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The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over
Your identity is like your shadow, not always visible, but always present. Plato once said, “I (and all persons) will survive death and destruction of my body insofar as what I essentially am is simple, immaterial soul something whose own essence is being alive.” The person who experiences himself as an ego and whose sense of identity is that of ego-identity naturally wants to protect this thing—him, his body, memory, property, and so on, but also his opinions and emotional investments which have become part of his ego. He is constantly on the defensive against anyone or any experience which could disturb the permanence and solidity of his mummified existence. In contrast, the person who experiences himself not as having but as being permits himself to be vulnerable. Nothing belongs to him except that he is by being alive. However, at every moment in which he loses his sense of activity, in which he is unconcentrated, he is in danger of neither having anything nor being anybody. This danger he can meet only by constant alertness, awakeness, and aliveness, and he is vulnerable compared with the ego-man, who is safe because he has without being. Transcendence is part of the phenomena of “human experiences.” Transcendence is customarily used in a religious context, and it refers to transcending the human dimensions to arrive at the experience of the divine. Transcending makes good sense in a theistic system; from a nontheistic standpoint it can be said that the concept of God was a poetic symbol for the act of leaving the prison of one’s ego and achieving the freedom of openness and relatedness to the World. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
If we speak of transcendence in a non-theological sense, there is no need for the concept of God. However, the psychological reality is the same. The basis for love, tenderness, compassion, interest, responsibility, and identity is precisely that of being versus having, and that means transcending the ego. It means letting go of one’s ego, letting go of one’s greed, making oneself empty to fill oneself, making oneself poor to be rich. Since the birth of living substances and transmitted by millions of years of evolution, in our wish to survive physically, we obey the biological impulse imprinted on us. The wish to be alive “beyond survival” is the creation of man in history, his alternative to despair and failure. The discussion of “human experiences” culminates in the statement that freedom is a quality of being fully humane. Inasmuch as we transcend the realm of physical survival and because we are not driven by fear, impotence, narcissism, dependency, etcetera, we transcend compulsion. Love, tenderness, reason, interest, integrity, and identity—they all are the children of freedom. Political freedom is a condition of human freedom only because it furthers the development of what is specifically human. Political freedom in an alienated society, which contributes to the dehumanization of man, becomes un-freedom. One of the fundamental elements of the human situation is man’s need for values which guide his actions and feelings. Of course, there is usually a discrepancy between what people consider their values to be and the effective values which direct them and of which they are not aware. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
In the industrial society, the official, conscious values are those of the religious and humanistic traditions: individuality, love, compassion, hope, etcetera. However, these values have become ideologies for most people and are not effective in motivating human behaviour. The unconscious values which directly motivate human behaviour are those which are generated in the social system of the bureaucratic, industrial society, those of property, consumption, social position, fun, excitement, etcetera. This discrepancy between conscious and ineffective and unconscious and effective values creates havoc within the personality. Having to act differently from what he has been taught and professes to abide by makes man feel guilty, distrustful of himself and others. It is that very discrepancy which our young generation has spotted and against which it has taken such an uncompromising stand. Values—the official or the factual ones—are not unstructuralized items but form a hierarchy in which certain supreme values determine the others as necessary correlates to the realization of the former. The development of those specifically human experiences forms the system of values within the psychospiritual tradition of the West and of India and China during the last 4,000 years. Since these values rest upon revelation, they were binding for those who believed in the source of revelation, which means, as far as the West is concerned, in God. In the West, the question arises whether the hierarchy of values presented by Western religion can have any foundation other than that of revelation by God. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
We find among those who do not accept God’s authority as the foundation of values the following patterns: Complete relativism which claims that all values are matters of personal taste and have no foundation beyond such taste. Since man’s freely chosen project can be anything and hence a supreme value, because it is authentic, Sartre’s philosophy basically does not differ from this relativism. Another concept of values is that of socially immanent values. The defenders of this position start with the premise that the survival of each society with its own social structure and contradictions must be the supreme goal for all its members and hence that those norms which are conducive to the survival of that society are the highest values and are binding for everyone. Ethical norms are identical with social norms and social norms serve the perpetuation of any given society—including its injustices and contradictions. It is obvious that the elite which governs a society uses all the means at its disposal to make the social norms on which its power rests appear to be sacred, universal norms, either revealed by God or inherent in human nature. Another value concept is that of biologically immanent values. The reasoning of some of the representatives of this thought is that experiences like love, loyalty, group solidarity are rooted in corresponding feelings in the animal: human love and tenderness are seen as having their roots in the animal mother’s attitude toward its young, solidarity as rooted in the group cohesion among many animal species. This view does answer the critical question of the difference between human tenderness, solidarity, and other “human experiences” and those observed in the animal kingdom. Biological immanent value systems often arrive at results which are the very opposite of the human-oriented one discussed here. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
In a well-known type of social Darwinism, egotism, competition, and aggressiveness are conceived as the highest values because they are allegedly the main principles on which survival and evolution of the species rest. If this self-initiated learning is to occur, it seems essential that the individual be in contact with, be faced with, a real problem. Success in facilitating such learning often seems directly related to this factor. Professional people who come together in a workshop, because of a concern with problems they are facing, are a good example. Almost invariably, when they are given the facilitating climate, they at first resist the notion of being responsible for their own learning, and then seize upon this as an opportunity, and use it far beyond their expectations. On the other hand, students in a required course expect to remain passive, and may find themselves extremely perplexed and frustrated at being given freedom. “Freedom to do what?” is their quite understandable question. So it seems reasonably clear that man be confronted by issues which have meaning and relevance for him. In our culture we tend to try to insulate the student from all the real problems of life, and this constitutes a difficulty. It appears that if we desire to have students learn to be free and responsible individuals, then we must be willing for them to confront life, to face problems. Whether we are speaking of the inability of the small child to make change, or the problem of his older brother in installing the Wi-Fi, or the problem of a college student and adult in formulating his views on international policy, or dealing effectively with his interpersonal relationships, some real confrontation by a problem seems necessary condition for this type of learning. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The forgotten hero is often the middle-class citizen, who goes quietly about his business, providing for himself and his family without making demands upon the state. The crushing effect of taxation upon such people is what is eroding the middle-class. Since the Revolution, the dogmas of the Enlightenment have been traditional ingredients of the America faith. American social thought has been optimistic, confident of the special destiny of the country, humanitarian, democratic. Its reformers relied upon the sanctions of natural rights. Optimism is sometimes a hollow defiance of the realities of social struggle, and our natural rights are nowhere to be found in nature. Humanitarianism, democracy, and equality are not eternal verities, but the passing mores of a stage of social evolution. In an age of helter-skelter reforms, confidence in one’s ability to will and plan their destinies is unwarranted by history or biology or any of the facts of experience—and the best one can do is to bow to natural forces. The best type of teacher is one who will facilitate a profound trust in the human organism. If we distrust the human being, then we must cram him with information of our own choosing, lest he go his own mistaken way. However, if we trust the capacity of the human individual for developing his own personality, then we can permit him the opportunity to choose his own way in his learning. Hence it is evident we need teachers who hold a confident view of man. Another element of the teacher’s function which stands out is his sincerity, his realness, his absence of a façade. He can be a real person in his relationship with his students. He can be angry. He can also be sensitive and sympathetic. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Because a competent teacher accepts his feelings as his own, he has no need to impose them on his students. He can dislike a student product without implying that it is objectively bad of that or that the student is bad. It is simply true that he, as a person, dislikes it. This he is a person to his students, not a sterile tube through which knowledge is passed from one generation to the next. As one’s sensitivity develops and his conscience refines, he comes to regard certain actions as sinful which he formerly regarded as innocent. There is a guiding conscience in a man which develops or weakens as he responds to the forces and influences playing on and in him from both bygone lives and the current incarnation. It is this preoccupation with choosing good and avoiding evil, with religious feelings and moral virtues, that lift man above the animal. We must interpret the word duty in a larger sense, not merely as some social task imposed on us from without, but as a spiritual decision imposed on us from within. When they really mean keeping up appearances before others, it is a faculty use of the term self-respect. If we understand its twofold character, we shall understand the mysterious nature of conscience. What we commonly experience as the inward voice of conscience is simply the distilled result of accumulated experience, and this includes the experience of many Earth lives also. This voice is usually a negative one, because it more often warns, admonishes, and hinders us from wrong conduct. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
There is a rarer experience of conscience, however, which is the voice of our own Overself, that divine consciousness which transcends our personal self. This voice is usually an optimistic one since it directs, guides, and explains with a wisdom which comes from beyond the fears and hopes, the suggestions and customs, that organized society and patriarchal convention have implanted in our subconscious mind. Its external development of a so-called evil course of conduct may or may not coincide with the disapproval arising from ancient experience or divine wisdom, for it is merely a matter of social convenience, cultural development, or geographical custom. It may indeed be defective, false, or even quite immoral guidance, for mob passion often masquerades as social conscience. This is the kind of conscience which has a history. It changes with changing circumstances and evolves with evolving grades of culture. The trial and death of Sokrates is a classic case illustrating the conflict between genuine and pseudo-conscience. When I was in India, I learnt that to commit suicide under any circumstance was the worst of human since whereas when I was in Japan, I learnt that the failure to commit suicide, under certain circumstances, was itself one of the worst sins. In both countries the individual pseudo-conscience tenders its counsel to commit or not to commit suicide according to the suggestions implanted from outside in the individual mind by collective society. The voice of outer convention is conscience in its commonest form, the voice of personal experience is the wisdom of the human personality and the distillate of many incarnations, and the serene monition of the Overself is conscience in its purest form, the true innermost voice of divine wisdom. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
The ego takes his conscience over and fits it to suit himself. That voice within you which whispers that one act is right and another wrong, is in the end none other than the voice of the Overself. Only it may come to us as from afar, remote and muffled, halting and intermittent, because it must come amid other voices which are more clamant and closer to your inner ear. When formalism is stretched out into hypocrisy and when compromise is accepted to the point of surrender, social conventions have drowned a man’s conscience. Everyone has some degree of conscience. So, in relationships with others, an awareness of the promptings of this inner voice—in the light of and supplemented by the teachings of Masters like Jesus as the Christ—will clarify one’s course of thought and action. Under the pressure of his personal ego but haunted by the commandments of respected prophets, he finds himself occasionally in moral dilemmas. How shall a man meet different moral situations? What line of conduct should he follow on different occasions? How shall he resolve each conflict of duty? These are questions which he alone can best solve. It is his own conscience which is at stake. However, this does not mean that he should disdain whatever sources of guidance may be available to him. It means that what he must do circumstances at his stage of evolution is not necessarily what other men would have to do. We can depend on making a correct ethical choice always only when we have consciously worked out a true philosophical basis for all our ethics; otherwise, we shall be at the mercy of those many possible changes of which feeling itself is at the mercy. It is not a question of what course of action will be most effective, but of what will be most ethical. Neither of these two factors can be ignored with impunity; both must be brought into a balanced relation. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
It is more prudent to “sense” the emanations imprinted in the auric field surrounding a personal than to trust alone to the words he utters or the claims he makes. Those who depend on other persons to make decisions for them or to solve problems, lose the chance of self-development which the situation offers them. In trying to reach a decision about his work and how he can best serve others, the individual must turn to the Overself and not to other sources, for direction. When confronted by difficult decisions, one must be especially careful to take into consideration the future effects of one’s choice. A decision based on sentiment, or on other emotional reactions, unchecked by reason, cannot solve any problem—as the student has, undoubtedly, already learned. It is necessary to examine experience—one’s own, and that of others—in so leads to painful repetition of avoidable suffering. This is true of personal relationships. There will come a time in the life of each student when certain critical decisions will have to be made. These, together with the quality of the ideals he pursues and his whole general attitude, will determine the circumstances of the remainder of that incarnation. There are so many sides to even the simplest situation that the aspirant will at times be bewildered as to what to do or how to act. He will waver from one decision to another and be unable to take up any firm ground at all. At such a time it is best to wait as long as possible and thus let time also make its contribution. If by waiting a little man can see his way more clearly and reach a more conducive decision, he should wait. However, if it only befuddles his mind still further, then he should not. We are not always given the chance to choose between simple good and evil. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
The situations which organized human society develops for us do not infrequently offer the choice only between lesser and larger evils. We see among neurotics this same long-drawn inability to form decisions, or dread of their being wrong is made. If he can successfully analyse the personal and emotional factors involved in in, in every situation requiring an important decision, he will get a truer one. Judgements made in haste, actions done rashly, without proper consideration, and decisions given out of impatience and excitement are likely to be of less value than the opposite kind. In our case study of Clare, she had a lot of problems involving judgements in her relationships. Her boyfriend Peter often disregarded her feelings. Recently, Peter rejected Clare when she asked him to take a trip with her out of town. When he broke to her the news of having to stay in town, there had been no tenderness, no regret, no sympathy. It was only toward the end of the evening, when she cried bitterly, that he turned affectionate. In the meantime, he had made her bear the brunt of the distress/ He had impressed on her that everything was her fault. He had acted in the same way as her mother and brother had acted in her childhood, first stepping on her feelings, and then making her feel guilty. Incidentally, it is interesting to see here how the meaning of a fragment became clearer because she had picked up her courage to rebel, and how this elucidation of the past in turn helped her to become straighter in the present. Clare then recalled any number of incidents in which Peter had made implicit or explicit promises and had not kept them. Moreover, she realized that this behaviour showed itself also in more important and more intangible ways. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Clare saw that Peter had created in her the illusion of a deep and everlasting love, and yet was anxious to keep himself apart. It was as if he had intoxicated himself and her with the idea of love. And she had fallen for it, as she had fallen for the story of the robbers. Finally Clare recalled the associations she had before that early dream: thoughts of her friend Eileen, whose love faded out during the illness, and the novel in which the heroine felt estranged from her husband. These thoughts too, she realised now, had a much more serious connotation than she had assumed. Something within her seriously wanted to break away from Peter. Though she was not happy about this insight she nevertheless felt relieved. She felt as if a spell had been broken. In following her insight Clare began to wonder why it had taken her such a long time to obtain a clear picture of Peter. Once these traits in him were recognized they appeared so conscious to her that it was hard to overlook them. She saw then that she had a strong interest in not seeing them: nothing should prevent her from seeing in Peter the realisation of the great man of her daydream. Also, she saw for the first time the whole parade of figures whom she had hero-worshiped in a similar way. The parade started with her mother, whom she had idolized. Then Bruce had followed, a type in many ways that were like Peter. And the daydream man and many others. The dream of the glorious bird now definitely crystalized as a symbol for her glorification of Peter. Always, because of her expectations, she had hitched her wagon to a star. And all the stars had proved to be candles. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Many think that Clare should have realized long ago that Peter promised more than he could keep. She had seen it some months before, but she had neither taken it seriously, nor appreciated the whole extent of Peter’s unreliability. At that time her thought had been predominantly an expression of her own anger at him; now it had crystallized to an opinion, a judgement. Moreover, she did not then see the admixture of sadism behind his façade of righteousness and generosity. If she blindly expected him to fulfill all her needs, she could not possibly have arrived at this clear vision. Her realization that she had fantastic expectations, and her willingness to put the relationship on a give-and-take basis, had made her so much stronger than she could not dare to face his weakness and thus sake the pillars on which the relationship rested. In the Victorian Age, we are taught, man was the victim of repression. He was raised and lived in an atmosphere heavy with censorship. Proper behaviour was very formally prescribed; the domain of the improper was large and its contents were determined by the silent agreement of parents, of teachers, of preachers, of friends. That which was improper was not talked about and that which was not talked about was improper. Since speaking of certain things was verboten, it was difficult to understand (and prohibited to try to understand) why these things were proscribed. Those matters not admitted to discussion were naturally not proper to think upon. However, it is a far easier chore to restrain the tongue than to inhibit the thought. And though the impulses can be denied labels, or even falsely labeled, as impulses they permit of only one natural translation. Lust may become poetry and prurience may become scholarship, but only so much of libido is translatable. Always there is an irreducible minimum which demands expression (and recognition?)—else a man will be very nervous. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
