid him on his bed, and I, a wretched frenzied woman, knelt beside him with the sole, ceaseless prayer that brain or lips could form—“God help me!” #RandolphHarris 9 of 13

I remember the physician’s arrival, and the grave face and low clear voice of Dr. Winchester, as he made his enquiries; and then another physician summoned, and the low frightened voices, and peering frightened faces, and the lighted candles guttering away in currents of air form opening and shutting doors, and the long hours of night, and the cold grey dawning, the heart-rendering suspense, and speechless, tearless, wordless agony, and the sun rose, gloriously cloudless, smiling in radiance, as if there was not the shadow of death over the weary World beneath his rays, and I hear the verdict—“there was scarcely a hope.” However, God was merciful to me and to him, and my darling did not die. With a fevered brain and a shattered limb he lay there for weeks—lay there with the dark portals half opened to receive him; lay there, when I could no longer watch beside him, but lay prostrate and suffering in another apartment, tended by kind relatives and friends; but at length, when the mellow sunshine, and the crisp clear air of the soft shadowy October days stole into the sick room. William was able to be dressed and sit up for an hour or two amongst the pillows of his easy-chair by the window. And there he was, longing to be gone away from London. “Sarah, darling, weak or strong I must go,” he said in his trembling uncertain voice, and with a restless longing in his faded eyes, “I shall never get better in this house.” And so a few days afterwards, accompanied by the doctor and two nurses, we went down in a pleasant swift railroad journey to our dear, beautiful, peaceful home in New Haven. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13

William never spoke of that night of horror but once, when Dr. Winchester told of the story connected with the original 18-room farmhouse we purchased, which morphed into a labyrinth of endless room, twisting and winding tunnels, and catacombs. Thirty years before we bought the farmhouse, the man who was both proprietor and tenant of the estate died, leaving his two daughters all he possessed. He had been a bad man, led a bad wild life, and died in a fit brough on by drunkenness; and these two daughters, grown to womanhood, inherited with his ill-gotten fold his evil nature. They were only half-sisters, and were believed to have been illegitimate also. The elder, a tall, masculine, strongly built woman, with masses of coarse fair hair, and bright, glitter blue eyes; and the younger, a plump, dark-haired rather pretty girl, but as treacherous, vain, and bold, as her elder sister was fierce, passionate, and cruel. They lived in this house, with only their servants, for several years after their father’s death, a life of quarrelling and bickering, jealousy, witchcraft, and heart-burnings, on various accounts. The elder strobe to tyrannize over the younger, who repaid it by deceit and crafty selfishness and black magic. At length a lover came, who the elder sister favoured; whom she loved as fiercely and rashly as such wild untamed natures do; and by fiercely and rashly as such wild untamed natures do; and by falsehood and deep-laid treachery the younger sister cast a love spell on the man and won his fickle fancy from the great, harsh-featured, haughty, passionate elder one. The elder woman soon perceived it, and there were dreadful scenes between the two sisters, when the younger taunted the elder, and the elder cursed the younger. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13

However, as fate would have it, one night and at length—there had been a fiercer encounter of words than usual, and the dark-haired girl maddened her sister by insults, and the sudden information that she intended leaving the house in the morning, to stay with a relative until her marriage, which was to take place in one week from that time—the wronged woman, demon-possessed from that moment, waited in her dressing-room, until her sister entered, and then she sprang on her and screaming and struggling, they both wrested until they reached the staircase, where the younger sister, escaping for an instant, rushed wildly down, followed by her murderess, who overpowered her in spite of her frantic struggles, and with her strong, cruel, bony hands deliberately strangled her, until she lay a disfigured palpitating corpse at her feet. She had several scars that seemed as if they had been long there, and they were done by witchcraft. The officers of justice arrested the murderess a few hours afterwards. The jailers put irons on her legs (having received such a command). [It was the curious theory that chaining the prisoner would prevent her specter from afflicting anyone.] The weight of them was about eight pounds. These irons and her other afflictions soon brought her into convulsion fits so they thought she would die that night. She died by poison self-administered on the second day of her imprisonment. What is now known as the Winchester Mansion had been shut up and silent for many a year afterwards, and when, at length, and when, at length, an enterprising landlord put it in habitable order, and found tenants for it again, he only found them to lose them. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13