So discoveries Dr. Freud and so taught Dr. Freud. And in his searching examination of the nervous man (and woman) he learned of the tricks and failures of repression. He demonstrated that certain neurotic symptoms represented the partial failures of repression. He helped society to see that pleasures of the flesh were what was being repressed in Victorian culture. It was Dr. Freud’s intention to give man a greater freedom (if only be reducing the number of forces and constraints determining his behaviour) by enhancing his knowledge of himself as a biological organism. And the impact of Freudian psychology has been to bring a very perceptible degree of new freedom into at least one aspect of man’s functioning. Now it is not only acceptable to have impulses for pleasures of the flesh, recognised and labeled as such, but it is allowed to talk about those impulses. We are an unrepressed and liberated culture—at least as regards pleasures of the flesh. We have publicly guiltless freedom of expression concerning matters involving pleasures of the flesh and even when there are frustrations of malfunctions of pleasures of the flesh, these are not stringently reserved for the physician’s consulting room. Paradoxically, the individual who may by nature be reserved and believed that pleasures of the flesh should be a private matter (without necessarily having any unhealthy attitudes toward it) may suffer from the repression of her “prudery”! Is there something repressive about our Freudian liberation? Repression is in essence a biological phenomenon—it is psychological only with respect to the content of what is repressed, and this is determined largely by the values peculiar to a culture at a particular time. Dr. Freud’s discovery of the sexual basis of some neuroses and of the techniques for alleviating repression, together with the science of contraception, have served largely to solve the problems of the sex-life of modern man, only to leave him with the problems of his love-life—problems possibly more difficult of solution because they are inaccessible to our technology. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
The freedom of pleasures of the flesh which resulted from Dr. Freud’s lifting of the forces of repression may now be recruited in the repression of our acquired drives to love and to be loved. It is further paradox that Dr. Freud’s efforts to liberate man and to free him from repression should have resulted in the cult of the expert psychotherapist. We have learned to appreciate the pathological effects of repression and to be sensitive to the benefits of emotional ventilation; we have learned that when we are troubled it is good to talk to someone. However, the forces of repression have been served by the cultural fallacy that it is good to talk only to a very select group of persons. Now we are confronted by a cultural neurosis so that people who would speak freely of their life involving pleasures of the flesh to even casual acquaintances feel that less “intimate” personal problems, their anxieties, frustrations, conflicts, and confusions must be revealed only in the magic privacy of the psychotherapist’s office. The person with a painful and perplexing personal problem is loath to ask a friend to share the knowledge of it, and his friend is loath to encourage him to talk it out. Reluctance to share one’s problems with even a very close friend can be traced not simply to the rise of modern psychiatry and the enhanced public awareness of psychotherapy. The mental health movement has a definite impact on dissuading individuals from looking to “non-experts” for even passively supportive roles. By emphasizing the activities of mental health specialist any by attributing to the psychiatrist, psychologist or other “expert” a specificity of therapeutic effect (which has thus far not been demonstrated) it has encouraged the notion that the non-expert cannot be truly helpful, and hence, that it is useless to talk with him. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Furthermore, the sensitive and help-oriented individual has been led to believe that either by failure to do something specific or, more likely, by virtue of making an inappropriate response he can do serious psychological injury to the friend who “consults” him. There appears to be a difference between the genders in degree of reluctance to share worries and anxieties, with women generally more ready than men to ventilate their concerns. With the greater proneness of women to introspection, self-doubt, and conflict, the injunction against “causal therapy” may have more impact on their tendency to seek professional help. This may partly account for the fact that two thirds of psychiatric clinical patients are females. Rousseau taught that human nature was essentially good, whereas Calvin taught that it was essentially bad. Philosophy teaches that the innermost core of human nature is essentially good, but the outer and visible husk is a mixture of good and bad, varying with individuals as to the proportions of this mixture. The mark of true goodness is, first, that it never by thought, word, or deed injuries any other living creature; second, that it has brought the lower nature under the bidding of the higher; and third, that it considers its own welfare not in isolation but always against the background of the common welfare. If he is to adhere to the principles of philosophical living, and if he is to place a correct emphasis on where it should belong, there are three different forms of wrong action which he must carefully separate from each other in his mind. First, the most important, is the sin in moral behaviour; second is the error in practical judgment; third is the transgression of the social code. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Marx postulated the interdependence between the economic basis of society and the political and legal institutions, its philosophy, art, religion, etcetera. The former, according to Marxist theory, determined the latter, the “ideological superstructure.” However, Marx and Engels did not show, as Engels admitted quite explicitly, how the economic basis is translated into the ideological superstructure. By using the tools of psychoanalysis, this gap in Marxian theory can be filled, and it is possible to show the mechanisms through which the economic basic structure and the superstructure are connected. One of these connections lies in the social character, the other in the nature of the social unconscious. According to Dr. Freud, character is defined as “the pattern of behaviour characteristic for a given individual.” While other authors like William McDougall, R.G Gordon and Kretschmer have emphasized the conative and dynamic element of character traits. Dr. Freud developed not only the first but also a most consistent and penetrating theory of character as a system of striving which underlies, but are not identical with, behaviour. Behaviour traits are described in terms of actions which are observable by a third person. Thus, for instance, the behaviour trait of “being courageous” would be defined as behaviour which is directed toward reaching a certain goal without being deterred by risks to one’s comfort, freedom, or life. Or parsimony as a behaviour trait would be defined as behaviour which aims at saving money or other material things. However, if we inquire into the motivation and particularly into the unconscious motivation of such behaviour traits, we find that the behaviour trait covers numerous and entirely different character traits. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Courageous behaviour may be motivated by ambition so that a person will risk his life in certain situations in order to satisfy his craving for being admired; it may be motivated by suicidal impulses which drive a person to seek danger because, consciously or unconsciously, he does not value his life and wants to destroy himself; it may be motivated by sheer lack of imagination so that a person acts courageously because he is not aware of the danger awaiting him; finally, it may be determined by a genuine devotion to the idea or aim for which a person acts, a motivation which is conventionally assumed to be the basis of courage. Superficially the behaviour in all these instances is the same despite the different motivations. I say “superficially” because if one can observe such behaviour minutely, one finds that the difference in motivation results also in subtle yet significant differences in behaviour. If his courage is motivated by devotion to an idea rather than by ambition, an officer in battle, for instance, will behave quite differently in different situations. In the first case, if the risks are in no proportion to the tactical ends to be gained. he would not attack in certain situations. If, on the other hand, he is driven by vanity, this passion may make him blind to the dangers threatening him and his soldiers. His behaviour trait of “courage” in the latter case is obviously a very ambiguous asset. Another illustration is parsimony. A person may be economical because his economic circumstances make it necessary; or he may be parsimonious because he has a stingy character which makes saving an aim for its own sake, regardless of the realistic necessity. Here, too, motivation would make some difference regarding the behaviour itself. In the first case, the person would be very well able to discern a situation where it is wise to save from one in which it is wiser to spend money. In the latter case he will save regardless of the objective needed for it. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Another factor which is determined by the difference in motivation refers to the prediction of behaviour. In the case of a “courageous” soldier motivated by ambition we may predict that he will behave courageously only if his courage can be rewarded. In the case of the soldier who is courageous because of devotion to his cause, we can predict that the question of whether his courage will find recognition will have little influence on his behaviour. The Sacramento Fire Department’s courage is certainly motivated by ambition. Here is the story of one of the firefighters. “To be honest with you, a collapsed building was never a thought that entered my mind. I always thought that fighters were firefighters, and that’s all they did. I never really gave a lot of thought to even interior firefighting until I actually got into the job and realized, as I was training and going through fire school, that there is a lot more to this job than people know. I certainly never realized that it is as involved as it is. There’s something different every day. And when we got the collapsed building, that was far above anything I might have imagined.” The forces by which man is motivated, the way a person acts, feels, and thinks is largely determined by the specificity of his character and is not merely the result of rational responses to realistic situations. The dynamic quality of character traits, and the character structure of a person represents a particular form in which energy is channeled in the process of living. Please be sure to make a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department to ensure that they are receiving all required resources. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one Nation, Under God, Indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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We Shall Always be Glad to See You
Drawn curtains blocked the sunlight. A single candle lit the cavernous entryway—an art gallery nearly forty feet long. Mahogany panels covering much of the walls added their own soberness. Marble busts of 13 Roman Emperors mounted on pedestals, two historic series of pre-Gobelin tapestries woven in 1640 for Louis III to present to Cardinal Barberine of Rome populated a side room. The draperies were green silk damask and blue velvet, the furniture of Louis XV gilded oak, the paintings signed by van Gough, Boch, Embiricos, Moueix, Geffen. In the half-light of my own home, I came face to face with an apparition, a man, with thin white, grizzled hair hanging like seaweed, frightened eyes the colour of crystal blue. His cheeks were hallow; although well-knit and well-proportioned his black attired figure, indefinitely grim. At first, I was alarmed. He looked like somebody who had risen from the grave. I am a very private person and the locals hereabouts would like nothing better than to have stories of “ghosties” and poltergeists up at The Winchester Mansion to giggle over. And God knows that the country rag would make of it. Up the wide mahogany staircase I preceded, shading the chamber candle with my hand, to protect it from the currents of bone chilling air. In such a rambling place, the spirits found plenty of room to disport themselves in. I conducted myself through a maze of rooms, and a labyrinth of passages, to the Hall of Fires where the fires were blazing. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
The sumptuous fires were composed of a bushel of coal, wood enough to build a small cottage, piled halfway up the chimney, and roaring and crackling like the sound of thunder. This was comfortable. I sat in a big armchair against the wall for about an hour, holding Zip on my lap. He was tense and I was frustrated, for a sense of personal guilt was growing. I had insisted on building this house and bringing him into it. When my bones warmed, I went to bed but not to sleep. I lay awake and thought of my youthful days when I had been a wife and a mother. Until the untimely deaths of my infant daughter and my beloved husband, I had not realized how much I had rejected certain rigid orthodox beliefs. Inexplicably, something seemed to lurch within, an abrupt sagging of mood that left me strangely wearied. I wondered at my own unease. The tranquility of this hour is the tranquility of death. Nonetheless I had lived in two haunted houses. In one of them, a Dutch Colonial, had bore the reputation of being haunted. Much like Llanada Villa, it had a score of mysterious bedrooms which were never used. After a few tears shed, I covered myself up warm, and fell asleep. Upon awakening, slowly waving shadows waved on from the heavy trees. Coming down from the ninth floor, I passed the servants quarters. The mirror-paneled walls hid mysterious doors, which opened to an entire suite of rooms. Perhaps these doors were hidden out of whimsy, perhaps with an eye toward security. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
One of my fondest rooms was the library, warmed by a fireplace from a sixteenth-century castle in Germany, decorated with a tiger rug at the near and a bear rug at the front end, with armed knights standing guard as anions. The mantel was carved with a scene of rural revelry, with a Shepherdess, a bagpiper, and dancing men. The ceiling was of carved French mahogany from the 1500s, the room contained three stained-glass windows freed from a thirteenth-century abbey in Belgium. The library also featured the finest European furnishings. Its thousands of volumes included Juan Ruiz, Venerable Bede, Julian of Norwich, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Hildegard of Bingen, Layamon, Boethius, Heinrich Kramer, and Jacob Sprenger. With the contagion downs stairs, I sat in the morning room listening when I heard strange noises, which chilled my blood. There was suspicion and fear among us. The servants were always ready to go off with hair triggers. The year was dying early, the leaves were falling fast, it was a cold day. However, there was a coldness about Llanada Villa which only in part was to do with the shift in season. In certain rooms and corridors there was a darkness of air, in others a sense of emptiness because they had not been used nor entered in years. Zip grumbled somewhere in the shadows, but did not show himself. In the basement, the cellar which contained filled wine racks. It was with a mild sense of relief that I left the cellar to walk through the kitchen and scullery out onto the garden terrace. This was a fine place for a haunting. If one believed in such things. Looking out at the gardens, enjoying how magnificently laid out in formal yet interesting lines and curves, I breathed in deeply. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
The was a cold, creepy feeling running up my spine. I expected something profound, maybe something deeply moving, an insight into the spiritual World on the other side of my own life. Descending a short flight of steps, the stone path before me branched off in three directions around the flower beds. I continued along the center path. Reflecting on how it is only when we begin to understand what is going on inside our own minds that we will discover some answers to the paranormal. I reached a knee-high wall, which encompassed a large ornamental pond, almost a miniature lake, full of water lilies. Before my eyes was a girl. She looked past me at the pond almost as if it had come as a shock to her eyes. However, there was something queer in her movement as she backed away. I blinked and it was moments before I realised that I was back in one of the mansion’s rooms, and looking up at the figure of a man, someone who had his back turned toward me. There was something wrong with this vision, for it had wavered before me as if…as if I were watching him through water. There were moving fronds around me, reeds shifting like loose tentacles. Two naked arms reached for me, slender, pearl-white limbs, fingers clawed. And even though they stretched toward me, these arms were bloodless. They were dead things. Suddenly, an air of profound peace invaded the dwelling. I entered the hallway with a vague, uneasy consciousness of unfitness and treachery. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
I switched the light off, and the door to the landing of the second-floor staircase was open. Just on that sport, I suddenly heard crashing noises as if somebody were rolling down. I was terrified. As soon as I switched the light back on, it stopped. There was nothing on the stairs. I sat on the chair for a moment, then decided it was my nerves, and turned the light off again. Immediately, the same noise returned, even louder. There was no mistaking the origin of the noises this time. They came from the stairs in front of the room. Wondering if this had anything to do with the terribly frigid area on the back of the staircase, I switched on the light again and they stopped. Before climbing into bed, I left the lights burning the rest of the night. I finally fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. The next morning was a clam day. I was lying in bed, enjoying from my window the sense of winter beauty and repose; a bright sky above, and the quiet estate before me. In this state I was gladdened by hearing footsteps, which I took to be those of the housemaid Hilda, approaching the chamber door. The visitor knocked and entered. The foot of the bed was toward the door, and the curtains at the foot, notwithstanding the season, were drawn to prevent any draught. The housemaid parted them and looked upon me. Her gaze was earnest and destitute of its usual cheerfulness, and she spoke not a word. I had a curious sense that I was looking upon some unknown, ethereal World which might vanish. “My dear Hilda,” I said, “how glad I am to see you! Come round to the bedside, I wish to have some talk with you.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
She closed the curtains, as if complying; but instead of doing so, to my astonishment, I heard her leave the room, close the door behind her, and begin to descend the stairs. Greatly amazed, I hastily rang, and when the butler appeared I bade him call the housemaid back. The butler replied that he had not seen her enter the house. However, I insisted, saying, “She was here but this instant, run! Quick! Call her back!” The butler hurried away, but, after a time, returned, saying that he could learn nothing of her anywhere; nor had anyone in or about the house seen her either enter or depart. This strangeness of this circumstance struck me forcibly. While I lay pondering on it, I heard a sudden running and excited talk in the garden. I listened; it increased, though up to that time the estate had been profoundly still; and I became convinced that something unusual had occurred. Again, I rang the bell, to enquire about the cause of the disturbance. This time it was the scullery maid who answered it. “Oh, Mrs. Winchester, it was nothing particular,” she said, “some trifling affair.” Finally, however, my alarm and earnest entreaties drew from my servants the terrible truth that my housemaid had just been stabbed at the market and killed on the spot. There then follows a detailed account of the events in which Hilda Howitt lost her life. So great was the respect entertained for her, and such a deep impression of her tragic end, that the bell in the belfry tolled on this day. Comparing the circumstances and the extant time at which end occurred, the fact was substantiated that the apparition presented itself to me almost instantly after she had received the fatal stroke. At sunset, I sat at my desk and gazed dreamily at the Observational Tower, and that shimmering spire crowned complex of rooms in the distance of the labyrinth which provoked my fancy. Now and then, I was trained my eyes on the spectral, unreachable World of my estate; picking out individual roofs and chimneys and steeples, and speculating upon the bizarre and curious mysteries that we have created. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
My house seemed somehow alien, fabulous, and linked to the unreal, intangible marvels of the Spirit World. It stood out with especial distinctness at certain hours of the day, and at sunset the great tower and tapering steeple loomed blackly against the glowing sky. Some believed that my home was built of stone and had withstood more than a century or more of storms. Around the towers and belfry, when the delicate leaves came out on the garden boughs, they World was filled with a new beauty. Plodding though the endless halls, I felt I was within a long-known, unreachable World beyond the mists. And presently I noted the strange, faces of the drifting shadows, and foreign sounds over wafting specular music. Nowhere could I find a familiar room among the six hundred in existence. I half fancied that Llanda Villa was a view of a dream-World never trod by living human feet. Now and then a carpenter or housemaid came in sight, but never the ones I sought. As I climbed higher, the regions of my home seemed stranger and stranger, with bewildering mazes of brooding hallways leading eternally off hither and tither. Faces within my house had a look of fear which they tried to hide. Upon entering a turret, I saw a boy being placed under a large wicker basket of conical shape, and a hooded woman stabbed through and through by the fakir with a long sword that pierced from side to side. Screams of pain followed each thrust, and the weapon was discerned to be covered with flesh blood. The cries grow fainter and at length cease altogether. Then the juggler uttering cries and incantations dances rough the basket, which she suddenly removes, and no sigh of the child is seen, no rent in the wickerwork, no stain on the steel. However, in a few seconds the boy, unharmed and laughing, spears running forward from some distant spot. “We shall always be glad to see you,” the boy said. The crowd began to quiet down to whispers, now, for the stillness and gloom of the place oppressed their spirits. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
The Winchester Mystery House
Wizards of medieval times, upon certain special days will with great ceremony appear in the temples, which are always thronged on these occasions, and whilst their disciples howl and shriek out invocations, they suddenly throw aside their robes and with a sharp knife seem to rip open their stomachs from top to bottom, whilst blood pours from the gaping wound. The worshippers, lashed to frenzy, fall prostrate before them and grovel frantically upon the floor. The wizard appears to scatter his blood over them, and after some five minutes he passes his hands rapidly over the wound, which instantly disappears, not leaving even the trace of a scar. The operator is noticed to be overcome with intense weariness, but otherwise all is well. Those who have seen this hideous spectacle assure us that it cannot be explained by any hallucination or legerdemain, and that only solution which remains is to attribute it to the glamour cast over the deluded crowd by the power of discarnate evil intelligences. The portentous growth of Spiritism, which within a generation passed beyond the limits of a popular and mountebank movement and challenged the serious attention and expert inquiry of the whole scientific and philosophical World, furnishes us with examples of many extraordinary phenomena, both physical and psychical, and these, in spite of the most meticulous and accurate investigation, are simply inexplicable by any natural and normal means.
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
All Was Not as it Seemed
Late in the evening of Thursday May 1, 1890, the atmosphere of the mansion was eerie and certainly encouraged fearful impressions. The panic-stricken housemaid, Florence Farr, cried out, “fetch a doctor, fetch the constable!” As everyone watched in suspense, my heart was pounding, sending curtains of dread through me. Eliphas Levi was lying in bed with his throat cut. Mr. Hansen told me that it had been a suicide. He presented me with a note that was in Mr. Levi’s handwriting which stated: “I abandon myself wholly to thy power and I put myself in thy hands, acknowledging no other god; and this sense thy art my god. We say to the Devil that we acknowledge him as our master, our god, our creator. The Devil told me he was my God, and that I should serve and worship him.” However, when the coroner Aurther Philipp arrived, he said that the carpenter had been murdered. His throat cut so deeply that he was practically decapitated. There appeared to be no motive. The apartment of which he was in had to doors in it; the one opening into a passage, and the other leading into the Oxford Bedroom: there were no means of entering the sitting room but from the passage, and no other egress from the bedroom except through the sitting room; so that any person passing into the bedroom must have remained there, unless he returned by the way he entered. “This is horrid,” I said. “It is unspeakable that such a tragedy could happen. Who would want to butcher him in his sleep?” My eye happened to glance from the scene toward the door that opened into the passage, and I observed a tall, youth, of about twenty years of age, whose appearance was that of extreme emaciation, standing beside it. Struck with the appearance of a perfect stranger, I immediately turned to Mr. Hansen, who was standing near me, and directed his attention to the guest who had thus strangely captured my attention. As soon as Mr. Hansen’s eyes turned towards the mysterious visitor, his countenance became strangle agitated. “Mrs. Winchester, I see no one,” said John Hansen. “I have heard of a man being pale as death, but I have never seen a living face assume the appearance of a corpse.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
As I looked silently at the form before us, perceiving the agitation of Mr. Hansen, I felt no inclination to address it—as I looked silently upon the figure, it proceeded slowly into the adjoining apartment and, in the act of passing us, cast its eyes with a somewhat melancholy expression on Mr. Hansen. The oppressing of this extraordinary presence was no sooner removed than Mr. Hansen, seizing me by the arm, and drawing a deep breath, muttering in a low and almost inaudible voice, “Great God!” By that time, I was not sure. Maybe I had been working too hard and needed rest. Perhaps I had only imagined the apparition. However, I never had been possessed of an overactive imagination. I was a practical person, used to dealing with facts and figures. Then I thought again of the door to the chamber, could someone beside the maid have walked by us without anyone seeing? I was completely confused. No one could find much to say about a suspect. And I was too busy with my own chaotic thoughts. I certainly had been convinced that an intruder was in the house. But if so, where did he go? Why the mystery? I did not want to discuss it further at the moment for it would only make me unduly nervous. The following afternoon came, and waned to the twilight. The Santa Clara Valley mourned. Public prayers had been offered up, and many and many a private prayer that had the petitioner’s whole heart in it; but still no good news came. As details of the murder emerged, fears grew that it might have been done by something not of this World. If my guest were not safe on my palatable, exclusive estate, who could be? The 1890s in California were nervous times, teaming with immigrants, the unemployed, renegades, and vengeful spirits. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
I resolved not to mention the occurrence to anyone, and persuaded myself that I had been imposed upon by some artifice, but I could neither account for the reasons nor suspect the author, nor conceive the means of execution; I was content to imagine anything possible, rather than admit the possibility of a supernatural appearance. However, though I had attempted these stratagems of self-delusion, I could not help expressing my solicitude with respect to the apparition I had seen or imagined to have seen; my frequent mention of my fears awakened the curiosity of the servants, and eventually betrayed me into a declaration of the circumstances which I had in vain determined to conceal. The destiny of the souls slain by the Winchester Rifle had become an object of universal and painful interest to the servants. It was clear that my mind was filled with thoughts that manifestly pained, bewildered and oppressed me: I drew near the fireplace and, learning my head on the mantelpiece, said in a low voice “my house is haunted.” I was under the impression that I certainly saw a spirit pass so mysteriously through the apartment. For a moment, I felt a twinge of apprehension, but it soon passed. The next morning, in the bright light of day, I had begun to doubt the reality of my impression. Everything had to have a logical explanation and I felt I would find one in this instance. Besides, so many were captivated by the aura that surrounded my imposing ancestral mansion. I took a sip of tea, washing away the sour debris in one swallow. There, you devils, I said in my mind, enough of your arrogance; now go about your business and keep this tired old blood flowing. I thanked the housemaid with a smile, then looked across the table at Daisy who was glumly eating an egg and anchovy salad. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
“Aunt Sarah, you’re miles away,” Daisy’s voice interrupted. I blinked. “I am sorry. My mind wanders too much these days.” “Not unusual for a medium.” “Our thoughts need direction.” “Not all the time. This is lunch, remember. You can relax.” “Like you?” I gently chided. “When was the last time you completely relaxed, Daisy?” Daisy looked genuinely puzzled. “Aunt Sarah, you know I have no problem with that at all.” Daisy sliced egg and began to eat. “Incidentally, I think the case of Eliphas is one that might prove interesting—it could be a genuine haunting. I just hope you handle it correctly.” Picking up my knife and fork, I learned forward. “Are you worried?” I asked. Daisy smiled distractedly. “Not as much as I used to be.” “Now what does that imply? Does it mean you believe Llanada Villa is haunted?” “It is common knowledge that your home is haunted, Aunt Sarah. Why should it be a secret?” I tasted my fish and refrained from adding salt. “It is an unusual thing to acknowledge,” I said after a while. “I am surprised that you openly admit it.” “I didn’t say I had.” “Then—” “Aunt Sarah, you can sometimes be too absorbed in the cynicism of others to allow much for to let the truth develop.” “Or too absorbed in my work,” I suggested. “It more or less amounts to the same thing.” I pondered Daisy’s response. “I see what you mean…I have an active prejudice against all things spiritual.” Smiling, Daisy reached over and touched my arm. “It is nothing personal, Aunt Sarah. You are sensitive and sincere. I think the spirits appreciate the comfort you give to the bereaved in your home. It is the outrageous charlatans that I despise, the kind who gossip and spread deceptions for their own profit. You’re different, Aunt Sarah. I really believe you help people and spirits. You have balance. We need people with honest skepticism to give the supernatural credibility.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
There was a sparkle in my eyes, “And Daisy, when every instinct tells you otherwise, I know how often you accept the logical.” Daisy laughed and acknowledged my point with a raised cup. She sipped the tea, then resumed her half-hearted attack on the salad. I was uncomfortable, though I was reluctant to admit it. I had never admired her more. Daisy was a clam, unexcitable person who created scarcely a ripple on the smooth pond of family existence as she moved serenely through her busy days. “I love you, Daisy.” The hiring and keeping of servants were a persistent topic of discussion. Turnover rates were high, disasters frequent, and I got used to constantly being on the look out for good recommendations from friends. While valets are given the responsibility of being confidants and agents of their masters’ most unguarded moments, of their most secret habits, the servants themselves were rarely equal to the task being subject to errant judgement, aggravated by an unperfect education. The honour of having my niece live with me was such a blessing. When we got home, one pleasant late spring evening, with the sun lighting the art-glass windows on the first floor, the house was quiet. I saw the figure of a woman in the doorway of the dinning room, walking down the hall, and through the curtain, and I heard footsteps in conjunction with it. I thought it was the housemaid, Florence, and I called to her. I was hanging a picture in the dining room at the time. No answer. I was getting annoyed and called her several times over, but there was no response. Finally, she answered from the second floor—she had not been downstairs at all. I walked in the hall and there was no one there. The woman I saw had on a long shirt, and she had hair on top of her head, and she was slender. Florence is not very tall, but she does wear dark clothes. It was a perfect solid figure I saw—nothing nebulous or transparent. The front door had been latched securely and Daisy was in her bedroom. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Later in the year, Daisy met a woman on the stairway—that is, the stairway leading to the third floor. It was around Thanksgiving time. There was a party that evening, and she mistook the woman for a guest who had somehow remained behind after all the other guests had gone home. Daisy passed her going up while she was coming down, and she walked into her room, which Daisy thought was odd, so she went back to ask if she could help her, but there was not anyone there. I took a good look at the upstairs. No one could have gotten out of the house quickly. The stairs were narrow and difficult to negotiate, and the back stairs, in the servant’s half of the house, are even more difficult. Anyone descending them rapidly was likely to slip and fall. As I lay rigid upon that strange upstairs bed—lay there fully dressed, I became broad awake; but a kind of obscure paralysis nevertheless kept me inert till long after the last echoes of sounds died away. I heard the wooden, deliberate ticking of the ancient Connecticut clock somewhere far below, and at last made out the irregular snoring of a sleep. Just what to think or what to do was more than I could decide. After all, what had I heard beyond things which pervious information might have led me to expect. Had I not known that unknown spirits were now freely admitted to Llanada Villa? No doubt Daisy had been surprised by an unexpected visit from them. Yet something in that fragmentary discourse had chilled me immeasurably, raised the most grotesque and horrible doubts, and made me wish fervently that I might wake up and prove everything a dream. I think my subconscious mind must have caught something which my consciousness has not yet recognised. The peaceful snoring below seemed to cast ridicule on all my suddenly intensified fears. Did those beings mean to engulf us because we have come to know too much? Something, my instinct told me, was terribly wrong. All was not as it seemed. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
At last, I felt able to act, and stretched myself vigorously to regain command of my body. Arising with a caution more impulsive than deliberate, I started downstairs. In my nervousness, I kept my ivory gripped revolver clutched in my right hand. As I half tiptoed down the creaking stairs to the lower hall, I could hear the sleeper more plainly, and noticed that he must be in the room on my left. On my right was the gaping blackness of the library in which I had heard voices. Pushing open the unlatched door of the living room, I traced a path toward the source of the snoring, and finally saw the sleepers face. The sorrowful sight presented itself in the dim twilight. With a sudden and dreadful sinking at the heart, I saw that it was none other than the late Eliphas Levi. He lay stretched upon the floor, dead, with his throat cut, bleeding, with his face close to the crack of the door, as if his longing eyes had been fixed, to the latest moment, upon the light and the cheer of the free World outside. I was touched, for I knew by my own experience how this wretch had suffered. The air seemed to shake and shimmer as I had never seen it: and as I looked, I began to feel something of a waviness and confusion in my brain. I looked away hastily. Just what the real situation was, I could not determine; but common sense told me that the safest thing was to find out as much as possible before arousing anybody. The Devil can deceive and trick the senses so that a head may appear to be cut off and blood to flow, when in truth no such thing is taking place. Regaining the hall, I silently closed and latched the living room door after me. As I turned around, I was startled to see a hideous black figure—working slowly along the hallway, looking from side to side. I was at my wits end. I screamed. In the still air the sound carried. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
The Winchester Mystery House
The existence of evil discarnate intelligences having being orthodoxly established, a realm which owns one chief, and it is reasonable to suppose, many hierarchies, a kingdom that is at continual warfare with all that is good, ever striving to do evil and bring man into bondage; it is obvious that if he be so determined, man will be able in some way or another to get into touch with this dark shadow World, and however rare such a connection may be it is, at least possible. It is this connection with its consequences, conditions, and attendant circumstances, that is known as Witchcraft. After God Himself hath spoke of magicians and sorcerers, what infidel dare doubt that they exist? To deny the possibility, nay, actual existence of Witchcraft and Sorcery, is at once flatly to contradict the revealed Word of God in various passages both of the Old and New Testament; and the thing itself is a truth to which every Nation in the World hath in its turn borne testimony, either by examples seemingly well attested, or by prohibitory laws, which at least suppose the possibility of commerce with evil spirits. Even the ultra-cautions—I had almost said sceptical—Father Thurston acknowledges: “In the face of Holy Scripture and the teaching of the Fathers and theologians the abstract possibility of a pact with the Devil and of diabolical interference in human affairs can hardly be denied.” Plainly, a man who not only firmly believes in a Power of evil but also that this Power can and does meddle with and mar human affections and human destinies, may invoke and devote himself to this Power, may give up his will thereunto, may as this Power to accomplish his wishes and ends, and so succeed in persuading himself that he has entered into a mysterious contract with evil whose slave and servant he is become.
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
It is Useless to Preach Ethics to a Gangster
Social meddlers have been labouring under the delusion that, since there are no natural laws of the social order, they might make the World over with artificial ones. Society, however, the product of centuries of gradual evolution, cannot be quickly refashioned by legislation. It is a superorganism, changing at a geological tempo. The great stream of time and Earthy things will sweep on just the same despite us. Every one of us is a child of his age and cannot get out of it. He is in the stream and is swept along with it. All his science and philosophy come to him out of it. Therefore, the tide will not be changed by us. It will swallow up both us and our experiments. That is why it is the greatest folly of which a man can be capable to sit down with a slate and pencil to plan out a new social World. Socialists are puny meddlers, social quacks, who would try to break into the age-old process of societal growth at an arbitrary point and remake it in accordance with their petty desires. They started from the premise that “everybody ought to be happy” and assumed that therefore it should be possible to make everyone happy. They never asked, “In what direction is society moving?” or “What are the mechanisms which motivate its progress?” Evolution would teach them that it is impossible to tear down overnight a social system whose roots are centuries deep in the social of history. History would teach them that revolutions never succeeded—witness the experience of France, where the Napoleonic period left essential interests much as they have been before 1789. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
There are two chief things with which government must deal. They are the property of men and the honour of women. These it must defend against crime. Polly Hannah Klass was a twelve-year-old American girl who was kidnapped at knifepoint during a slumber party at her mother’s home in Petaluma, California in 1993. She was strangled to death. Richard Allen Davis was convicted of her murder in 1996 and sentenced to death. As part of an Anti-Violence Strategy, politicians in California and other U.S.A. states supported the three strikes law, which requires a person who is convicted of an offense and who has one or two other previous serious convictions to serve a mandatory life sentence in prison without parole. California’s Three Strikes act was signed into law on March 8, 1994. However, since 2014, under California law, purchasing or soliciting a child for sex is a misdemeanor carrying a maximum penalty of up to a year in jail, or a minimum of two days in jail, and a $10,000 fine. This is a direction contradiction of the Three Strikes Act. Many people wonder how such legislation could even exist when worldwide, at any given time, there are approximately 30 million victims (about the population of Texas) being sold into the sex trade. Every system has its inevitable evils, but this is blatantly wrong. When they care nothing about the health and safety of your children, why keep electing sinful democrats? Human progress is moral progress, and moral progress is largely the accumulation of economic virtues. Let every man be sober, industrious, prudent, and wise, and bring up his children to be so likewise, so we can abolish crime and corruption in a few generations. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
If the good and evil values of this Earthly existence are in the end relative, partial, and transient, there yet remains a supreme value which is absolute, total, and eternal in its goodness. It belongs to the root of our being, the Overself in us that represents the World-Mind. The atheist who declares that the moral scene is entirely suggested to man by his environment has taken a partial truth, a partial untruth, and joined them together. However, if he had declared that the environment was a contributory factor to the result, he would have been quite correct. The moaning of a cat has doubtless a certain musical note in it. The Messiah by Handel has musical notes of another kind. Metaphysical scepticism would say that both values are relative and not absolute, hence both are as worthwhile or as worthless as we believe them to be. However, most of us would prefer Handel! Why? Because although as relative as the cat’s sounds, it is progressively superior. We may apply this to ethics. Excessive moral tolerance easily becomes moral lethargy. How can you rightly give the same rules on self-control to young men, in whom the lusts are hot, and to old men, who whom they are cold? To tie a code of moral values to a religious belief is safer in a simple community and riskier in a sophisticated one. When it is no longer an integrity, a virtue may be practised wrongly. New circumstances bring out new and different qualities, including latent and even unsupported ones. Or a crisis in events may explode and let them appear suddenly. Thus, the good may become the bad; the bad may become good. Arrogance in virtue is risky. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
By giving his allegiance to the political system, the religious system, and the commercial system in which he lives, man has unwittingly done two things; he has made a judgement on them, and he has taken a moral decision about them. However, whether this has penetrated his consciousness, he cannot absolve himself from these responsibilities. Sinfulness is relative. What is right for a man at a low stage may be wrong for him at a higher stage; and in the highest stage, he may act rightly yet in sin in thought. Although two different doctrines may each be relatively true, this is not the same as being on the same level of evaluation. To set up relativity as an absolute truth without qualifying it, is unfair. To say that all values are alike, all codes are the same, is to say something half-false. Paradox is an indispensable element of the Highest Formulations. If the old moralities fall away from man, it is only to be displaced by higher ones, certainly not to be bereft of any ethical code. The doctrine who uses right ideas to support or defend wrong actions can do so only because those ideas are general and abstract ones. They ignore circumstances, time, and place. Convert them into specific concrete, practical, and cases, and their misuse becomes difficult. Although he has now inwardly transcended conventional codes of good and evil, man will outwardly continue to respect them. This is not hypocrisy for he is not opposed to them. He perceives that the very relativity which deprives them of value for him, provides them with value for society. Obedience to the Overself will then become the only code of ethics that he can follow. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Dr. Freud’s independent man has emancipated himself from the dependence on mother. Marx’s independent man has emancipated himself from the dependence on nature. However, there is one important difference between the two concepts of independence. Dr. Freud’s independent man is basically a self-sufficient man. He needs others only to satisfy his instinctual desires. Since men and women need each other, this satisfaction is a mutual one. The relationship is not primarily but only secondarily a social one, like that of individual buyers and sellers on the market who are united by their mutual interest in exchange. For Marx, man is primarily a social being. If he is related to his fellow men and to nature, he needs his fellow man, not to satisfy his desires, but because only then is he complete as a man. The independent, free man in Marx’s sense is the active, related, productive man. Spinoza, who had considerable influence on Marx, as he had on Hegel and Goethe, held activity vs. Passivity to be central concepts for the understanding of man, He differentiated between active and passive emotions. The former (fortitude and generosity) iriginate in the individual, and they are accompanied by adequate ideas. The latter rule over man; he is the slave of passions, and they relate to inadequate, irrational ideas. This connection between knowledge and affect has been enriched by Goethe and Hegel in their emphasis on the nature of true knowledge. Knowledge is not obtained in the position of the split between subject and object, but in the position of relatedness. As Goethe put it: “Man knows himself only since he knows the World. He knows the World only within himself, and he is aware of himself only within the World. Each new object, truly recognized, opens a new organ within ourselves. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
In his Faust, Goethe gave the most outstanding expression to this concept of the “ever striving” man. Neither knowledge nor power nor sex can give an ultimately satisfactory answer to the question which man is asked by the fact of his very existence. Only the free and productive man, untied to his fellow man, can give the right answer to man’s existence, Marx’s concept of man was a dynamic one. Human passion is, he said, “the essential power of man striving energetically for its object.” Man’s own powers develop only in the process of relatedness to the World. “The eye has become a human eye when its object has become a human, social object, created by man and destined for him. The senses have therefore become directly theoreticians in practice. They relate themselves to the thing for the sake of the thing, but the thing itself is an objective human relation to itself and to man and vice versa. Need and enjoyment have thus lost their egoistic character, and nature has lost its mere utility by the fact that its utilization has become human utilization. (In practice I can only relate myself in a human way to a thing when the thing is related in a human way to man.)” Just as our senses develop and become human senses in the process of their productive relatedness to nature, our relatedness to man, says Marx, becomes human relatedness in the act of loving. “Let us assume man to be man, and his relation to the world to be a human one. Then love can only be exchanged for love, trust for trust, etcetera. If you wish to enjoy art, you must be an artistically cultivated person; if you wish to influence other people you must be a person who really has a stimulating and encouraging effect upon others. Every one of your relations to man and to nature must be a specific expression, corresponding to the object of your will, of your real individual life. If you love without evoking love in return, id est, if you are not able, by the manifestation of yourself as a loving person, to make yourself a beloved person, then your love is impotent and a misfortune.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