Year after year passes away, its evil fame darkening with its massive masonry, for none could be found to sanctify with the sacred name and pleasures of home that dwelling blighted by an abiding curse. “I never told you, Sarah,” William said, “although I told my cousin Dr. Winchester, that from the first evening I led a haunted life in that beautiful house, and the more I struggled to disbelieve the evidence of my senses, and to keep the knowledge from you, the more unbearable it became, until I felt myself going mad. I knew I was haunted, but will that last night I had never witnessed what I dreaded day and night to see. And then, Sarah, when I fired, and I saw the devilish murderess face, with its demon eyes blazing on me, and the tall unearthly figure hurrying down to meet me, dragging the other struggling, writhing figure, with her long sinewy fingers seemingly pressed around the convulsed face, then I knew it was all over with me. If there had been a flaming furnace beside me I think I should have leaped into it to escape that awful sight.” That was over a century ago. Sarah eventually returned to the Winchester all along and made several changes to it over 38 years. It is now a 4 story, 160-room mansion, with over 25,500 square feet, sitting on four acres. It was once up to 600 rooms, likely 95,625 square with as many as 737 acres. The strange thing about witchcraft and legends is many of them are based in truth, and sometimes there are unexplainable continuity errors. Take for example An hysterical fit, from J.M. Charcot, Lectures on the Disease of the Nervous System (London, 1877). Look at the extruded tongue, reported during the seventeenth century in witchcraft cases at Gordon, Boston, Salem, and elsewhere. Notice also the legs crossed in spasm; at one time Mary Warren’s legs could not be uncrossed without breaking them. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13

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I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day!

When looking at top concert pianists, Olympic swimmers, sculptors, tennis players, mathematicians, and research neurologists, it was discovered that drive and determination, not great natural talent, led to exceptional success. The first steps toward high achievement began when parent expose their children to music, swimming, scientific ideas, and so forth, “just for fun.” At first, many of the children had very ordinary skills. One Olympic swimmer, for instance, remembers repeatedly losing rases to a 10-year-old. At some point, however, the children began to actively cultivate their abilities. Before long, parents noticed the child’s rapid progress and found an expert instructor or coach. After more successes, the youngsters began “living” for their talent and practiced many hours daily. This continued for many years before they reached truly outstanding heights of achievement. Talent is nurtured by dedication and hard work. It is most likely to blossom when parents actively support a child’s special interest and emphasize doing one’s best at all times. Studies of child prodigies and eminent adults also show that intensive practice and expert coaching are common ingredients of high achievement. Elite performance in music, sports, chess, the arts, and many other pursuits requires at least 10 years of dedicated practice. The old belief that “talent will surface” on its own is largely a myth. This is especially true for talented women, who face a wide variety of social obstacles to exceptional achievement. “If ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true,” reports Alma 32.21. #RandolohHarris 1 of 23
Faith is needed to reach any goal. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Faith is a principle of action and power. Whenever you work toward a worthy goal, you exercise faith. You show your hope for something that you cannot yet see. In order for your faith to lead you to salvation, it must be centered in the Lord Jesus Christ. “We believe that the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel are: first, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, Repentance; third, Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost,” Articles of Faith 1.4. Achieving elite performance may be reserved for the dedicated few. Nevertheless, you may be able to improve everyday motivation by increasing your self-confidence. People with self-confidence believe they can successfully carry out an activity or reach a goal. To enhance self-confidence, it is wise to do the following: Have faith in Jesus Christ. That means relying on Jesus Christ completely. Trust in His infinite power, intelligence, and love. Set goals that are specific and challenging, but attainable. Visualize the steps you need to take to reach your goal. Advance in small steps. When you first acquire a skill, your goal should be to make progress in learning. Later, you can concentrate on improving your performance, compared with other people. This means believing that even though you do not understand all things, Jesus Christ does. Remember that because He as experienced all your pains, afflictions, and infirmities, He knows how to help you rise above your daily difficulties. He has overcome the World. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