The fully developed, and this the healthy, man, is the productive man, the man who is genuinely interested in the World, responding to it; he is the rich man. In contrast to this fully developed man, Marx paints the picture of a man under the system of capitalism. “The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.” In the present system man has much, but he is little. The fully developed man is the wealthy man who is much. “Communism,” for Marx, “is the positive abolition of private property, of human nature through and for man. It is, therefore, the return of man himself as a social, id est, really human being, a complete and conscious return which assimilates all the wealth of previous development. Communism as a fully developed naturalism is humanism and, as a fully developed humanism, is naturalism. It is the definitive resolution of the antagonism between man and natura, and between man and man. It is the true solution of the conflict between existence and essence, between objectification and self-affirmation, between freedom and necessity, between individual and species. It is the solution of the riddle of history and knows itself to be this solution.” By “private property” as used here and in other statements, Marx never refers to the personal property of things for use (such as a house table, et cetera). He refers to the property of the “propertied classes,” that is, of the capitalist who, because he owns the means of production, can hire the property-less individual to work for him, under conditions the latter is forced to accept. “Private property,” in Marx’s usage, then, always refers to private property within capitalist class society and thus is a social and historical category; the term does not refer to things for use, to “personal property.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The past has not been devoid of experimentation to permit freedom in education, and there has accumulated a considerable body of knowledge regarding education which has inward freedom as one of its primary goals. August Aichorn, many years ago, carried out a radical experiment in the reeducation of delinquents. He permitted them freedom, within the institutional setting, to conduct themselves as they desired in the group in which he was the leader. After a period of chaos which I am sure few of us could bear, these youths gradually chose a social and disciplined and cooperative life as something they preferred. They learned, though experience in an accepting relationship that they desired responsible freedom and self-imposed limits rather than the chaos of license and aggression. Another radical experiment was that conducted by A.S. Neill in his school, Summerhill. Starting one hundred years ago, school has become a current focus of great interest because A.S. Neill’s book Summerhill tells of the experience of his pupils and himself in this school. This is a book which is well worth thoughtful reading by every educator. Neill’s sincerity and genuineness, his faith in the potential of everyone, his firm respect for each child and for himself shines through its pages. As in the case of Aichorn, few of us would have the courage to trust the individual, and his natural desire to learn, as completely as does Neill. Yet has given u a challenging laboratory example of what it means to provide a setting in which children can learn to be free. Even the cautious report of the Ministery of Education makes is clear that the students develop a zest for living spontaneous courtesy, as well as initiative, responsibility, and integrity. They conclude, “a piece of fascinating and valuable educational research is going on here which it would do educationists good to see.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
The core of the progressive education movement, now frequently derided, was another attempt to help individuals to learn to be free. That its fundamental philosophy frequently became debased into turning education into a sugar-coated pill should not obscure its true aims, nor its effective research when it was true to its own philosophical base. Still another type of experiment along this line is evident in the work being done in student-centered teaching. Here much of the work has been done in university classes and in intensive workshops for professional persons. The aim of the approach: to assist students to become individuals who can take self-initiated action and to be responsible for those actions; who are capable of intelligent choice and self-direction; who are critical learners, able to evaluate the contributions made by others; who have acquired knowledge relevant to the solutions of problems; who, even more importantly, are able to adapt flexibly and intelligently to new problem situations; who have internalized an adaptive mode of approach to problems, utilizing all pertinent experience freely and creatively; who are able to cooperate effectively with others in these various activities; who work, not for approval of others, but in terms of their own socialized purposes. If it is not possible for the generality of mankind to practise ethical indolence permanently and to avoid the moral struggles which the situations of life lead to intermittently, it is much less possible for the minority of mankind who have begun this quest to do so. Life becomes graver for them. If they do not obey the call of conscience the first time, it may become more painful to obey it the second time. If they persist in following an ignoble and contemptible course after they have already seen that it is dishonourable and deplorable the universal law becomes proportionately heavier with consequences. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
We have been having an ongoing look at Clare, and her dependence on people. Her case study has been enlightening. She had started taking notes on her own behaviour to see what triggered an upset. While reviewing these notes concerning an evening in which her mood had swung from elation to depression, she saw the possibility that fatigue may have been a factor. She wondered whether the latter might have resulted not only from the anxiety that had been aroused but also from a repressed anger for the frustration of her wishes. If that were so, her wishes could not be quite so harmless as she had assumed, for they must then contain some admixture of an insistence that they be complied with. She left this an open question. This piece of analysis had an immediately favourable influence upon the relationship with her man Peter, who was aloof and distant. Clare became more active in sharing his interests and in considering his wishes, and ceased being merely receptive. Also, the sudden eruptions of irritation stopped entirely. It is hard to say whether her demands upon him relented, though it would be reasonable to assume that they did to a moderate degree. This time Clare faced her finding so squarely that there is almost nothing to add. It is noteworthy, though, that the same material had presented itself six weeks before, when the daydream of the great man first emerged. At that time the need to hold on to the fiction of “love” was still so stringent that she could do no more than admit that her love was tinged with a need for protection. Even in that admission she could conceive of the need for protection only as a factor reinforcing her “love.” Nevertheless, that early insight constituted the first attack on her dependency. The discovery of the degree of fear in her love was the second step. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
A further step was the question she raised as to whether she overrated Peter, even though the question remained unanswered. And only after she had worked that far through the fog could she finally see that her love was by no means unadulterated. Only now could she stand the disillusionment of recognizing that she had mistaken for love her abundant expectations and demands. She had not yet taken the last step of realizing the dependency that resulted from her expectations. Otherwise, however, this fragment of analysis is a good example of what it means to follow up an insight. Clare saw that her expectations of others were largely engendered by her own inhibitions toward wishing or doing anything for herself. She saw that her sponging attitude impaired her capacity to give anything in return. And if her expectations were rejected or frustrated, she recognized her tendency to feel offended. Clare’s expectations were mainly in reference to intangible things. Despite apparent evidence to the contrary, she was not essentially a greedy person. The receiving of presents was only a symbol for less concrete but more important expectations. She demanded to be cared for in such a way that she should not have to make up her mind as to what is right or wrong, should not have to take the initiative, should not have to be responsible for herself, should not have to solve external difficulties. Some weeks passed in which her relationship with Peter was smoother. They had finally planned a trip together. Through his long indecision he had spoiled for her most of the joy of anticipation, though when everything was settled, she did look forward to the holiday. However, a few days before they were to leave, he told her that business was too precarious just then to allow him to go away for any length of time. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Clare was first enraged and then desperate, and Peter scolded her for being unreasonable. She tended to accept the reproach and tried to convince herself that he was right. When she calmed down, Clare suggested that she go alone to a resort that was only a three-hour drive from the city; Pere could then join her whenever his time allowed. Peter did not openly refuse this arrangement, but after some hemming and hawing he said that if she were able to take things more reasonably, he would have been very glad to agree since she reacted so violently to every disappointment, and since he was not master of his time, he foresaw only frictions forthcoming and felt it better for her to make plans without him. This again threw her into despair. The evening ended with Peter consoling her and promising to go away with her for ten days at the end of vacation. Clare felt reassured. Inwardly agreeing with Peter, she decided to take things more easily and to become content with what he could give her. The next day, while trying to analyze her first reaction of rage, she had three associations. The first was a memory of being teased, when she was a child, for playing the martyr role. However, this memory, which had often recurred to her, appeared now in a new light. She had never examined whether the others were wrong in teasing her in this way. She had taken it merely as a fact. Now for the first time it dawned on her that they were not right, that she had been discriminated against, that by teasing her they had added insult to injury. Then another memory occurred to her from the time when she was five or six. She used to play with her brother and his playmates, and one day they told her that in a certain meadow, near where they played, robbers lived in a hidden cave. She believed it completely and always trembled when she went near that meadow. Then one day they had ridiculed her for having fallen for their story. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Finally, Clare thought of her dream of the foreign city, the part in which she had seen the freak show and the gambling stands. And now she realised that these symbols expressed more than a transient anger. She saw for the first time that there was something phony, something fraudulent in Peter. Not in the sense of any deliberate swindle. However, he could not help playing the role of one who was always right, always superior, always generous—and he had feet of clay. He was wrapped up in himself, and when he yielded to her wishes it was not because of love and generosity but because of his own weakness. Finally, in his dealing with her there was much subtle cruelty. Psychotherapy is a good idea for someone like Clare. In view of the general disdain for, if not outright counter prescription of, advice-giving as a part of formal psychotherapy, it is interesting to note that fewer than 15 percent of those who were helped definitely by psychiatrists attributed their relief to the receipt of advice; the comparable figures of helpful advice are 24 percent and 34 percent for the physicians and clergymen respectively. By contrast, 23 percent of persons helped by the clergymen credited the receipt of “comfort” and an “ability to endure”; of those who were helped by physicians and psychiatrists only 9 percent and 7 percent respectively claimed that this was the way in which therapy had helped them. The data from this survey does not permit a comparison of the relative efficiency of the clergyman as a psychotherapist with the psychiatrist or other experts. It may be that the clergymen “treat” a very different group of “patients,” and that the medical and psychological experts receive the more difficult cases. It is important to note, however, that they tend to seek to help all those who come to them with personal problems, making fewer referrals than to the physicians. Nevertheless, their effectiveness as evaluated in subjective appraisals of helpfulness by those who consult them is equal to that of the physicians, and both “nonexperts” are credited with giving more “help” than are the psychiatrists, psychologists, and marriage counselors. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
It seems obvious that the clergy constitute a great potential resource in helping to meet the psychotherapy needed of our society. It is not known to what extent this potential is being fully realized. In the past there have been pseudo-antagonisms (based upon presumed conflicts of values and philosophy) between religion and psychiatry. Some psychotherapists have feared that the clergy were doing harm through slowness to make referrals to experts. Concern for the possible usurpation of a role for which they were inadequately prepared has been based partly on a recognition that the older spiritual adviser had rarely received intensive instruction in scientific psychology or orientation to the nature of neurotic illness. In the face of some of these antipathies and with growing recognition for the extent to which the clergyman is turned to for help with emotional and mental problems, both the church and psychiatry are moving toward a reproachment. Seminaries are showing increasing attention to provision of some background in pastoral counseling as a necessary part of the training of future churchmen; in providing sophistication in the techniques of counseling there is also attention to the problem of recognition of psychiatric illness. Priests, rabbis, and ministers in increasing numbers are being encouraged to pursue graduate study in psychology. Through the cooperation of the Wheat Ridge Foundation of Lutheran Church and graduate department of psychology of the University of Minnesota a small and highly select group of ordained pastors are studying for the Ph.D. in clinical psychology. These men will later be key resource persons in providing mental health consultation to other pastors and to church programs of mental health education. Psychiatrists and psychologists are showing a growing willingness to participate in special seminars and short courses designed to provide clergymen with a basic understanding of psychiatric illness and treatment. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
The increased education of clergy in the field of mental illness should have a beneficial effect. It should bring this important source of therapeutic conversation to increasingly direct and effective expression. It should mean that more and more clergy will come to do more and better personal counseling. It should have this effect but it may not! The effect of the increased “psychiatric sophisticated” of the clergy may be simply that they will reveal a new tendency toward making increasingly frequent referrals to the already overburdened “experts.” It is of the utmost importance that clergymen be sensitized not only to the presence of serious psychological disturbance, which may be occasionally masked by a plea for spiritual guidance, but that they be made equally aware of that they have within themselves the potential to render significant help and relief to many of the persons who seek their counsel with strictly secular problems. If the tuition of clergymen in the field of mental hygiene were to be so diagnosis-and pathology oriented that they were simply rendered over-ready to make referrals rather than to accept a basic, appropriate responsibility to render aid. It is obvious that religious leaders should be among the first to recognise a “philosophical neurosis” and should know that they may have a special expertise in the treatment of this form of pseudo-neurotic disturbance. They should prepare themselves to receive the referrals which, hopefully, psychiatrists and psychologists may be making in increasing numbers. Beyond this, the mental health movement must seek to give the clergy an increasing feeling for the strategic advantage of their special status as suppliers of therapeutic conversation, an increasing sense of the legitimacy of their functioning in this role, and an increasing awareness of their need to take responsibility for their distinctly psychotherapeutic skills over and above their qualities as spiritual leaders. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
There are a couple of “humane experiences” which are difficult to classify in terms of feelings, affects, and attitudes. However, it matters little how we classify them, since all these classifications themselves are based on traditional distinctions, the validity of which is questions. I am referring to the sense of identity and integrity. The problem of identity has been much in the foreground of psycholgoical discussion, especially stimulated by the excellent work of Erik Erikson. He has spoken of the “identity crisis,” and, undoubtedly, he has touched upon one of the major psychological problems of industrial society. However, he has not gone far or penetrated as deeply as is necessary for the full understand of the phenomena of identity and identity crisis. In the age of information, men are transformed into things, life is lived on social media, and things have no identity. Or do they? Is not every BMW car of a certain year and a certain model identical with every other BMW car of the same model and different from other models and vintages? Has not any dollar bill its identity like any other dollar bill because it has the same design, value, exchangeability, but different from any other dollar bill in terms of differences in the quality of the paper brought about by the length of use? Things can be the same or different. However, if we speak of identity, we speak of a quality which does not pertain to things, but only to man. What then is identity in a human sense? Among the many approaches to this question, I want to stress only the concept that identity is the experience which permits a person to say legitimately “I” — “I” as an organizing active center of the structure of all my actual or potential activities. This experience of “I” exists only in the state of spontaneous activity, but it does not exist in the state of passiveness and half-awakeness, a state in which people are sufficiently awake to go about their business but not awake enough to sense an “I” as the active center within themselves. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
This concept of “I” is different from the concept of ego. (I do not use this term in the Freudian sense but in the popular sense of a person who, for example, has a “big ego.”) The experience of my “ego” is the experience of myself as a thing, of the body I have, the memory I have—the money, the house, the social position, the power, the children, the problems I have. I look at myself as a thing and my social role is another attribute of thingsness. Many people easily confuse the identity of ego with the identity of “I” or self. The difference is fundamental and unmistakable. The experience of ego, and of ego-identity, is based on the concept of having. I have “me” as I have all other things which this “me” owns. Identity of “I” or self refers to the category of being and not of having. I am “I” only to the extent to which I am alive, interested, related, active, and to which I have achieved an integration between my appearance—to others and/or to myself—and the core of my personality. The identity crisis of our time is based essentially on the increasing alienation and reification of man, and it can be solved only to the extent to which man comes to life again, becomes active again. There are no psychological shortcuts to the solution to the identity crisis except the fundamental transformation of alienated man into the living man. The increasing emphasis on ego versus self, on having versus being, finds a glaring expression in the development of our language. It has become customary for people to say, “I have insomnia,” instead of saying, “I cannot sleep”; or, “I have a problem,” instead of, “I feel sad, confused” or whatever it may be; or “I have a happy marriage” (sometimes successful marriage), instead of saying “My wife and I love each other.” All categories of the process of being are transformed into categories of having. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
The ego, static and unmoved, relates to the World in terms of having objects, while the self is related to the World in the process of participation. Modern man has everything: a BMW, a house, a job, “kids,” a marriage, problems, troubles, satisfactions—and of all that is not enough, he had his psychoanalyst. He is nothing. A concept which presupposes that of identity is that of integrity. It can be dealt with briefly because integrity simply means a willingness not to violate one’s identity, in the many ways in which such violation is possible. The main temptations for violation of one’s identity are the opportunities for advancement in industrial society. Since the life within the society tends to make man experience himself as a thing anyway, a sense of identity is a rare phenomenon. However, the problem is complicated by the fact that aside from identity as a conscious phenomenon as described above, there is a kind of unconscious identity. Some people, while consciously they have turned into things, carry unconsciously a sense of their identity precisely because the social process has not succeeded in transforming them completely into things. These people, when yielding to the temptatiomn of violating their integrity, may have a sense of guilt which is unconscious and which gives them a feeling of uneasiness, although they are not aware of its cause. It is all too easy for orthodox psychoanalytic procedure to explain a sense of guilt as the result of one’s incestuous wishes or one’s “unconscious homosexuality.” The truth is that since a person is not entirely dead—in a psychological sense—he feels guilty for living without integrity. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
It takes a lot of integrity to be a firefighter. “I was a training officer for almost two years when the Sacramento Fire Department advertised for a drillmaster, and they hired me. They were looking for somebody from the outside because of the training fire which killed two firefighters and injured two others. That changed the department. It was a very powerful, emotional experience, because it is a small closely knit outfit. It was a smoke training exercise, there was no intention of having a fire there. They used a small shed that was going to be demolished for a smoke-in. A hopeless structure. For example, they had put up cardboard walls, and it had a low-density combustible fireboard ceiling. Anf there was probably a finer layer of carbon from pervious burns. This was the third exercise of the morning. There was a flashover. Since this was only a “smoke exercise,” they weren’t prepared for firefighting. This was a case of their intentions outrunning their idea of what the potential was in that situation. So they weren’t hooked up to a hydrant, and there was nobody by the pump panel. They were generating the smoke by burning tires, a series of fires in this long shed. They were advancing a booster line to simulate hose line advancement, but they weren’t in there to extinguish fires. I don’t know if it was an oxygen flashover, or, more likely, the presence of all that combustible material getting heated up and liberating its gases to the point where everything ignited simultaneously, the walls, the ceilings, everything. There were four people inside. Two died. Two made it out, the company officer and the officer who was putting on the drill. The company officer suffered extensive burns and spent considerable time in a burn ward. The officer putting on the drill wasn’t a regular training officer, he was just somebody who’s volunteered to conduct the drill. This was a real tragedy.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Please keep the Sacramento Fire Department in your prayers and make a donation to ensure that they have all the resources required. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God and indivisible with liberty and justice for all. The wise man harbours neither revenge nor envy; he speaks good of all men, and belittles none. He is moderate in his merriment, and rejoices not at the misfortune of others; he cleaves to the men of truth and faithfulness. See that you guard your soul’s holiness, and when you pray, consider before whom you stand. Visit the sick and suffering, and let your countenance be cheerful. Purge your soul from angry passion; that is the inheritance of fools. Love the society of learned men, and strive to know more and more of the ways and the works of your Creators. A city is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked, but it is exalted by the blessing of the upright. Sin is a reproach to any people, but righteousness exalts a nation. When the wicked rule, the people sigh, but when the righteous come to power, the people rejoice. Where there is no vision, the people perish, but happy is he that keeps the law. When the righteous exult, there is a great glory, but when the wicked rule, righteous men must be sought for. Let us now praise such righteous men, famous men, the fathers of our country. The Lord manifested in them great glory, even His mighty power from the beginning. These men did rule and were renowned for their power, giving counsel by their understanding; leaders of the people, men of learning, wise and eloquent men, rich in ability; men of vision and mercy, whose righteous deeds have not been forgotten; their heritage shall continually remain, and their names live on unto all generations. Men will declare their wisdom, and continually speak their praise. For the Lord never leaves His people without leaders and men of learning. That they may be instructed and ennobled, and their destiny exalted. America was founded on Biblical precepts. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
The Winchester Mystery House
There is a charming story concerning one of the first ghosts Mrs. Winchester saw. “He appeared first in the garden one afternoon. I saw him as I looked out of the morning-room window, a very ordinary-looking young man wearing a tweed jacket and flannels. I saw him as clearly as I am seeing you now…and yet I knew immediately that he was a ghost. I knew he was not alive in the sense that you and I are alive. No, I was not worried by him. There was nothing ominous or threatening about his appearance. I saw him several times in the garden, and then one day entering from the door-to-nowhere. This time he seemed to be ill.”
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
There are No Natural Rights in the Jungle
The way we behave toward our fellow men depends on one’s evolutionary status. The young inexperienced naive idealist will contradict the aged Worldly-wise cynic for whom like, authority, celebrity, tradition, innovation, have been totally denuded of their glamour. The distance from one answer to the other will also be marked by varying views. It is quite true that moral codes have historically been merely relative to time, place, and so on. However, if we try to make such relativity a basis of non-moral actions, if we act on the principle that wrong is not worse than right and evil not different from good, then social life would soon show a disastrous deterioration, the ethics of the jungle would become its governing law, and catastrophe would overtake it in the end. The relativity of good and evil is no justification for the tolerance of wrong and evil. It would be a mistake to believe that because philisophy affirms that morality, art, conscience, and religion are relative to human beings, it therefore has no moral code to offer. It most assuredly has such a code. This is so because side by side with relativity it also affirms development. It holds up a purpose, traces out a path to its realization, and hence formulates a code. The virtue which he is to practise is not bound by the standards set by law and customs, nor even by conventional morality. His standards are far higher and far nobler. For they are not measured by human weakness but by human possibility. If for so much of his lifetime they must exist side by side with his shortcomings, the latter are not accepted but are resisted. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
When embraced by intellectual materialists or unphilosophical mystics, moral relativity has led to foolish and even dangerous practical results. The fallacy is that although all points of view in morality are tenable, all are not equally sustainable. The danger of this teaching of evil’s unreality and moral relativity is that in the hands of the unwise it annuls all distinction between evil and good, while in the hands of the conceited it opens dangerous doors. The undisciplined or the evil-minded will always seize on such a tenant to provide support and excuse for their faults or sins. There is no reason to withhold it, however, for they will commit the same faults or sins anyway whether they have the teaching or not. Because there are levels of moral growth, character, and self-control, it became necessary to lay down laws, codes, and rules for mankind in the masses. These may be of sacred origin, as with a Moses, or of secular authority, as with a ruler. Where the name of God is invoked to give them weight, this is usually a human device. However, the come-back of Universal Law is very real, and not a fancy. The discovery of moral relativity gives no encouragement however to moral laxity. If we are freed from human convention, it is because we are to submit ourselves sacrificially to the Overself’s dictate. The unfoldment of progressive states of conscious being is not possible without giving up the lower for the higher. The doctrine that ethical and artistic values are relative need not be inconsistent with the doctrine that they are also progressive. They evolve from lower to higher levels. Being ideas in some individual mind, they improve with the refinement of that mind’s own quality. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
The codes of good and bad are usually part of religion and certainly belong to the religious level. However, the idea of goodness implies the idea of badness, so both are held in the mind although in different ways: one explicitly, the other implicitly. The philosopher does not depend on them but on their source, the Higher Power. The ego being an illusory entity, its virtues are in the ultimate sense either imaginary or also illusory. Nevertheless, moral perfection of the ego is a necessary stage on the journey to perfection of consciousness, to Overself. To cast it aside as being merely relative, to reject ethics and virtue as being unnecessary, is a trick of the intellect to enable the ego to stay longer in its own self-sufficiency. The first fact in life is the struggle for existence; the greatest forward step in this struggle is the production of capital, which increases the fruitfulness of labour and provides the necessary means of an advance in civilization. Primitive man, who long ago withdrew from the competitive struggle and ceased to accumulate capital goods, must pay with a backward and unenlightened way of life. Social advance depends primarily upon hereditary wealth; for wealth offers a premium to effort, and hereditary wealthy assures the enterprising and industrious man that he may preserve in his children the virtues which have enabled him to enrich the community. Any assault upon hereditary wealth must begin with an attack upon the family and end by reducing men to “swine.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
The operation of social selection depends upon keeping the family intact. Physical inheritance is a vital part of the Darwinian theory; the social equivalent of physical inheritance is the instruction of the children in the necessary economic virtues. If the fittest are to be allowed to survive, if the benefits of efficient management are to be available to society, the captains of industry must be paid for their unique organizing talents. Their huge fortunes are the legitimate wages of superintendence; in the struggle for existence, money is the token of success. It measures the amount of efficient management that has come into the World and the waste that has been eliminated. Millionaires are the bloom of a competitive civilization: The millionaires are the product of natural selection, acting on the whole body of men to pick out those who can meet the requirement of certain work to be done…It is because they are thus selected that wealth—both their own and that entrusted to them—aggregates under their hands….They may fairly be regarded as the naturally selected agents of society for certain work. They get high wages and live in luxury, but the bargain is a good one for society. There is intense competition for their place and occupation. This assures us that all who are competent for this function will be employed in it, so that the cost of it will be reduced to the lowest terms. In the Darwinian pattern of evolution, animals are unequal; this makes possible the appearance of forms with finer adjustment to the environment, and the transmission of such superiority to succeeding generations brings about progress. Without inequality the law of survival of the fittest could have no meaning. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
Accordingly, in Sumner’s evolutionary sociology, inequality of powers was at a premium. The competitive process develops all powers that exist according to their measure and degree. If liberty prevails, so that all may exert themselves freely in the struggle, the results will certainly not be everywhere alike; those of courage, enterprise, good training, intelligence, perseverance will come out at the top. These principles of social evolution negate the traditional American ideology of equality and natural rights. In the evolutionary perspective, equality was ridiculous; and no one knew so well as those who went to school to nature that there are no natural rights in the jungle. There can be no rights against Nature except to get out of her whatever we can, which is only the fact of the struggle for existence stated over again. In the cold light of evolutionary realism, the eighteenth-century idea that men were equal in a state of nature was the opposite truth; masses of men starting under conditions of equality could never be anything but hopeless savages. To Sumner rights were simply evolving folkways crystallized in laws. Far from being absolute or antecedent to a specific culture—an illusion of philosophers, reformers, agitators, and anarchists—they are properly understood as rules of the game of social competition which are current now and here. In other times and places other mores have prevailed, and still others will in the future. Each set of views colours the mores of a period. The eighteenth-century notions about equality, natural rights, classes and the like produced nineteenth-century states and legislation, all strongly humanitarian in faith and temper; at the present time the eighteenth-century notions are disappearing, and the mores of the twenty-first century will not be tinged by humanitarianism as those of the last hundred years have been. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
Sumner’s resistance to the catchwords of the American tradition is also evident in his skepticism about democracy. The democratic ideal, so alive in the minds of men as diverse as Eugene Debs and Andrew Carnegie, as a thing of great hopes, warm sentiments, and vast friendly illusions, was to him simply a transient stage in social evolution, determined by a favorable quotient in the man-land ratio and the political necessities of the capitalist class. Democracy itself, the pet superstition of the age, is only a phase of the all-compelling movement. If you have abundance of land and few men to share it, the men will all be equal. Conceived as a principle of advancement based on merit, democracy met his approval as socially progressive and profitable. Conceived as equality in acquisition and enjoyment, he thought it unintelligible in theory, and thoroughly impracticable. Industry may be republican; it can never be democratic so long as men differ in productive power and in industrial virtue. Many people fear democracy and attempt to set limits upon it in the federal structure; but since the whole genius of the country has inevitably been democratic, because of its inherited dogmas and its environment, the history of the United States of America has been one of continual warfare between the democratic temper of the people and their constitutional framework. Marx’s picture of the healthy man is rooted in the humanistic concept of the independent, active, productive man, as it was developed by Spinoza, Goethe, and Hegel. The aspect in which Marx’s and Dr. Freud’s independence is a limited one; the son makes himself independent of the father by incorporating his system of commandments and prohibitions; he carries fatherly authority within himself and remains obedient to and dependent on the father and the social authorities in this indirect way. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
For Marx independence and freedom are rooted in the act of self-creation. “A being,” Marx wrote, “does not regard himself as independent unless he is his own master, and he is only his own master when he owes his existence to himself. A man who lives by the favor of another considers himself a dependent being. But I live completely by another person’s favor when I owe to him not only the continuance of my life but also its creation, when he is its source. My life has necessarily such a cause outside itself if it is not my own creation.” Or, as Marx put it, man is independent only “…if he affirms his individuality as a total man in each of his relations to the World, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, thinking, willing, loving—in short, if he affirms and expresses all organs of his individuality”–if he is not only free from but also free to. Marx, freedom and independence were not merely political and economic freedom in the sense of liberalism, but the positive realization of individuality. His concept of socialism was precisely that of a social order which serves the realization of the individual personality. Marx wrote: “[This crude communism] appears in a double form; the domination of material property looms so large that it aims to destroy everything which is incapable of being possessed by everyone as private property. It wishes to eliminate talent, etcetera, by force. Immediate physical possession seems to it the unique goal of life and existence. The role of worker is not abolished but is extended to all men. The relation of private property remains the relation of the community to the World of things. Finally, this tendency to oppose general private property to private property is expressed in an animal form; marriage (which is incontestably a form of exclusive private property) is contrasted with the community of women, in which women become communal property. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
One may say that this idea of the community of women is the open secret of this entirely crude and unreflective communism. Just as women are to pass from marriage to universal prostitution, so the whole World of wealth (id est, the objective being of man) is to pass to the relation of universal prostitution with the community. This communism which negates the personality of man in every sphere, is only logical expression of private property, which is this negation. Universal envy setting itself up as power is only a camouflaged form of cupidity which reestablishes itself and satisfies itself in a different way. The thoughts of every individual private property are at least directed against any wealthier private property, in the form of envy and the desire to reduce everything to a common level; so that this envy and levelling in fact constitute the essence of competition. Crude communism is only the culmination of such envy and levelling-down based on a preconceived minimum. How little the abolition of private property represents a genuine appropriation is shown by the abstract negation of the whole World of culture and civilization, and the regression to the unnatural simplicity of the poor and wantless individual who has not only surpassed private property but has not yet even attained to it. The community is only a community of work and of equality of wages paid out by the communal capital, by the community as universal capitalist. The two sides of the relation are raised to a supposed universality; labour as a connection in which everyone is placed, and capital as the acknowledged universality and power of the community. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
Tenderness, love, and compassion are exquisite feeling experiences and generally recognized as such. However, there are some human experiences which are not as clearly identified as feelings but are more frequently called attitudes. They do not express the same direct relatedness to another person, but are, rather, experiences which are within oneself and which only secondarily refer to other persons. The first one among this group is “interest.” The word “interest” today has lost most of its meaning. To say “I am interested” in this or that is almost equivalent to saying “I have no strong feeling about it, but I am not entirely indifferent.” It is one of those cover words which mask the absence of intensity, and which are vague enough to cover almost anything from having an interest in a certain industrial shock to an interest in a young lady. However, this deterioration of meaning which is so general cannot deter us from using words in their original and deeper meaning, and that means to restore them to their own dignity. “Interest” comes from the Latin inter-esse, that is, “to be in-between.” If I am interested, I must transcend my ego, be open to the World, and jump into it. Interest is based on activeness. It is the relatively constant attitude which permits one at any moment to grasp intellectually as well as emotionally and sensuously the World outside. The interested person becomes interesting to others because interest has an infectious quality which awakens interest in those who cannot initiate it without help. When we think of its opposite, curiosity, the meaning of interest becomes still clearer. The curious person is passive. He wants to be fed with knowledge and sensations and can never have enough, since quantity of information is a substitute for the depth quality of knowledge. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
The most important realm in which curiosity is satisfied is gossip, be it the small-town gossip of the woman who sits at the window and watches with her spyglasses what is going on around her or the somewhat more elaborate gossip which fills the newspaper columns, occurs in the faculty meetings of professors as well as in the management meetings of professors as well as in the management meetings of the bureaucracy, and at the cocktail parties of the writers and artists. Curiosity, by its very nature, is insatiable, since aside from its maliciousness, it never really answers the question, Who is the other person. Interest has many objects: persons, plants, animals, ideas, social structures, and it depends to some extent on the temperament and the specific character of a person as to what his interests are. Nevertheless, the objects are secondary. Interest is an all-pervading attitude and form of relatedness to the World, and one might define it in a very broad sense as the interest of the living person in all that is alive and grows. If the interest is genuine, even when this sphere of interest in one person seems to be small, there will be no difficulty in arousing his interest in other fields, simply because he is an interested person. Another of the “human experiences” is responsibility. Again, the word responsibility corresponds to the distinction between the authoritarian and humanistic conscience. The authoritarian conscious is essentially the readiness to follow the orders of the authorities to which one submits; it is glorified obedience. The humanistic conscience is the readiness to listen to the voice of one’s own humanity and is independent of orders given by someone else. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
The survey of attitudes of the American public toward their personal adjustment and toward mental illness is a perplexing problem. Of those persons with acknowledged problems who sought consultation and advice beyond the family circle, the largest proportion (42 percent) turned to clergymen. Approximately 30 percent sought counsel from a general physician. Only 18 percent reported seeking assistance initially from a psychologist or psychiatrist. Of those persons who went for help to psychiatrists, psychologists, or marriage counselors nearly one third had been referred either by their physicians or by their clergymen, although a very small proportion of these referrals came from clergymen or physicians, over three fourths reported that they had received some help, and nearly two thirds reported having been “helped a lot.” Significantly smaller proportions of those who saw marriage counselors, psychologists, or psychiatrists (25 to 46 percent) reported having been helped. Of those persons who claimed to have been helped much by their consultation, the largest single proportion (73 percent) was contributed by those with a “personal problem with a defect in self.” We are left with an apparent inconsistency that should, somehow, be accounted for: individuals who recognize personal adjustment problems caused by some personal defect claim to be helped by therapeutic treatment more often than individuals with other kinds of problems; psychiatrists are consulted more often about just these kinds of problems; yet psychiatrists are not perceived to be the most effective source of help. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
Continuing with our case study of Clare, she was not usually given to crying in movies but one evening, tears came to her eyes when a girl who was in a wretched condition met with unexpected help and friendliness. She ridiculed herself for being sentimental, but this did not stop the tears, and afterward she felt a need to account for her beheaviour. She first thought of the possibility that an unconscious unhappiness of her own might have expressed itself in crying about the movie. And, of course, she did find reasons for unhappiness. Yet her associations along this line of thought led nowhere. It was only the next morning that she suddenly saw the issue: the crying had occurred not when the girl in the movie was badly off but when her situation took an unexpected turn for the better. She realized than what she had overlooked the previous day—that she always cried at such occasions. Her associations then fell in line. She remembered that in her childhood she always cried when she reached the point where the fairy godmother heaps unexpected presents on Cinderella. Then her joy at receiving the scarf came back to her. The next memory concerned an incident that had occurred during her marriage. Her husband usually gave her only the presents due at Christmas or on her birthdays, but once an important business friend of his was in town and the two men went with her to a dressmaker to help her select a dress. She could not make up her mind which of two dresses to choose. The husband then made a generous gesture and suggested that she take both garments. Though she knew that this gesture was made not altogether for her sake but also to impress the business friend, she nevertheless was inordinately happy about it and cherished these dresses more than others. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
Finally, two aspects of the daydream of the great man occurred to her. One was the sence in which, to her complete surprise, she singled her out for his favour. The other concerned all the presents he gave her, incidents that she had told herself in detail: the trips he suggested, the hotels he chose, the gowns he brought home, the invitations to luxurious restaurants. She never had to ask for anything. She felt quite taken aback, almost like a criminal who is confronted with overwhelming evidence. This was her “love”! She remembered a friend, a sworn bachelor, saying that woman’s love is merely a screen for exploiting men. She also recalled her friend Susan who had greatly astonished her by saying that she thought the usual flood of talk about love was disgusting. Love, said Susan, was only an honest deal in which each partner did his share to create a good companionship. Clare had been shocked at what she regarded as cynicism: Susan was too hard boiled in denying the existence and the value of feelings. However, she herself, she now realized, had naively mistaken for love something that largely consisted of expectations that tangible and intangible gifts would be presented to her on a silver platter. Her love was at bottom no more than a sponging on somebody else! This was certainly an entirely unexpected insight, but despite the painful surprise at herself she soon felt greatly relieved. She felt, and rightly, that she had really uncovered her share in what made her love relationships difficult. Clare was so overwhelmed by the discovery she had made that she quite forgot the incident from which she had started, the crying in the movie. However, she returned to tears the next day. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
The tears expressed an overwhelming bewilderment at the thought of a sudden fulfillment of most secret and most ardent wishes, a fulfillment of most secret and most ardent wishes, a fulfillment of something one has waited for all one’s life, something that one has never dared to believe would come true. Within the next couple of weeks Clare followed her insight in several directions. In glancing over her latest series of associations it struck her that in almost all the incidents the emphasis was on help or gifts that came unexpectedly. She felt that at least one clue for this lay in the last remark she had written about the daydream, which was that she never had to ask for anything. Here she came into territory that was familiar to her through the previous analytic work. Since she had formerly tended to repress her own wishes, and was still inhibited to some extent from expressing them, she needed somebody who wished for her, or who guessed her secret wishes and fulfilled them without her having to do anything about them herself. Another tack she pursued concerned the reverse side of the receptive, sponging attitude. She realized that she herself gave very little. Thus, she expected Peter to be always interested in her troubles or interested but did not actively participates in his. She expected him to be tender and affectionate but was not very demonstrative herself. She responded but left the initiative to him. It is hard to be a caring person without getting duped a time or two. Getting emotionally involved with the wrong people can hurt you in more ways than one. Some people like getting others wrapped around their finger. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