Get expert instruction that helps your master the skill. “And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith He will take upon Him the pains and the sickness of His people. And He will take upon Him death, that He may loose the bands of death which bind His people; and He will take upon Him their infirmities, that His bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that He may know according to the flesh how to succor His people according to their infirmities,” reports Alma 7.11-12. Jesus Christ has prepared a way for you to receive eternal life. He is always ready to help you as you remember His plea: “Look unto e in every thought; doubt, not fear,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 6.36. Find a skilled model (someone good at the skill) to emulate. Get support and encouragement from an observer. Faith is much more than a passive belief. You express your faith through actions—by the way you live. If you fail, regard it as a sign that you need to try harder, not that you lack ability. The Saviour promised, “If ye will have faith in me, ye shall have power to do whatsoever thing is expedient in me,” Moroni 7.33. Faith in Jesus Christ can motivate you to follow His perfect example. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, one that believeth on me, the works that I do shall one do also; and greater works than these shall one do; because I go unto my Father,” reports John 14.12. Self-confidence affects motivation by influencing the challenges you will undertake, the effort you will make, and how long you will persist when things do not go well. You can be confident that self-confidence is worth cultivating. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
Your faith can lead you to do good works, obey the commandments and repent of your sins. Your faith can help you overcome temptation. “Teach them to withstand every temptation of the devil, with their faith on the Lord Jesus Christ,” reports Alma 37.33. The Lord will work mighty miracles in your life according to your faith. “And that one manifesteth oneself unto all those who believe in Him, by the power of the Holy Ghost; yea, unto every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, working mighty miracles, signs, and wonders, among the children of men according to their faith,” reports 2 Nephi 26.13. Faith in Jesus Christ helps you receive spiritual and physical healing through His Atonement. When times of trial comes, faith can give you strength to press forward and face your hardships with courage. Even when the future seems uncertain, your faith in the Saviour can give your peace. “Peace, peace be unto you, because of your faith in my Well Beloved, who was from the foundation of the World,” Helaman 5.47. Faith is a gift from God, but you must nurture your faith to keep it strong. Faith is like the muscle of your arm. If you exercise it, it grows strong. If you put it in a sling and leave it there, it becomes weak. You can nurture the gift of faith by praying to Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ. As you express your gratitude to your Father and as you plead with Him for blessings that you and others need, you will draw near to Him. You will draw near to the Saviour, whose Atonement makes it possible for you to plead for mercy. “And thou didst hear me because of mine afflictions and my sincerity; and it is because of Thy Son that Thou hast been thus merciful unto me, therefore I will cry unto Thee in all mine afflictions, for in Thee is my joy; for Thou hast turned Thy judgments away from me, because of Thy Son,” reports Alma 33.11. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

You will also be receptive to the quiet guidance of the Holy Ghost by exercising faith. Another question that arises is this. If the redemption of Man is the beginning of Nature’s redemption as a whole, must we then conclude after all that Man is the most important thing in Nature? If I had to answer “Yes” to this question I should not be embarrassed. Supposing Man to be the only rational animal in the Universe, then (as has been shown) his small size and the small size of the globe he inhabits would not make it ridiculous to regard him as the hero of the cosmic drama: Jack after all is the smallest character in Jack the Giant–Killer. Nor do I think it in the least improbable that Man is in fact the only rational creature in this spatiotemporal Nature. That is just the sort of lonely pre-eminence—just the disproportion between picture and frame—which all that I know of Nature’s “selectiveness” would lead me to anticipate. However, I do not need to assume that it actually exists. Let Man be only one among a myriad of rational species, and let him be the only one that has fallen. Because he has fallen, for him God does the great deed; just as in the parable it is the one lost sheep for whom the shepherd hunts. Let Man’s pre-eminence or solitude be one not of superiority but of misery and evil: then, all the more, Man will be the very species into which Mercy will descend. For his prodigal the fatted calf, or, to speak more suitably, the eternal Lamb, is killed. However, once the Son of God, drawn hither not by our merits but by our unworthiness, has put on human nature, then our species (whatever it may have been before) does become in one sense the central fact in all Nature: our species, rising after its long descent, will drag all Nature up with it because in our species the Lord of Nature is now included. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

And it would be all of a piece with what we already know if ninety and nine righteous races inhabiting distant planets that circle distant suns, and needing no redemption on their own account, were re-made and glorified by the glory which had descended into our race. For God is not merely mending, not simply restoring a status quo. Redeemed humanity is to be something more glorious than unfallen humanity would have been, more glorious than any unfallen race now is (if at this moment the night sky conceals any such). The greater the sin, the greater the mercy: the deeper the death the brighter the re-birth. And this super-added glory will, with true vicariousness, exalt all creatures and those who have never fallen will thus Adam’s fall. I write so far on the assumption that the Incarnation was occasioned only by the Fall. Another view has, of course, been sometimes held by Christians. According to it the descent of God into Nature was not in itself occasioned by sin. It would have occurred for Glorification and Perfection even if it had not been required for Redemption. Its attendant circumstances would have been very different: the divine humility would not have been a divine humiliation, the sorrows, the gall and vinegar, the crown of thorns and the cross, would have been absent. If this view is taken, then clearly the Incarnation, wherever and however it occurred, would always have been the beginning of Nature’s re-birth. The fact that it has occurred in the human species, summoned tither by that strong incantation of misery and abjection which Love has made Himself unable to resist, would not deprive it of its universal significance. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