There are tremendous pressures today—cultural and political—for conformity, docility, and rigidity. The demand is for technically trained students outperform students in China, and none of this nonsense about education which might improve our interpersonal relationships! The demand is for hard-headedness, for training of the intellect only, for scientific proficiency. We want inventiveness in developing better “hardware,” but creativity in a larger sense tends to be suspect. Personal feelings, free choice, uniqueness—these have little or no place in the classroom. One may observe an elementary school classroom for hours without recording one instance of individual creativity of free choice, expect when the teacher’s back is turned. And at the college level we know that the major effect of a college education on the values of the student is to “shape up” the individual for more comfortable membership in the ranks of college alumni. For the public and for most educators the goal of learning to be free is not an aim they would select, nor toward which they are actually moving. Yet if a civilized culture is to survive, and if the individuals in that culture are to be worth saving, it appears to me to be an essential goal of education. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
The Winchester Mystery House
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
We Should Get Back to the House
There was a sound like the faintest, far-off shout. My eyes opened and uncertainty surfaced with the wakefulness. The rhythmic knocking of hammers and crisp slicing and the saws vanquished the lingering pleasantness of my reverie. My head ached dully. All I could recall was marvelous vista in its Victorian grandeur and splendor. I was flying over it, not at a height, my flying was not so assured, but a meter or two off the ground, flying at a joyful, terrifying velocity, as a glided hither and tither. However, with one false movement the magic would end in dreadful fall. I sighed with relief as I reached for my bed jacket and settled in a chair on the opposite side of the bureau. I looked in the mirror and saw my face breaking into a warm smile. Shuffling papers, I retrieved an appointment book which had been buried. There were two sitting scheduled for me this afternoon. A widow, freshly made, and a young couple who wanted their son’s death confirmed. Would you believe he was reported missing at the Tournament of Roses during winter? The poor dears—so many days of uncertainty. They wanted me to locate his spirit. As I pushed back my chair and summoned the chambermaid to bind my hair and prepare my state-of-the-art shower, I shivered as a frigid air breezed through my chamber. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
My attire for the day was simple: a long coat, slim fitting, curving in gently at the waist, hardly swelling at all over my bosom; the shoulder padding was squarish but by no means exaggerated, the collar was tight around my neck. The young couple greeted me in my blue seance room. I gestured for them to sit down. “Move closer. We must hold hands.” Matthias and Anneliese Hulsmann obliged. It was of course a dark seance. “Are we ready?” I asked, taking my place among the couple. They nodded and we all clasped hands. “Before we contact the spirits, we must clear our heads of all pessimism,” I said. Taking a deep breath and with a soft voice, I began. I was influenced to offer up a brief petition that our assembling might enable us to receive a full measure of spiritual gifts; that I might thereby become more fitted to do the Lord’s work and shew forth His great Love to the World. In a brief time, I exclaimed, “Oh! There is an angel—it is Uriel, and he will soon make his presence known.” We then heard the rustling of large wings, which ceased after a time. After which, there was a gentleman standing between Matthias and Anneliese. He was singing and accompanying himself on a harp. “Happy are those who find love in the Father’s breast. Like the wandering dove who found no repose on Earth around, they can to their Ark repair and enjoy it ever there. Enlarge not to my hunger, or I’m caught in trammels of perverse deliciousness. No, on, that shall not be: thee will I bless, and bid a long adieu.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
After that, a deep rumbling shook the floor. I was able to describe Erich to the bereaved with great accuracy, and then I was told to by the angel to say, “Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he will sustain thee: His arm will uphold thee, so deep that the waters shall not cover thee.” With a deep sigh, the couple closed their eyes in an act of surrender. After Uriel spoke, Erich Hulsmann came through. “Oh Erich. My dear Erich are you here?” I called out. “It’s I. It’s Erich.” “You parents are here, and they miss you dearly. You became lost at the Tournament of Roses. My dear child, have you passed through the veil?” “I am not dead. I’m alive. I feel an effort is being made to raise me, but you must not speak to me, nor touch me.” The darkness being complete, we could not see how much he was raised, but he spoke occasionally, and his voice sounded very much above us. As he lowered to place, we could see his feet above the level of the table. Mrs. Hulsmann’s handkerchief with then drawn to her eyes. “Sorry, so sorry,” Mr. Hulsmann cried. We were then desired to have light for the remainder of the seance. Mr. and Mrs. Hulsman saw a figure behind me whom they described very clearly. He had on a white linen suit with gold buttons. Mrs. Hulsmann then told me to ask Erich about his grandmother. “Erich my dear,” I said, “is your grandmother, who loved you so, well?” “As much as ever,” he replied. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Then his father called his name. Erich nodded toward his father with a veined face, as he walked through the door into the halls of Llanada Villa. As we concluded the seance with the Lord’s prayer, the table rose from the floor, and slammed back down. Our chair fell backward, and the room went pitch black. Several Indians in white clothes became visible. The word “Light” became visible on the ceiling. When again in darkness, a voice called out to us, “We have crowned you all with blessing that you may do the Lord’s work on this Earth.” Mr. and Mrs. Hulsmann were struck with tears. They received the answer they were looking for, but could not understand why their son was angry and could not speak further with them. As they were leaving the room, Mrs. Hulsmann saw a spectral white dove fly through the door and a real feather fell into her hand. Mr. Hulsmann recalled that he made a promise that he had not fulfilled. In a very gentle voice, Mrs. Hulsmann said, “I will never forget you.” Some delicious perfume was sprinkled upon us. I bid them goodbye, as their carriage rode away. The house and grounds were exerting a terrific emotional pull, and I was falling under a spell from the past that I had never felt before. It was foreign to my usual manner of thinking that I could not even speak. I locked the front door and went into the library. As I looked up, a dark shape was looming over my head in the moonlight. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Then I made my way back upstairs to the Daisy Bedroom as fast as I safely could. It was then that I heard the door-to-nowhere open and perceived approaching footsteps. “Who’s there?” I called out. There was no answer, and I was annoyed. Although my housemaids were in other wings of the house—I was sure that one of them had come in and was playing a trick on me. I lit a candle. I could see no one. Yet the door-to-nowhere, I was so sure had been closed was now open—and beyond it only darkness. The candle flickered and died. Then I heard footsteps coming from the door, passing by me, and then going down the stairs. Hastily, I ran into the hallway, and turned on the light, but there was no one there. “Antonia,” I questioned tentatively. “Hanne?” Silence. After a few tense seconds, I heard the footsteps start to mount the stairs and I knew then that there were not the footsteps of either woman. They were unmistakably, the footsteps of a child. I stepped forward and could have reached through the railings and grasped his ankle as he passed, but if my life depended on it, I could not have moved my hand to do so. The area in which I was standing was suddenly icy cold. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
“Who are you?” I yelled. At least I thought I was yelling, but no voice could be heard, as when one tries to scream in a nightmare. I was not too sure that I was not having one, either. I reached the newel post and felt the mahogany—cold and solid—beneath my hand. I had to be awake! I yelled again. My challenges went unanswered. There was not the slightest change in the rhythm of the footsteps as they continued their steady climb back up the stairs. I stood betwixt, as I heard them in the upper hall. They went on up to the third floor. I heard a door softly close, and all was silent. I finally moved…fast. I stumbled into a room. True, I had seen nothing by candlelight nor by gasolier in the dark hall, but a heavy concentrated beam most certainly would have shown a boy on the stairs. Was it Erich? Was he now a spirit coming to live in my house? This had been my impression. I walked upstairs and went into the room where the door had closed and found it empty. Then I inspected several miles of the house and tested all the doors leading to the outside. They were securely locked, and the housemaids were fast asleep. Upon descending upon the first floor, I found the butler in the servants’ quarters. “Did you notice anything unusual?” I asked Rainer. “Did you see anyone walking through the house?” “Of course not, Mrs. Winchester,” he replied a little impatiently. “But I did hear some sort of disturbance. A volley of noises broke out throughout the entire house.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Rainer described the noises as “banging, thumping, the whole place shaking.” Zip was shut up in the library, while Rainer took refuge in the breakroom. “Zip whined in terror as the noises increased in volume and in violence. Then suddenly the noises ceased,” he said. Later that night, I was in the Crystal Bedroom with my precious Zip. For no reason, he began to bristle up his hair, and bark at something. I looked up and saw the boy in his white linen suit, with about half of his figure passing through the slightly opened door. I ran to the door. There was no one there. Rainer was going about his usual business and had seen nothing. Some weeks after this, my house became extremely haunted, especially above the stairs, so that I was forced to stay in the lower rooms, there was such a throwing of things up and down, of bats through the windows, and putting all in disorder. A little while after the, a window on the first floor flew open, and in came a bat which inflamed Rainer with a more eager desire to see what the matter was. The keen desire of discovering the cheat made him venture by himself into that room. Into which, when he came, he saw the bedding, chairs, tables, candlesticks, and bed-staves, and all the furniture, rudely scattered on the floor, but, upon search, found no mortal in the room. In the coming days, while at the market, curious people overheard him saying to the grocer, “There is something more than ordinary in the business of the Winchester mansion. It is not womanish fear or superstition that so affrighted the mistress of the house. The house is haunted in all the rooms, upper and lower, that the staff does not stay for a long time.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
The Winchester Mystery House
After years of working at The Winchester Mystery House, one of the caretakers reported that he was contacted by Mrs. Winchester. The dreams in which Mrs. Winchester appeared to him were getting increasingly lively, and he wanted to go on record with the information thus received. According to him, Mrs. Winchester poured his heart out to the young man, incredible though this seemed on the face of it. The gist of it was a request to go to “the blue room” and find certain papers in a metal box. “This will prove my innocence. I have not harmed a soul. There is written proof. Notarized sworn statements from my staff written October 5, 1922, or 1923.” The message was specific enough, but the papers of course were long since gone. The blue room would be the Blue Seance Room. The restless spirit of the late Mrs. Winchester had evidently decided to be heard once more. At the same time, he was approached by the Society for Psychical Research for an enquiry into his nocturnal impressions.
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Four Seasons Fill the Measure of the Year
Let it be understood that we cannot go outside of this alternative: liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest; not-liberty, equality, survival of the unfittest. The former carries society downwards and favours all its worst members. The most vigorous and influential social Darwinist in America was William Graham Sumner of Yale. Sumner not only made a striking adaptation of evolution to conservative thought, but also effectively propagated his philosophy through widely read books and articles, and converted his strategic teaching post in New Haven into a kind of social-Darwinian pulpit. He provided his age with a synthesis which, though not quite so grand as Mr. Spencer’s, was bolder in its stark and candid pessimism. Mr. Sumner’s synthesis brought together three great traditions of western capitalist culture: the Protestant ethic, the doctrines of classical economics, and Darwinian natural selection. Correspondingly, in the development of American thought Mr. Summer played three roles: he was a great Puritan preacher, an exponent of the classical pessimism of Ricardo and Malthus, and an assimilator and popularizer of evolution. His sociology bridged the gap between the economic ethic set in motion by the Reformation and the thought of the nineteenth century, for it assumed that the industrious, temperate, and frugal man of the Protestant ideal was the equivalent of the “strong” of the “fittest” in the struggle for existence; and it supported the Ricardian principles of inevitability and laissez faire with a hard-bitten determinism that seemed to be at once Calvinistic and scientific. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Sumner was born in Paterson, New Jersey, on October 30, 1840. His father, Thomas Sumner, was a hard-working, self-educated English labourer who had come to America because his family’s industry was disrupted by the growth of the factory system. He brought up his children to respect the traditional Protestant economic virtues, and his frugality left a deep impress upon his son William, who came in time to acclaim the savings-bank depositor as “a hero of civilization.” The sociologist later wrote of this father: His principles and habits of life were the best possible. His knowledge was wide and his judgment excellent. He belonged to the class of men whom Caleb Garth in Middlemarch is the type. In early life I accepted, from books and other people, some views and opinions which differed from his. At the present time, in regard to these matters, I hold with him and not with others.” The economic doctrines of the classical tradition which were current in his early years strengthened Sumner’s paternal heritage. He came to think of pecuniary success as the inevitable product of diligence and thrift, and to see the lively capitalist society in which he lived as the fulfillment of the classical ideal of an automatically benevolent, free competitive order. At fourteen he had read Harriet Martineau’s popular little volumes, Illustrations of Political Economy, whose purpose was to acquaint the multitude with the merits of lassie faire through a series of parables illustrating Ricardian principles. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
There he became acquainted with the wage-fund doctrine, and its corllaries: “Nothing can permanently affect the rate of wages which does not affect the proportion of population to capital”; and “combinations of labourers against capitalists…cannot secure a permanent rise of wages unless the supply of labour falls short of demand—in which case, strikes are usually unnecessary.” There also he found fictional proof that “a self-balancing power being…inherent in the entire system of commercial exchange, all apprehensions about the result of its unimpeded operations are absurd,” and that “a sin is committed when Capital is diverted from its normal course to be employed in producing at home that which is expensive and inferior, instead of preparing that which will purchase the same article cheaper and superior abroad.” Charities, whether public or private, Miss Martineau held, would never reduce the number of the indigent, but would only encourage improvidence and nourish “peculation, tyranny, and fraud.” Later Sumner declared that his conceptions of “capital, labour, money and trade were all formed by those books which I read in my boyhood.” Francis Wayland’s standard text in political economy, which he recited in college, seems to have impressed him but little, perhaps because it only confirmed well-fixed beliefs. In 1859, when he matriculated at Yale, young Sumner devoted himself to theology. During undergraduate years Yale was still a pillar of orthodoxy, dominated by its versatile president, Theodore Dwight Woolsey, who had just turned from classical scholarship to write his Introduction to the Study of International Law, and by the Rev. Noah Porter, Professor of Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics, who as Woolsey’s successor would one day cross swords with Sumner over the proper place of the new science in education. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Sumner, a somewhat frigid youth (who could seriously ask, “Is the reading of fiction justifiable?”) repelled many of his schoolmates; but his friends made up in munificence what they lacked in number. One of them, William C. Whitney, persuaded his elder brother Henry to supply funds for Sumner’s further education abroad; and the Whitneys secured a substitute to fill his place in the Union Army while Sumner pursued theological studies at Geneva, Gottingen, and Oxford. In 1868 Sumner was elected to a tutorship at Yale, beginning a lifelong association with its faculty that would be broken only by a few years spent as editor of religious newspaper and reactor of the Episcopal Church in Morristown, New Jersey. In 1872 he was elevated to the post of Professor of Political and Social Science in Yale College. Despite personal coldness and a crisp, dogmatic classroom manner, Sumner had a wider following than any other teacher in Yale’s history. Upperclassmen found unique satisfaction in his course; lowerclassmen looked forward to promotion chiefly as a means of becoming eligible to enroll in them. William Lyon Phelps, who took every one of Sumner’s courses as a matter of principle without regard for his interest in the subject matter, as left a memorable picture of Sumner’s dealings with a student dissenter: “Professor, don’t you believe in any government aid to industries?” “No! It’s root, hog, or die.” “Yes, but hasn’t the hog got a right to root?” “There are no rights. The World owes nobody a living.” “Yo believe then, Professor, in only one system, the contract-competitive system?” “That’s the only sound economic system. All others are fallacies.” “Well, suppose some professor of political economy came along and took your job away from you. Wouldn’t you be sore?” “Any other professor is welcome to try. If he gets my job, it is my fault. My business is to teach the subject so well that no one can take the job away from me.” The stamp of his early religious upbringing and interests marked all Sumner’s writings. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Although clerical phraseology soon disappeared from his style, his temper remained that of a proselytizer, a moralist, an espouser of causes with little interest in distinguishing between error and iniquity in his opponents. “The type of mind which he exhibited,” writes his biographer, “was the Hebraic rather than the Greek. He was intuitive, rugged, emphatic, fervently and relentlessly ethical, denunciatory, prophetic.” He might insist that political economy was a descriptive science divorced from ethics, but his strictures on protectionist and socialists resounded with moral overtones. His popular articles are read like sermons. Sumer’s life was not entirely given to crusading. His intellectual activity passed through two overlapping phases, marked by a change less in his thought than in the direction of his work. During the 1870’s, 1880’s and early 1890’s, in the columns of popular journals and from the lecture platform, he waged a holy war against reformism, protectionism, socialism, and government interventionism. In this period, he published What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883), “The Forgotten Man” (1883), and “The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over” (1894). In the early 1890’s, however, Sumner turned his attention more to academic sociology. It was during this period that the manuscript of “Earth Hunger” was written, and the monumental Science of Society projected. When Sumner, always a prodigious worker, found that his chapter on human customs had grown to 200,000 words, he decided to publish it as a separate volume. Thus, almost as an afterthought, Folkways was brought out in 1906. Although the deep ethical feeling of Sumner’s youth gave way to the sophisticated moral relativism of his social-science period, his underlying philosophy remained the same. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The Christian scriptures name obstacles the aspirant may have to deal with. They are frivolity, changeableness, unruly desires, dissatisfaction, gratification of the senses, and craving for the ego’s existence. Even if he finds himself in a moral solitude, as he may in earlier years, it is still worthwhile to be loyal to ideals. He must cast off the long mantle of arrogance and put on the short coat of humility. A lapse in artistry may be pardoned but a lapse in sincerity may not. Be sincere! That is the message from soul to self, from God to man. It is not man’s own voice, which is to acclaim him as a master, but his life. His willingness to acknowledge he has faults and lots of them is admirable—so few ever like to confess such a thing—but they are not so deep or so numerous as he imagines. He should not forget that he has some merits too and they are able to balance the others and keep them where they belong. As for perfection, alas, the self-actualized Christian too is still striving for it. Pride can take a dozen different disguises, even the disguise of its very opposite, humility. The quicker he grows and the father he goes on this quest, the more an aspirant must examine his character for its traces and watch his actions to detect it. He is indeed a prudent man who refuses to be blinded by passions or deluded by appearances. He does not know in advance what he will do in every new situation that arises—who does?–but only what he will try to do, what principles he will try to follow. He who trims his sails to the winds of expediency reveals his insincerity. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