This doctrine of a universal redemption spreading outwards from the redemption of Man, mythological as it will seem to modern minds, is in reality far more philosophical than any theory which holds that God, having once entered Nature, should leave her, and leave her substantially unchanged, or that the glorification of one creature could be realized without the glorification of the whole system. God never undoes anything but evil, never does good to unto it again. The union between God and Nature in the Person of Christ admits no divorce. He will not go out of Nature again and she must be glorified in all ways which this miraculous union demands. When spring comes it “leaves no corner of the land untouched”; even a pebble dropped in a pond sends circles to the margin. The question we want to ask about Man’s “central” position in this drama is really on a level with the disciples’ question, “Which of them was the greatest?” It is the sort of question which God does not answer. If from Man’s point of view the re-creation of non-human and even inanimate Nature appears a mere byproduct of one’s own redemption, then equally from some remote, non-human point of view Man’s redemption may seem merely the preliminary to this more widely diffused springtime, and the very permission of Man’s fall may be supposed to have had that larger end in view. If they will consent to drop the words mere and merely, both attitudes will be right. Where a God who is totally purposive and totally foreseeing acts upon a Nature which is totally interlocked, there can be no accidents or loose ends, nothing whatever of which we can safely use the word merely. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

Nothing is “merely a by-product” of anything else. All results are intended from the first. What is subservient from one point of view is the main purpose from another. No thing or event is first or highest in a sense which forbids it to be also last and lowest. The partner who bows to Man in one movement of the dance receives Man’s reverences in another. To be high or central means to abdicate continually: to be low means to be raised: all good masters are servants: God washes the feet of men. The concepts we usually bring to the consideration of such matters are miserably political and prosaic. We think of flat repetitive equality and arbitrary privileges as the only two alternatives—thus missing all the overtones, the counterpoint, the vibrant sensitiveness, the inter-inanimations of reality. For this reason, I do not think it at all likely that there have been (as Alice Meynell suggested in an interesting poem) many Incarnations to redeem many different kinds of creature. One’s sense of style—of the divine idiom—rejects it. The suggestion of mass-production and of waiting queues comes from a level of thought which is here hopelessly inadequate. If other natural creatures than Man have sinned we must believe that they are redeemed: but God’s Incarnation as Man will be one unique act in the drama of total redemption and other species will have witnessed wholly different acts, each equally unique, equally necessary and differently necessary to the whole process, and each (from a certain point of view) justifiably regarded as “the great scene” of play. To those who live in Act II, Act III looks like an epilogue: to those who live in Act III, Act II looks like a prologue. And both are right until they add the fatal word merely, or else try to avoid it by the dullard’s supposition that both acts are the same. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

All the kinds of knowledge that demand reflection, all those acquired only by the concatenation of ideas and perfected only successively, appear to be utterly beyond grasp of savage man, owing to the lack of communication with one’s fellow-men, that is to say, owing to the lack of the instrument which is used for that communication, and to the lack of the needs that make it necessary. His understanding and his industry are limited to jumping, running, fighting, throwing a stone, climbing a tree. However, if he knows only those things, in return he knows them much better than we, who do not have the same need for them as he. And since they depend exclusively on bodily exercise and are not capable of any communication or progress from one individual to another, the firs man could have been just as adept at them as his last descendants. The reports of travelers are full of examples of the force and vigor of men of barbarous savage nations. They praise scarcely less their adroitness and nimbleness. And since eyes alone are needed to observe these things, nothing hinders us from giving credence to what eyewitnesses certify on the matter. I draw some random examples from the first books that fall into my hands. “The Hottentots,” says Kolben, “understand fishing better than the Europeans at the Cape. Their skill is equal when it comes to the net, the hook and the spear, in coves as well as in rivers. They catch fish by hand no less skillfully. They are incomparably good at swimming. Their style of swimming has something surprising about it, something entirely unique to them. They swim with their body upright and their hands stretched out of the water, so that they appear to be walking on land. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

In the greatest agitation of the sea, when the waves form so many mountains, they somehow dance on op of the waves, rising and falling like a piece of cork. “The Hottentots,” say the same author further, “are surprisingly good at hunting, and the nimbleness of their running surpasses the imagination.” He is amazed that they did not put their agility to ill use more often, which however, sometimes happens, as can be judged from the example he gives. “A Dutch sailor,” he says, “on disembarking at the Cape, charged a Hottentot to follow him to the city with a roll of tobacco that weighed about twenty pounds. When they were both some distance from the crew, the Hottentot asked the sailor if he knew how to run. Run! answered the Dutchman; yes, very well. Let us see, answered the African. And feeling with the tobacco, he disappeared almost immediately. The sailor, confounded by such marvelous quickness, did not think of following him, and he never again saw either his tobacco or his porter. “They have such quick sight and such a sure hand that Europeans cannot go near them. At a hundred paces they will hit with a stone a mark the size of a halfpenny. And what is more amazing, instead of fixing their eyes on the target as we do, they make continuous movements and contortions. It appears that their stone is carried by an invisible hand.” Father du Tertre says about the savages of the Antilles nearly the same things that have just been read about the Hottentots of the Cape of Good Hope. He praises, above all, their accuracy in shooting with their arrows birds in flight and swimming fish, which they then catch by diving for them. The savages of North America are no less famous for their strength and adroitness, and here is an example that will lead us form a judgment about these qualities in the Indians of South America. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
In the year 1746, an Indian from Buenos Aires, having been condemned to the galleys of Cadiz, proposed to the governor that he buy back his liberty by risking his life at a public festival. He promised that by himself he would attack the fiercest bull with no other weapon in his hand but a rope; that he would bring him to the ground, seize him with his rope by whatever part they would indicate, saddle him, bridle him, mount him, and so mounted he would fight two other of the fiercest bulls to be released from the Torillo, and that he would put all of them to death, one after the other, the moment they would command him to do so, and without anyone’s help. This was granted him. The Indian kept his word and succeeded in everything he had promised. On the way in which he did it and on the details of the fight, one can consult M. Gautier, Observations sur l’ Histoire Naturelle, Vol. I (in-12), p. 262, whence this fact is taken. What is the nature of the analytic work which is performed at the “vertical” barriers? What are the activities of the analyst? It is to bring the central sector of the personality to an acknowledgement of the simultaneous existence (1) of unaltered conscious and preconscious narcissistic and/or perverse aims, and (2) of the realistic goal structures and the moral and aesthetic standards which reside in the central sector. This is not as cold or complex a process as the language implies. It is amazing how close to “kissing it better” the whole business sometimes is. Or is it amazing that psychotherapists are only now finding a place for such processes in their theories? #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

How does a person become strong, in the sense of having good self-esteem, a good ability to understand situation and cope with them, a good personality organization which allows feeling and needs to find expression in actions and gratifications which in turn fee self-esteem? Bluntly, we do not know for sure. We may make some guesses based on what good parents and good therapists are thought by some to have in common. Let us think of a simple, everyday pain: a child has hurt a finger. The finger gives pain. The pain must be recognized and accepted. Parents know this who put large plasters on tiny grazes. They give recognition to the fact that the child has had a shock. The pain was a shock. The child’s illusions of omnipotence or safety may have shattered. It has certainly been reminded that it does not have perfect control over what happens to it. The suddenness of the shock may have been experienced as an impingement—this needs healing as much as the graze does, so that the boundaries of the self may feel secure again. Consolation is needed. So mourning with the child, as in depression about other losses: mouring the fact that the World is not a better place, and mouring our limited power to be safe and keep our good things safe. In mouring there is a kind of recognition and acceptance which is consoling. The process takes a while, and during that time we just have to sit about, being not doing. London April 2003: I am sitting in my armchair reading. Leo walks in, stifling his sobs, clambers on my lap, positions himself upright, facing away, tilts his head fully back, and bursts into howls and howls and howls. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

I make a move to cuddle him but he elbows my arms away, and when I tentatively touch the tips of his fingers, by way of some gesture of consolation, he snatches them away, and his howls threaten to turn into shrikes, or even skreeks. As his howls continue, I have just time to check my impulse to ask him what is the matter to hug him, stroke his hair, to offer him words of comfort, before he is lowering his head and turning to look at me for the first time, his last howl fades. In one smile he says hello, bye-bye, perhaps thanks daddy. With a sigh of completion, he gets down from my lap, and without a word between us since he came in and without looking back, he ambles out the door, ready for his next adventure with Nacho. This is why bed-rest is sometimes a good treatment (to accompany other help) in the case of psychologically wounded people. It would be great if hospitals could provide this. However alas, financial shortages, the wrong medical model of psychological troubles, and demoralized management structure which cannot support and educate its nursing staff, militate against this as things are at present—as does the professional’s passion to be doing or at least talking. Jus as the good-enough parent accepts the small child as it is, giving recognition and acceptance by “mirroring” in an atmosphere which implies that what is seen in the mirror is good, so will therapists, accepting people who are hoping for a new beginning, find themselves impelled to mirror. Mirroring is not quite interpreting, though in some ways near it. The best simple example comes from Virginia Axline’s account of her work with Dibs, the very anxious and confused little boy of four who had been very much overwhelmed by parents obsessed with doing at the expense of being. Dibs remembered his therapy as “Everything I did, you did. Everything I said, you said.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