It is true that environment contributes to the molding of character but not true that it creates or even dominates character. Thought and will are linked with our own rebirth in Jesus as the Christ. Character can be improved by effort and Grace. If we will only attend to the first and persistently carry out the inner work required on ourselves, destiny will attend to the second and not seldom remove the outer obstacles or improve the outer environment in the process. Each person who enters our life for a time, or becomes involved with it at some point, is an unwitting channel bringing good or evil, wisdom or foolishness, fortune or calamity to us. This happens because it was preordained to happen—under the law of recompense. However, the extent to which he affects our outer affairs is partly determined by the extent to which we let him do so, by the acceptance or rejection of suggestions made by his conduct, speech, or presence. It is we who are finally responsible. The victim of exterior suggestion is never quite an innocent victim, for his own quota of consent must also be present. When a therapist is experiencing a warm, beneficial and acceptant attitude toward what is in the client, this facilitates change. It involves the therapist’s genuine willingness for the client to be whatever feeling is going on in him at that moment—fear, confusion, pain, pride, anger, hatred, love, courage, or awe. It means that the therapist cares for the client, in a non-possessive way. It means that he prizes the client in a non-possessive way. The is accepted in a total rather than conditional way. He does not simply accept the client when he is behaving in certain ways and disapproves of him when he behaves in other ways. It means an outgoing optimistic feeling without reservations, without evaluation. This is known as an unconditional beneficial regard. Again, research studies show that the more this attitude is experienced by the therapist, the more likelihood there is that therapy will be successful. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Empathic understanding is when the therapist is sensing the feelings and personal meanings which the client is experiencing in each moment, when he can perceive these from “inside,” as they seem to the client, and when he can successfully communicate something of that understanding to his client, then this condition is fulfilled. Each of us has discovered that this kind of understanding is extremely rare. We neither receive it nor offer it with any great frequency. Instead, we offer another type of understanding which is very different. “I understand what is wrong with you”; “I understand what makes you act that way”; or “I too have experienced your trouble and I reacted very differently”; these are the types of understanding which we usually offer and receive, an evaluative understanding which we usually offer and receive, an evaluative understanding from the outside. However, when someone understands how it feels and seems to be me, without wanting to analyze me or judge me, then I can blossom and grow in that climate. And research bears out this common observation. When the therapist can grasp the moment-to-moment experiencing occurring in the inner World losing the separateness of his own identity in this emphatic process, then change is likely to occur. Studies with a variety of clients show that when these conditions occur in the therapist, and when they are to some degree perceived by the client, therapeutic movement ensures, the client finds himself painfully but learning and growing, and both he and the therapist regard the outcome as successful. From our perspective, it seems that it is attitudes such as these rather than the therapist’s technical knowledge and skill, which are primarily responsible for therapeutic change. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Not later than high school every student should receive a solid course of instruction in general psychology. Such a course should enable the student to see that the behaviour of people is proper, indeed a crucial, area for the application of scientific method. He should be introduced to the general principles that have been uncovered through careful study of how people learn, how they perceive their World, how they acquire attitudes and how those attitudes influence their modes of adjustment. The aim of such a general psychology course taught at the secondary level would be not simply to provide the student with an awareness of the substantive content of psychology as a field of human inquiry but, more importantly, to instill in him attitudes toward behaviour, his own and that of other persons, likely to encourage and maintain hygienic personal relationships. The study of psychology encouraged an attitude of objectivity and persisting examination of reasons for behaviour; it provides a foundation and stimulus for the student to seek to understand himself and others. With a scientifically psychological orientation toward the understanding both of self and others the individual is less likely to be victimized either by his own emotions or by the irrationalities of others. An adequate general psychology would introduce the student to the “psychology of everyday life,” would sensitize him to the meaning of errors, oversights, and momentary distortions in his perceptions and thought. With this instruction he would have at least the equipment, if not the motivation, for the life-long exploration of his own developing personality—for the continual challenge to self-realization and self-understanding. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
As the frontiers of geograpy have been progressively pushed back and exhausted, it becomes increasingly difficult for the average man to be an explorer, to make discoveries. For the average man, the last frontier challenging his urge to search and to uncover new lands if provided by the complex vastness of his own mind, by the boundaries of his own spirit. It is a sorry epiphenomenon of the mental health movement that many persons who are admirably equipped to embark on this voyage and who long for insight for the sheer sake of discovery and not out of any pressing need, have been persuaded that they require the services of an expert guide. While it is true that the psychotherapist may shorten the trip to the island of insight it is not certain that the seeker cannot find it on his own, or that he will be significantly discommoded by the longer journey. Sound courses in psychology and inspired instruction can afford possibly a reduction in the susceptibility to neurosis. Certainly, it can reduce the number of sentient persons who relinquish the responsibility and privilege (and the exquisite rewards) of a personal, life-long exploration of their existence, and who in so doing waste the time and energies of the therapists whose skills are required by those voyagers who are truly lost. Until recently courses in psychology have been almost totally restricted to colleges and universities, and in these settings, they have frequently been unavailable before the sophomore year. While the proportion of the college-age population attending institutions of higher learning is steadily rising, it is still very small. Consequently, it is good to find increasing signs of thoughtful planning for the introduction of psychology as a basic subject in high school, and experience with such instruction is being carefully recorded. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
The study of psychology is not provided by courses in how to be successful, how to be proper, and the like. There is a need for research to determine at what minimal age levels a formal course in psychology can be effectively introduced. Considering the central role of psychological phenomena in the enitre life of the individual it seems incredible that we have been so slow to find a place for the study of psychology in our secondary school curricula. The mental health movement should lend its resources and energies to supporting those teachers and educational leaders who are seeking to find a stable and adequate place for the study of psychology in our secondary schools. In our ongoing case study of Clare, it struck her that there was a contrast between the two men she was focused on. One man rescued her from drowning; in connection with the man in the novel she was reading, a similarity occurred because he offered the girl a refuge from abuse and brutality. Bruce and the great man of her daydream, while not saving her from any danger, also played a protective role. As she observed this repetitious motif of saving, shielding, sheltering, she realized that she craved not only “love” but also protection. She also saw that one of the values Peter had for her was his willingness and ability to give advice and to console her when she was in distress. A fact occurred to her in this context that she had known for quite a while—her defenselessness when under attack or pressure. She saw now that it produced, in turn, a need for somebody to protect her. Finally, she realized that her longing for love or marriage had always increased rather acutely whenever life became difficult. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
In recognizing that a need for protection was an essential element in her love life Clare took a great step ahead. The range of demans that this apparently harmless need embraced, and the role it played, became clear only much later. It may be interesting to compare this insight into a problem with the last one reported regarding the same problem, the insight concerning her “private religion.” The comparison reveals a frequent happening in psychoanalytical work. A problem is first seen in its barest outline. One does not recognize much beyond the fact that it exists. Later one returns to the same problem with a much deeper understanding of its meaning. The feeling would be unwarranted in such a case that the alter finding is not new, that one has known it all along. One has not known it, at least not consciously, but the way for its emergence has been prepared. Despite a certain superficiality this first insight struck the initial blow at Clare’s dependency. However, she glimpsed her need for protection, she did not yet realize its nature, and she could not draw the conclusion that this was one of the essential factors in her problem. She also ignored all the material in the daydream of the great man, material indicating that the man she loved was expected to fulfill many more functions than mere protection. Experiences with pleasures of the flesh can be simply sensuously pleasurable without the depth of love but also without a marked degree of greed. The arousal involving pleasures of the flesh is physiologically stimulated, and it may or may not lead to human intimacy. The opposite of this kind of desire involving pleasures of the flesh is characterized by an opposite sequence, namely, that love creates the desire for pleasures of the flesh. This means that a man and a woman may feel a deep sense of love for each other in terms of concern, knowledge, intimacy, and responsibility, and that this deep human experience arouses the wish for physical wisdom. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
It is obvious that this second type of desire for pleasures of the flesh will occur more frequently, although by no means exclusively so, among people beyond their mid-twenties and that it is the basis for the continuation of desires of pleasures of the flesh in monogamous human relationships of long duration. Where this type of arousal with pleasures of the flesh does not take place, it is natural that—aside from sexual perversions which might bind two people together for a lifetime because of the individual nature of their perversion—the merely physiological arousal will tend to require change and new experiences with pleasures of the flesh. Both these kinds of arousals of pleasures of the flesh are fundamentally different from the greedy one that is essentially motivated by anxiety or narcissism. Despite the complexity of the distinction between greedy and “free” sexuality, the distinction exists. Everyone who becomes aware of and sensitive to the difference can observe in himself and herself the various types of arousal, and those with more experimentation in pleasures of the flesh than was the case in middle class of the Victorian age may be supposed to have rich material for such observation. They may be supposed to have, because, unfortunately, increased experimentation with pleasures of the flesh has not been combined sufficiently with greater discernment of the qualitative differences in experience with pleasures of the flesh—although I am sure that a considerable number of people exist who, when they reflect upon these matters, can verify the validity of the distinction. If you are one of those people with what some call an overactive imagination, you had better watch out for those people who will see it and exploit it. It is relatively easy to get people with vivid imaginations to fall for things. After all, they can picture what the speaker is saying. Their emotions get all caught up in stuff without them even meaning to. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Modern man, in industrial society, has changed the form and intensity of idolatry. He has become the object of blind economic forces which rule his life. He worships the work of his hands; he transforms himself into a thing. Not the working class alone is alienated (in fact, if anything, the skilled worker seems to be less alienated than those who manipulate men and symbols) but everybody is. This process of alienation which exists in the European-American industrialized countries, regardless of their political structure, has given rise to new protest movements. The renaissance of socialist humanism is one symptom of this protest. Precisely because alienation has reached a point where it borders on insanity in the whole industrialized World, undermining and destroying its religious, spiritual, and political traditions and threatening general destruction through nuclear war, many are better able to see that Marx had recognized the central issue of modern man’s sickness; that he had not only seen, as Feuerbach and Kierkegaard had, this “sickness” but that he had shown that contemporary idolatry is rooted in the contemporary mode of production and can be changed only by the complete change of the socioeconomical constellation together with the spiritual liberation of man. Surveying the discussion of Dr. Freud and Marx’s respective views on mental illness, it is obvious that Dr. Freud is primarily concerned with individual pathology, and Marx is concerned with the pathology common to a society and resulting from the system of that society. It is also clear that the content of psychopathology is quite different for Marx and for Dr. Freud. Dr. Freud sees pathology essentially in the failure to find a proper balance between the Id and Ego, between instinctual demands and the demands of reality; Marx sees the essential illness, as what the nineteenth century called la maladie du siecle, the estrangement of man from his own humanity and hence from his fellow man. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Yet it is often overlooked that Dr. Freud by no means thought exclusively in terms of individual pathology. He speaks also of a “social neurosis.” “If the evolution of civilization,” he writes “had such a far-reaching similarity with the development of an individual, and if the same methods are employed in both, would not the diagnosis be justified that many systems of civilization—or epochs of it—possibly even the whole of humanity—have become “neurotic” under the pressure of civilizing trends? To analytic dissection of these neuroses, therapeutic recommendations might follow which would claim a great practical interest. However, it behooves us to be very careful, not to forget that after all we are dealing only with analogies, and that it is dangerous, not only with men but also with concepts, to drag them out of the region where they originated and have matured. The diagnosis of collective neuroses, moreover, will be confronted by a special difficulty. In the neurosis of an individual, we can use as a starting point the contrast presented to us between the patient and his environment which we assume to be “normal.” No such background as this would be available for any society similarly affected; it would have to be supplied in some other way. And regarding any therapeutic application of our knowledge, what would be the use of the most acute analysis of social neuroses, since no one possesses the power to compel the community to adopt the therapy? Despite all these difficulties, we may expect that one day someone will venture upon this research into the pathology of civilized communities. However, in Dr. Freud’s interest in the “social neuroses,” one fundamental difference between Dr. Freud’s and Marx’s thinking remains: Marx sees man as formed by his society, and hence sees the root of pathology in specific qualities of the social organization. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Dr. Freud sees man as primarily formed by his experience in the family group; he appreciates little that the family is only the representative and agent of society, and he looks at various societies mainly in terms of the quantity of repression they demand, rather than the quality of their organization and of the impact of this social quality on the quality of the thinking and feeling of the members of a given society. This discussion of the difference between Marx’ and Dr. Freud’s views on psychopathology, brief as it is, must mention one more aspect in which their thinking follows the same method. For Dr. Freud the state of primary narcissism of the infant is not a sick infant. Yet the dependent, greedy adult, who had been “fixated” on, or who has “regressed” to, the oral level of the child is a sick adult. The main needs and strivings are the same in the infant and in the adult; why then is the one healthy and the other sick? The answer obviously lies in the concept of evolution. What is normal at a certain stage is pathological at another stage. Or, to put it differently: what is necessary at one stage is also normal or rational. What is unnecessary, seen from the standpoint of evolution, is irrational and pathological. The adult who “repeats” an infantile stage at the same time does not and cannot repeat it, precisely because he is no longer a child. Marx following Hegel, employs the same method in viewing the evolution of man in society. Primitive man, medieval man, and the alienated man of industrial society are sick and yet not sick, because their stage of development is a necessary one. Just as the infant must mature physiologically to become an adult, so humans must mature sociologically in the process of gaining mastery of nature and of society to become fully human. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
All irrationality of the past, while regrettable, is rational because it was necessary. However, when the human race stops at a stage of development which it should have passed, when it finds itself in contradiction with the possibilities which the historical situation offers, then its state of existence is irrational or, if Marx had used the term, pathological. Both Marx’s and Dr. Freud’s concepts of pathology can be understood fully only in terms of their evolutionary concept of individual and human history. The victim of exterior suggestion is never quite an innocent victim, for his own quota of consent must also be present. It is perfectly true that environment does count, and often heavily, in the sum of life. However, if one’s faith is strong enough or if one’s understanding is deep enough, it is also true that the quest can be pursued effectively anywhere, be it a slum tenement or a stockbroker’s office. It is easier to pursue it in some places, harder in others, but the law of compensation always operates to even matters out. If there is a total giving-up of oneself to this higher aim, sooner or later there will be a total result, whatever the external circumstances may be. What is in a man, in his character, his mind, and his heart is, in the end, much more important than what is in his surroundings; but his surroundings have their own importance, for they either limit or they promote what he can do. With most people the reaction to their environment and to events is mainly impulsive and mostly uncontrolled. So the first step for them is to become conscious of what they are doing, the second being to refuse to do it when reflection and wisdom dictate a better course. All this implies a taking hold of the self and a disciplining of its mechanism—body, feelings, and thoughts. It leads to using the self with awareness and functioning it with efficiency. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Being a firefighter is very rewarding, but it also comes with risks, and even recovery can have unforseen risks. A firefighter we will call Brunno Groning shares his story with us. “Four months out of the fire academy, I had had a lot of garbage runs, you know, smoke scares and pots of food. Then one day we had a fire in an attic, and we had the old service masks, just a canister and a face piece. I was climbing through the attic, and the flap of my coat kept coming down over the intake hole of my mask. It was cutting my air off, and the only air I was getting was the air that I was breathing out. I was hyperventilating. The next thing I knew, I was lying on my side, and I thought, “What the (expletive) is going on here?” I was laying on a rafter, and I just rolled over and fell through the plasterboard into a closet. There were no injuries or anything. Looking back on it, I thought, ‘Hey, I could have died up there.’ I could have been pinned or whatever and never come out. After that, three of us were on top of a house extension, it was a summer kitchen, and we were pulling some boards down when the whole thing collapsed. Fire and the rot of the old timbers brought it down. I didn’t know I was injured until I took about four steps, and my leg went out that way. Bot the led and the ankle were broken. They sent me to Mercy Hospital, that’s where they used to send us, and the hospiutal sent me home. To let the swelling go down, they said. The doctor told me to come in on Saturday and he would put it in a cast. The guy was a boozer, and I looked at him that morning, and he had half a jacket on. I looked down, and he had two different shoes on, a brown wingtip and a black one. And I said, ‘Oh, (expletive).’ When he was wrapping the foot, I kept telling him he was wrapping it too tight. He said he had to go play golf. He said, ‘If your toes turn blue, come back in.’ Well, I got home, and they turned black on me. So I went to the hospital, and they took that cast off and put another one on. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
“I was out of work seven months that time. I had to go for whirlpool treatments, and one day the leg was in the whirlpool and the technician came in and said he had to take the hospital rig to a fire, so he left. That temperature gauge on the side climbed up in the red, and I was like, ‘What’s going on here?’ I wound up with blisters on my leg from that. If it had been too hot to start with, I couldn’t have put my leg in it. But it was like, you know, if you’re sitting in a warm tub you can stand the water getting hotter and hotter. The guy, being in a rush to get to the fire, didn’t adjust the temperature right. So you could day I was in a job that was dangerous, and I was surrounded by people who were dangerous, too.” It is perfectly true that environment does count, and often heavily, in the sum of life. However, it is also true that is one’s faith is strong enough or if one’s understanding is deep enough, the quest can be pursued effectively anywhere, be it a slum tenement or a stockbroker’s office. It is easier to pursue it in some places, harder in other, but the law of compensation always operates to even matter out. If there is a total giving-up of oneself to this higher aim, sooner or later there will be a total result, whatever the circumstances may be. What is a man, in his character, his mind, and his heart is, in the end, much more important than what is in his surroundings; but his surroundings have their own importance, for they either limit or they promote what he can do. Please show support for the Sacramento Fire Department by making a contribution. Wisdom is the greatest good, for it does not depart for man. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
And can I ever bid these joys farewell? Yes, I must pass them for a nobler life, where I may find the agonies, the strife of human hearts: for lo! I see afar, o’ersailing the blue cragginess, a car and steeds with streamy manes–the charioteer looks out upon the winds with glorious fear: and now the numerous tramplings quiver lightly along a huge cloud’s ridge; and now with sprightly wheel downward come they into fresher skies, tipt round with silver from the sun’s bright eyes.