Good parents give the small child permission to be just whatever it happens to be at the time. And they not only give it room to be, but also recognize that it is a person in its own right, even before it is so, and praise it for what it is not yet. They also validate its needs and requirements. They also provide the conditions for ego-relatedness, allowing the child to feel safe and protected and yet not obligated by their presence. So the child feels safe enough to begin to discover something about itself in the World. In much the same way, friends and therapists can provide an opportunity for people to discover that it is safe just to be, to be arglos, undefended, in a safe ego-related us-related state. In this state of mind people can let their thoughts drift in a free-association kind of way. It may be that, contentedly in touch with a person who matters to them and whom they have come to trust they are unconsciously getting close to sharing something which cannot (yet) be put into words. They may be getting ready to be a person they have not yet dared to be, or to reveal a split-off par of self which had hitherto been disowned. Words are no very suitable for conveying your essential being. The new (organization of the) self is therefore sometimes acted out somehow, the person half-hoping that the right response from the first or psychotherapist will do something that will somehow make something good happen. This is a route by which people can sometimes get back to a state of being when something was so unbearable that they had to stay split. At such times there may be a lot of anger, or other behaviour it is as hard to put up with as it would be in a three-person regions of relationships. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

However, this can be a cover-up. In these regressions, anguish is much more common, and may be the norm. Can this be conveyed in words, except by a poet? “I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree, bitter would have me taste: my taste was me; bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse. Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough scours. I see the lost are like this, and their sciurage o be as I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.” (Gerard Manely Hopkins, I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.) Therapists, parents, or friends, faced with these feelings, may find themselves in conflict. This person who has come for help seems so clearly to need comfort and reassurance, is so obviously in agony, ashamed, or frightened; the feelings are so hard to bear. How to react for the best? On the one hand, here is a person in pain. On the other hand, the pain could be very largely due to some very distorted ideas about how others would react if they really knew them. Those ideas need to be changed. Putting them right by reassurance or sensible arguments has not worked in the past and does not seem worth trying again. The old pain, the shame-making situation, the hidden person, have first to come into view and be seen and acknowledged and recognized and shared. After that it may become possible to repair the damage which had previously prevented the bad experienced from being fully integrated into the personality at the obvious moment, the moment when they first aroused. However, integration can be achieved only if they are now allowed to come into consciousness, now, while the sufferer is in a relationship with someone willing to have them come to light. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
The process must therefore not be impeded by too many expressions or reassurance and comfort, however, well meant, least the sufferer get the idea that we cannot bear (contain, accept, integrate) these feelings either. That might cause such an increase in anxiety that the splits would be deepened rather than mended. The whole point of reviving all that pain is to have someone there who is able to survive it, contain it, and integrate it. Recognition is basic need. To be recognized is part of the healing process, whether it be recognition of good or of bad things. What is recognized is that here is someone who has lived thus and has felt thus and not otherwise. Just the experience of going to pieces, of being lost, furious, disgusting, terrified, ignored, yet safe and known and accepted, may be what a person is after, just the experience of being so in someone else’s presence and not having to do anything about it. When does a person need the kind of recognition that goes with support and with praise for achievement, and when do people need us to stand back and let them be a little while longer? It is clear that it is not supportive to prevent people from telling us their bad feelings when they are urgent to do so, and there is time, and we are ready to hear them. And it is not supportive to behave like blocks of stone while we are listening. Or to just say, “Okay,” which is the same as saying “I do not care. Why are you bothering me with your petty concerns? I have better things to do.” However, how far to go? #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

It has been interesting to see the newer therapies which are less firmly attached to psycho-analytic roots and which have recently gained in popularity—Transactional Analysis, Gestalt, Bio-energetics, Psychosynthesis, and so on—also grappling with this question. These newer techniques are much more empathic about the need to provide safety, recognize “being,” and communicate acceptance. This emphasis derives from many sources; among others, there is the fact that they evolved in an era when people in fear of disintegration were seeking non-religious, non-medical, non-psycho-analytic help for their condition (and were often rightly avoided by more orthodox psychotherapies because they were considered unsuitable for psycho-analysis). Disintegrating people need holding, and the newer techniques are freer in encouraging comfort, praise, and warmth. Thus they help people to bear both the pain of their everyday lives and the pain of therapy, where painful new discoveries are made and painful old feelings revived: people get a supply of strength while they seek new ways of being. Groups are ideal for this purpose, different members offering different gifts of themselves, and support coming from many quarters at once. The more orthodox psycho-analytically based therapies on the whole refrain from giving gratifying support of this kind, and this can be hard both on patient and on therapist—the many warnings against it prove how strong the temptation is. They impose restraint on the grounds that people must eventually find those gratifications for themselves in themselves and in others: the wrong kind of dependence may be created when a therapist gives realistic gratifications. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

Abstinence from support, praise, warmth, or reassurance can serve another purpose also: it can serve to give recognition to our strivings to be strong, able, competent. Having given rom for ocnophilic dependency-needs, room has equally to be made for the philobat’s independence-strivings. So while many of the newer therapies at first made much of physically holding people, surrounding them with cuddling words and gestures, many are now also quite explicit on the importance of waiting for people to stop sobbing or shouting, letting then gain control over themselves, and allowing them to find within themselves the strength needed for self-control and self-esteem. Older and newer agree on the importance of people finding out for themselves who they are and what they can do and what they like doing. However, their methods of achieving this vary, particularly here, in the timing and indeed the nature of helpful interventions. There seem at present no hard and fast rules which make things right for everyone. We will, for a while longer, just have to guess what each particular person needs at a particular moment, to help one with become strong enough to bear reality after having denied it for son long or after having distorted it and secretly held on to all kinds of cherished delusions which must now be given up. We have been considering why and how parents and others might create an atmosphere in which it feels safe for people to let themselves go, in which they can be defenceless and even go to pieces, and yet know that someone is looking after them. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

A more realistic phase is now starting. Conversations are becoming possible. From he very early days, of people’s life and of their therapy, there will have been phantasies about the World, about living, about parents and/or therapists, sometimes of a quite frightening kind. What is to happen to these phantasies? The time has come for them to be established as either true or untrue. In the early days, the parent/therapist’s role was concentrated on providing an atmosphere which conveyed that it was all right to have phantasies, not wrong to have thoughts about anything. In therapy this often comes as a surprise, and the discovery has therapeutic effects. However, when conversations become possible, further gains can be achieved. Words can now be provided, for use when thinking, or talking about hazardous things—words in which the at-first blurry phantasies can be talked about, words like “muscle” words like “hate,” words like “disagree” and “conflict.” The parent/therapist can now convey new things to the child (part of us) knowing that we are ready for it. The parent/therapist teaches, making meaning for us, or helping us to find meaning, still often ego-functioning for us as a form of support. Verbal labels help us look for and remember things—symbolic thought become possible, reasoning. Explanations can now be made in words; there is less need to reply on direct experience to make the connections. “If you put your fingers into those little holes, you might get a nasty shock from the electric current.” “It may be that you are feeling disgruntled because you missed a session last week, and now you feel somehow sold short.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
Facts will be changing accordingly. The parent/therapist can say, or allow the discover to be made, that a particular phantasy is true (or false, as the case may be): “Yes, fathers and mothers go on dates.” “No, your mother is not a child.” The child learns language. The child learns road safety, and crocheting, and other skills. Some of these are learned because someone sets out to teach them. I think there is an observable difference between those whose parents took trouble over such things, and those who were left too entirely to their own devices. In somewhat the same way there is a difference between people whose therapists’ techniques differed in this respect. Words, skills, and the ability to look after yourself are related. At this time in development, the child part of us is now no longer so confined to creating its own realities as in the ego-related state. We become interested in our new opportunities—and discover new limitations. We being to be interested in doing things for ourselves; now we need to be allowed freer opportunities to discover both the World and our place in it. At this time we need recognition that we can safely be strong enough to do things for ourselves. We need to be allowed to discover what we can do, with fairly wide limits, and not be inhibited too much in our play and our trial-and-error explorations, which necessarily involve a good deal of error, failure, and frustration. Yet good parents are very much there: they are no uninvolved, or let the child discover things for itself in a laissez-faire sort of way. They give praise in recognition of the fact that it is strong and can do things. However, they protect the child’s growing self-confidence by keeping away problems which might prove too overwhelmingly difficult, which would necessarily defeat it and sap its growing self-esteem. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
The child needs protection against what it cannot yet handle. Support is needed for instance when we have to give up our omnipotent or endlessly greedy phantasies. Part of this support consists of help in recognizing limits: “No, you cannot have the moon, but you can have my love, and a hug, and a game with Tommy next door.” Support is needed, too, while learning to accept the reality of other people “Yes, you can play with Tommy but no, you must not kick him. He does not like it any more than you would.” We need to have boundaries pointed out to us and maintained, if necessary against our wishes at the time. In psychotherapy, the therapist’s willingness to do this new kind of holding may be tried and tested over and over. At this time, a laid-back psychotherapist, laissez-faire because anxious not to intrude, may fail to provide a feeling of safety. At this stage, when there is much frustration and disillusionment at what is not possible as well as much pleasure at what can be now done, the need for reliable, comforting, sharing-the-mourning kind of holding is as crucial as ever. It is what gives us the strength and vitality to keep on trying. These periods of being-at-rest and being-at-one allow the new things to be securely integrated and valued. They bring us back to our central strength. For we can be sure that we have the seeds of the goodness and strength we need hidden and repressed or split-off though they may be. Locked in our memory are traces of the experiences which enabled us to survive. We know that this is so because we have in fact survived. We did not die. At least the minimum goodness was there, and just enough strength, at least. We are already posses of what we need, if we can but get to it. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

With the discover of this higher self, there comes a conviction of truth gained, a sense of perfect assurance, and a feeling of happy calmness. “Oh joy! that in our embers is something that doth live, that nature yet remembers what was so fugitive! The thought of our past years in me doth breed perpetual benediction: not indeed for that which is most worthy to be blest—delight and liberty, the simple creed of children, whether busy or at rest, with new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:–not for these I raise the song of thanks and praise…but for those first affections, those shadowy recollections, which, be they what they may, are yet the fountain-light of all our day, are yet a master-light of all our seeing; uphold us, cherish, and have power to make our noisy years seem moments in the being of the eternal Silence: truth that wake, to perish never: which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, now Man nor Boy, nor all that is at enmity with joy, can utterly abolish or destroy! Hence in a season of calm weather though inland far we be, our souls have sigh of that immortal sea which brough us hither, can in a moment travel thither, and see the children sport upon the shore, and hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!” (William Wordsworth, Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.) Hear, O Humankind, the prayer of my heart for are we not one, have we not one desire, to heal our Mother Earth and bind her wounds to hear again from dark forests and flashing rivers the varied ever-changing Song of Creation? O humankind, are we not all brothers and sisters, are we not the grandchildren of the Great Mystery? Do we not all want o love and be loved, to work and to play, to sing and dance together? However, we live with fear. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Fear that is hate, fear that is mistrust, envy, greed, vanity, fear that is ambition, competition, aggression, fear that is loneliness, anger, bitterness, cruelty…and yet, fear is only twisted love, turned back on itself, love that was denied, love that was rejected…and love. Love is life—creation, seed, and lead, and blossom, and fruit, and seed, love is growth and search and reach and touch and dance. Love is nurture and succor and feed and pleasure, love is pleasuring ourselves pleasuring each other, love is life believing in itself. And life…life is the Sacred Mystery singing to itself, dancing to its drum, telling tales, improvising, playing and we are all that Spirit, our stories all but one cosmic story that we are love indeed, that perfect love in me seeks the love in your, and if our eyes could ever meet without fear we would recognize each other and rejoice, for love is life believing in itself. The glimpse will affect each individual in a different way, although the feeling of stepping out of darkness into light will be common to all. Within and around the Earth, within and around the hills, within and around the mountains, your authority returns to you. Help Thine establish dwelling, the tranquil habitation, the tabernacle of America, the goal of the tribe’s pilgrimage, the precious corner-stone, even America, the excellent, the Holy of Holies, the object of your affection, the home of Thy glory. O save America, yea, save the hill to which the World turns. O Eternal, we beseech Thee, do Thou save us. Saviour of might ones that swelt with Thee in Lud, the land whence Thou didst set them free; so save Thou us! As Thou didst save together God and nation, the people singled out for God’s salvation; so save Thou us! The house of Thy redeemed, with manifold Angelic hosts were saved by Thee of Old. So save us Thou us! #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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