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I Will Meet You Once Again Beyond the Grave
With its rapid expansion, its exploitative methods, its desperate competition, and its peremptory rejection of failure, post-bellum America was like a vast human caricature of the Darwinian struggle for existence and survival of the fittest. Successful business entrepreneurs accepted by instinct the Darwinian terminology which portrayed the conditions of their existence. Businesspeople are not commonly articulate social philosophers, but a rough reconstruction of their social outlook show how congenial to their thinking were the plausible analogies of social selection, and how welcome was the expansive evolutionary opportunism of the Spencerian system. In a nation permeated with the gospel of progress, the incentive of pecuniary success appealed even to many persons whose ethical horizons were broader than those of business enterprise. “I perceive clearly,” wrote Walt Whitman in Democratic Vistas, “that the extreme business energy, and this almost maniacal appetite for wealth prevalent in the United States of America, are parts of amelioration and progress, indispensably needed to prepare the very results I demand. My theory includes riches, and the getting of riches…” No doubt there were many to applaud the assertion of the railroad executive Chauncey Depew that the guests at the great dinners and public banquets of New York City represented the survival of the fittest of the thousands who came there in search of fame, fortune, or power, and that it was “superior ability, foresight, and adaptability” that brought them successfully through the fierce competitions of the metropolis. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
James J. Hill, another railroad magnate, in an essay defending business consolidation, argued that “the fortunes of railroad companies are determined by the law of the survival of the fittest,” and implied that the absorption of smaller by larger roads represents the industrial analogy to the victory of the strong. And John D. Rockefeller, speaking from an intimate accquaintance with the methods of competition, declared in a Sunday-school address: “The growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest…The American Beauty rose can be produced in the splendor and fragrance which bring cheer to its beholder only by sacrificing the early buds which grow up around it. This is not an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working-out of a law of nature and the law of God.” The most prominent of the disciples of Spencer was Andrew Carnegie, who sought out the philosopher, became his intimate friend, and showered him with favours. In his autobiography, Mr. Carnegie told how troubled and perplexed he had been over the collapse of Christian theology, until he took the trouble to read Darwin and Spencer. “I remember that light came as in a flood and all was clear. Not only had I got rid of theology and the supernatural, but I had became my motto, my true source of comfort. Man was not created with an instinct for his own degradation, but from the lower he had risen to the higher forms. Nor is there any conceivable end to his march to perfection. His face is turned to the light; he stands in the sun and looks upward.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Perhaps it was comforting, too, to discover that sociual laws were founded in the immutable principles of the natural order. In an article in the North American Review, which he ranked among the best of his writings, Mr. Carnegie emphasized the biological foundations of the law of competition. However much we may object to the seeming harshness of this law, he wrote, “It is here; we cannot evade it; no substitutes for it have been found; and while the law may sometimes be hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department.” Even if it might be desirable for civilization eventually to discard its individualistic foundation, such a charge is not practicable in our age; it would belong to another “long succeeding sociological stratum,” whereas our duty is with the here and now. The reception accorded to Spencer’s social ideas cannot be disassociated from that accorded to the main body of his thought; however some part of his success probably came because he was telling the guardians of American society what they wanted to hear. Grangers, Greenbackers, Single Taxers, Knights of Labor, trade unionists, Populists, Socialists Utopian and Marxian—all presented challenges to the existing pattern of free enterprise, demanded reforms by state action, or insisted upon a thorough remodeling of the social order. Those who wished to continue in established ways were pressed for a theoretical answer to the rising voices of criticism. Said ironmaster Abram S. Hewitt: “The problem presented to systems of religion and schemes of government is, to make men who are equal in liberty—that is, in political rights and therefore entitled to the ownership of property—content with that inequality in its distribution which must inevitably result from the application of the law of justice.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
This problem the Spencerian system could solve. Conservatism and Spencer’s philosophy walked hand in hand. The doctrine of selection and the biological apology for laissez faire, preached in Spencer’s formal sociological writings and in a series of shorter essays, satisfied the desire of the select for a scientific rationale. Spencer’s plea for absolute freedom of individual enterprise was a large philosophical statement of the constitutional ban upon interference with liberty and property without due process of law. Spencer was advancing within a cosmic framework the same general political philosophy which under the Supreme Court’s exegesis of the Fourteenth Amendment served so brilliantly to turn back the tide of state reform. It was this convergence of Spencer’s philosophy with the Court’s interpretation of due process which finally inspired Mr. Justice Holmes (himself an admirer of Spencer) to protest that “the fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics.” The social views of Spencer’s popularizers were likewise conservative. Youmans took time from his promotion of science to attack the eight-hour strikers in 1872. Labour, he urged in characteristic Spencerian vein, must “accept the spirit of civilization, which is pacific, constructive, controlled by reason, and slowly ameliorating and progressive. Coercive and violent measures which aim at great and sudden advantages are sure to prove illusory.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
He suggested that, if people were taught the elements of political economy and social science during their education, such mistakes might be avoided. Youmans attacked the newly founded American Social Science Association for devoting itself to unscientific reform measure instead of a “strict and passionless study of society from a scientific point of view.” Until the laws of social behaviour are known, he declared, reform is blind; the Association might do better to recognize a sphere of natural, self-adjusting activity, with which government intervention usually wreaks havoc. There was precious little scope for meliorist activities in the outlook of one who believed with Youmans that science shows “we are born well, or born badly, and that whoever is ushered into existence at the bottom of the scale can never rise to the top because the weight of the universe upon him.” Acceptance of the Spencerian philosophy brought with it a paralysis of the will to reform. One day, some years after the publication of Progress and Poverty, Youmans in Henry George’s presence denounced with great fervour the political corruption of New York and the selfishness of the rich in ignoring or promoting it when they found it profitable to do so. “What do you propose to do about it?” George asked. Youmans replied, “Nothing! You and I can do nothing at all. It’s a matter of evolution. We can only wait for evolution. Perhaps in four or five thousand years, evolution may have carried men beyond this state of things.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
The peak of Spencer’s American popularity probably was reached in the fall of 1882, when he made a memorable visit to the United States of America. Despite his aversion to reporters, Spencer received much attention from the press, and hotel managers and railway agents competed for the privilege of serving him. Finally yielding one synthetic “interview” with the gentlemen of the press, Spencer expressed (it was a slightly jarring note) his fear that the American character was not sufficiently developed to make the best use of its republican institutions. The prospect for the future, however, was encouraging; from “biological truths,” he told the reporters, he inferred that the eventual mixture of the allied varieties of the Aryan race forming the population would produce “a finer type of man than has hitherto existed.” Whatever difficulties the Americans might have to surmount, they might “reasonably look forward to a time when they will have produced a civilization grander than any the World has known.” The climax of that visit was a hastily arranged banquet at Delmonico’s, which gave American notables an opportunity to pay personal tribute. The dinner was attended by leaders in American letters, science, politics, theology, and business. Spencer’s message to this distinguished audience was somewhat disappointing. He had observed, he said, an excess of hurry and hard labour in the tempo of American life, too much of the gospel of work; his friends would ruin their constitutions with exertion. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
The guests rewarded this appeal against strenuosity with an onerous round of fulsome tributes, which painfully embarrassed even the vain Spencer. William Graham Sumner ascribed the foundations of sociological method to the guest of honour; if the South had been familiar with his Social Statics, Carl Schurz suggested that the Civil War might have been averted; John Fiske asserted that his service to religion were as great as his services to science; and Henry Ward Beecher struck a rather incongruous note at the end of a hearty testimonial by promising to meet him once again beyond the grave. However imperfect the appreciation of the guests for the niceties of Spencer’s thought, the banquet showed how popular he had become in the United States of America. When Spencer was on the dock, waiting for the ship to carry him back to England, he seized the hand of Carnegie and Youmans. “Here,” he cried to reporters “are my two best American friends.” For Spencer it was a rare gesture of personal warmth; but more than this, it symbolized the harmony of the new science with the outlook of a business civilization. The rise of critical reformism in economics and sociology, of pragmatism in philosophy, and of other tendencies that undermined Spencer’s vogue and displaced his ideas—this remains to be treated elsewhere. It is enough to say that, surviving until 1903, he outlived by many years the popularity of his works. In his old age, he was aware that the current of the times was running against his preaching, and a visitor of this period reported finding him “grievously disappointed” at the neglect of his political doctrines, the decline of individualism, and the rise of socialist ideals. “Herbert Spencer was a name to conjure with twenty-five years ago,” taunted a religious observer in 1917. “But how the mighty are fallen! How little interest is shown in Herbert Spencer at the present time!” #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
While it was true that for younger men Spencer’s name no longer carried its old ring of authority, the writer had forgotten that men who were then in their maturity—the publicists, industrialists, teachers, and writers of the governing generation—had spent their youth with Spencer. Whatever had become of Synthetic Philosophy, the mark of his evolutionary individualism was indelible. As late as late as 1915, the Forum had seen fit to reprint a collection of Spencer’s individualistic essays, “The Man Versus the State,” “The New Toryism,” “The Coming Slavery,” “Over-Legislation,” “The Sins of Legislators,” and others, along with commentaries by a galaxy of Republican Party luminaries brilliant enough to dispel all doubt of the vitality of Spencer’s influence among outstanding national leaders. Nicholas Murray Butler, Charles William Eliot, Representative Augustus P. Gardner, Elbert H. Gary, David Jayne Hill, Henery Cabot Lodge, Elihu Root, and Harlan Fiske Stone responded to the editor’s request for contributions by “leaders of thought in America who know the tremendous value of Spencer’s work in our social system.” Hill’s remark that he saw at work in this country the same fatal and illogical procedure that Spencer had been fighting in England, “namely, the gradual imposition of a new bondage in the name of freedom…the increasing subjection of the citizens to the growing tyranny of officialism,” made it clear that the essays were being republished as a manifesto against Wilson’s New Freedom. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Long after individualism had become a national tradition, Spencer’s doctrines were imported into the Republic. Yet in the expansive age of our industrial culture, he became the spokesman of that tradition, and his contribution materially swelled the stream of individualism if it did not change its course. If Spencer’s abiding impact on American thought seems impalpable to later generations, it is perhaps only because it has been so thoroughly absorbed. His language has become a standard feature of the folklore of individualism. “You can’t make the World all planned and soft,” says the businessman of Middletown. “The strongest and best survive—that’s the law of nature after all—always has been and always will be.” Man is not required to acquire a perfect character, a complete absence of all faults. In new surroundings or circumstances and under different pressures, new faults may appear. He is required to remove just sufficiently the obstructive conditions within himself. The herd of men are ruled by physical instincts and changing emotions. The aspirant for true individuality must set up higher standards of self-control, personal stability, and harmonious balance. Though man assigns little importance to his thoughts, contrasted with his deeds, their total effect is to dictate his policies which in turn dictate his deeds. If Universal obligations may have to be fulfilled, at least this will not be done in total ignorance. It will be with resignation rather than hatred, and with hope for higher attainment. The habit of always remembering that he is committed to the Quest and to the alteration of character which this involves should help him to refuse assent in temptation and reject despondency in tribulation. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
We now have a considerable body of knowledge, both clinical and empirical, as to the conditions which, in psychotherapy, foster the process of learning to be free, of becoming oneself. We have found, this experience comes about in a close, warm, understanding relationship in which there is freedom from such things as threat, and freedom to choose and be. From the practical and research information currently available, it seems that a growth-facilitating of freedom-promoting relationship contains at least three significant qualities. When the psychotherapist is what he is, when in the relationship with his client he is genuine and without “front” of facade, openly being the feelings and attitudes which at that moment are following in him, personal change is facilitated. Congruence describes this condition. If appropriate, congruence is the feelings the therapist is experiencing which are available to him, to his awareness, and he can live these feelings, be them, and able to communicate them. No one fully achieves this condition, yet the more the therapist can listen acceptantly to what is going on within himself, and the more he is able to be the complexity of his feelings, without fear the higher the degree of his congruence. Each of us senses this quality in people in many ways. One of the things that offends us about radio, Internet, TV News, and TV commercials is that it is evident from the tone of voice that the announcer is “putting on,” playing a role, saying something he or she does not feel. That is incongruence. Each of us knows individuals whom we somehow trust because we sense that they are being what they are, that we are dealing with the person, not with a polite or professional front. It is this quality of congruence which we sense that research has found to be associated with successful therapy. The more genuine and congruent the therapist has in the relationship, the more probability there that a change in personality in the client will occur. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
In our case study with Clare something fascinating happened. In the morning paper, a notice about a shipwreck brought back to her that part of her dream in which she had drifted on waves. When she had time to think about this dream, four associations occurred to her. One was a fantasy of a fantasy of a shipwreck in which she was drifting on the water. When a strong man put his arms around her and saved her, she was in danger of drowning. With him she had a feeling of belonging, and of never-ending protection. He would always hold her in his arms and never leave her. The second association concerned a novel which ended in a similar tone. A girl who had gone through disastrous experiences with several men finally met the man she could love and upon whose devotion she could rely. Then she remembered a fragment of a dream that she had at the time she became familiar with Bruce, the older writer who had encouraged her and implicitly promised to be her mentor. In that dream, she and Bruce walked together hand in hand. He was a hero or a demigod, and she was overwhelmed by happiness. To be singled out by this man was like an indescribable grace and blessing. When recalling this dream Clare smiled, for she had blindly overrated Bruce’s brilliance and only later had seen his narrow and rigid inhibitions. This memory made her recall another fantasy, or rather a frequent daydream, which she had almost forgotten though it had played quite a role at college, before the time of her crush on Bruce. It circled around the figure of a great man, endowed with superior intelligence, wisdom, prominence, and wealth. And this great man made advances to her because beneath her inconspicuous exterior he had snesed her great potentialities. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
If given a break, he knew that she could be beautiful and achieve great things. He devoted all his time and energy to her development. He did not merely spoil her by giving her beautiful garments and an attractive home. Under his guidance, not only at becoming a great writer but also at cultivating mind and body, she had to work hard. Thus, he made a beautiful swan out of someone who had great potential. It was a Pygmalion fantasy, created from the point of view of the girl to be developed. She also had to be devoted to her master exclusively. Clare believed associations expressed a wish for an everlasting love. She believed that every woman wanted this. Because Peter did not give her a feeling of security and permanent love, she recognized that this wish was enhanced. With these associations, without becoming aware of it, Clare touched rock bottom. The special characteristics of the “love” that she craved, she only saw later. Otherwise, the most significant part of the interpretation is the recognition that Peter did not give her what she wanted. As if she had already known it, it is made casually, but it was her first conscious realization of any deep dissatisfaction with the relationship. Therefore, only the conscious facing of problems counts, but also every step taken forward toward this goal. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Have you ever felt as if you were being pulled into someone’s story? Maybe you have met someone in your life who could tell you things so vividly it made you see what they were saying in your mind. Their words might have ignited emotions with you. Maybe you could smell the things they were talking about—the fresh bread they spoke of baking. If youy can recall a time like this, then you can safely say that you have been covertly hypnotized. without even knowing, you have been pulled into a place the speaker wanted you. You had not expected to be seeing things so vividly, you had not opened a book or turned on the television, yet there you were, seeing it all unfold. It felt as if you had experienced it with the person, even though you had never left where you stood. When you find yourselfd taking the word of what the speaker is saying, you are not using your own analytical mind. When this happens, your brain takes in what is being said as truth. This is dangerous. Greed can be motivated in two ways: By a physiological imbalance which produces the greedy desire for food, drink, etcetera. Once the physiological need is satisfied, greed ceases, unless the imbalance is chronic. By a psychological imbalance, especially the presence of increased anxiety, loneliness, insecurity, lack of identity, etcetera, which is alleviated by the satisfaction of certain desires like those for food, satisfaction with pleasures of the flesh, power, fame, property, etcetera. This type of greed is, in principle, insatiable, unless a person’s anxiety, etcetera, ceases or is greatly reduced. This first type of greed is reactive to circumstances; the second is inherent in the character structure. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
The greedy feeling is highly egocentric. Whether it is hunger, thirst, or desire for pleasures of the flesh, the greedy person wants something for himself exclusively, and that by which he satisfies his desire is only a means for his own purposes. When we speak of arousal of pleasures of the flesh in its greedy form where the other person becomes primarily an object, this is obvious. In the nongreedy feeling, there is little egocentricity. Experience is not needed to preserve one’s life, to allay anxiety, or to satisfy or enhance one’s ego; it does not serve to still a powerful tension, but begins precisely where necessity in the sense of survival or still of anxiety ends. In the nongreedy feeling, the person can let go of himself, is not compulsively holding on to what he had and what he wants to have, but is open and responsive. The concept of alienation has its roots in an early phase of the Western tradition, in the thought of Old Testament prophets, more specifically in their concept of idolatry. The prophets of monotheism did not denounce heathen religions as idolatrous primarily because they worshiped several gods instead of one. The essential difference between monotheism and polytheism is not one of the numbers of gods, but lies in the fact of alienation. Man spends his energy, his artistic capacities on building an idol, and then he worships this idol, which is nothing but the result of his own human effort. His life forces have flowed into a “thing,” and this thing having become an idol, is not experienced because of his own productive effort, but as something apart from himself, over and against himself, which he worships and to which he submits. As the prophet Hosea says (XIV, 8): “Assur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses; neither will we say anymore to the work of our hands, you are our gods; for in thee the fatherless finds love.” Idolatrous man bows down to the work of his own hands. The idol represents his own life-forces in an alienated form. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
The principle of monotheism, in contrast, is that man is infinite, that there is no partial quality in him which can be hypostatized into the whole. God, in the monotheistic concept, is infinite, that there is no partial quality in him which can be hypostatized into the whole. God, in the monotheistic concept, is unrecognizable and indefinable; God is not a “thing.” Man being created in the likeness of God is created as the bearer of infinite qualities. In idolatry man bows down and submits to the projection of one partial quality in himself. He does not experience himself as the center from which living acts of love and reason radiate. He becomes a thing, his neighbour becomes a thing, just as his gods are things. “The idols of the heathen are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths but they speak not; eyes have they, but they see not; they have ears, but they hear not; neither is there any breath in their mouths. They that make them are like them; so is everyone that trusts in them,” reports Psalm 135. In programs of education aimed at the prevention of mental illness, it would be well to recognize the secondary school as an institution providing an excellent opportunity to reach large numbers of students with instruction in the beneficial principles of mental hygiene. At the early school age, it is more important that they be given sound suggestions as to how to maintain healthy attitudes, how to manage conflicts, and how to deal with strong emotions than it is that they be informed about mental illness. However thoughtful, courses in mental hygiene are not enough. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Here is an interesting story from a firefighter we will call Hans Fallada. “When I got called for the fireman’s job, I was sent to the fire department training school to learn all the things you must know to be a professional firefighter. The training school confronts you with a lot of tough situations. They put you in heavy smoke without masks, so you get a sense of what it’s like to be in a terribly hostile environment, one that’s claws around your neck, just squeezing and squeezing. You get an understanding of what it’s like to work in complete darkness, where you’re totally blind. This is what it’s like to be in a burning building, you learn. You’re also taught many other things. You learn how to use the equipment, the fire trucks, the Halligan tool (it’s a pry bar with a form on one end and a point and adz on the other), the axes, the claw tools, and hooks. You’re taught how to use hoses and nozzles, how to stretch hose, hump hose, pack hose. You learn the science of fire. You learn how fire travels. You learn the various kinds of building construction. You know what kind of windows to expect in different buildings, and you know how to deal with those windows and whether to break them or not. In a way, it’s like studying to be a lawyer or a doctor. In law school, the student studies law books, goes through mock trials, and says, ‘Hey, I really know what I’m doing.’ Then he finds it’s a lot different when he’s in an actual courtroom. The medical student studies chemistry, physiology, anatomy, and how to use a scalpel. But once he gets into an actual operating room, it’s different—suddenly people’s lives are at stake. It’s no longer an academic confrontation. It’s right now. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
“It’s the same thing with a firefighter. You learn all these things in training school so that when you are out in the field in an emergency situation, you know where to go and what to do, so that your actions will be effective. Here I was, a trained firefighter. I got assigned to a firehouse in Sacramento. The men I worked with there were great guys, what we call stand-up guys. They had fast lips, they could get around any situation with their mouths when they couldn’t do it with their dukes. You meet all kinds of personalities in a firehouse. They’re all fundamentally good guys who care about other people. That, in my opinion, is what sets them apart. That’s not to say that you have a room full of Francis of Assisi types figuring out how they’re going to help the poor. But in an emergency situation they care about what happens to people. I got to the firehouse, met these guys. Then, of course, the alarm started ringing. So I went through a few alarms. Mayve it was a false alarm, a garbage pail on fire, a car accident, maybe somebody went out to get a paper and left the soup on the stove. All kinds of things can happen. I remember the first fire. Not really a great fire, but there were a couple of things that happened that day that stick in my memory. The area outside the firehouse is called the apron. When the fire trucks are coming out, two firemen are out there stopping traffic. In those days two firemen rode on the back step of the fire engine. We don’t do that anymore because it’s unsafe. I remember being on the back of the rig, it’s two in the afternoon and I’m putting on my coat, with one arm in the D-ring hanging there like a subway strap. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
“The truck is stopped momentarily, waiting for the traffic to halt. I look up, and who walks by but a priest from St. Mary’s parish up by 818 N street. He looks over, and he blesses me and the guy beside me on the back of the truck. Now, the other guy may be an atheist for all I know, but I have this priest blessing me, so I make the sign of the cross, a conditioned response like a dog salivating to a stimulus. We get going, and I’m thinking, ‘What’s going on here? I’m just doing my job, and this priest is blessing me on the sidewalks of the City of Sacramento.’ I guess in his head he’s saying, these guys have a tremendously tough job and they might me in a bit of trouble, so I’ll bless them. But at that point I don’t want anybody reminding me that I might be in trouble. All i know is that I’ve been blessed, and that we are going to this alarm. From blocks away I could smell the wood burning. It has a particular smell, not like a car fire, for instance, which has a heavy smell of plastic and rubber. This was a two-story frame building in a row of houses typical of that area of Sacramento, generally lived in by working-calls people. The first thing I thought of, what every firefighter thinks of, was: ‘is there anybody inside, how bad is the fire, and what is the immediate thing to do?’ One of the saving things about being a trooper in a way is that there is leadership you can rely on, and in the fire department we have a lieutenant or a captain on every truck. I was probably with the captain, because I was a probationary firefighter, and they always put a probie with the captain so the captain can keep an eye on on him and assess his performance. The captain has to make reports and decide whether he wants to keep him or transfer him after six months. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
“I’m in an engine company, and the captain says, ‘Okay, stretch a two-and-a-half-inch line.’ This tells us it’s a serious fire, because for a small fire you stretch a smaller line. This was the way we were trained. So we stretch the hose into the building, and I’m still thinking that I’m probably in better shape than the others because I was blessed. The ladder company arrives, and they immediately go in and do a search. I don’t remember anybody being caught in the fire, maybe somebody was, but it didn’t matter to me at the time. I had my job to do. We’re on our stomachs, crawling into this fire, and I’m humping, pulling, this gargantuan snake of a hose filled with water. Fifty feet of it weighs ninety pounds when it’s dry, so you can imagine how much it weighs when it’s filled with water. There is black, dense smoke, and we can’t see an inch in front of us. There’s a red glow in the background, and we’re pushing toward it. Without masks. Making it a “snotty” fire, that’s one where for every square inch of smoke you ingest a square inch of something else comes out through your eyes, nose, and mouth. The red glow is in the back of the building, and we learn later that the fire has gone out through the back windows and is shooting up to the afternoon sky. We’re on our stomachs, the guy on the nozzle, myself, and the captain behind me, advancing slowly into the fire. Then all of a sudden, this big guy, another firefighter, comes in and jumps on top of the hose, he grabs it from the hands of our nozzle man, and he runs with it in a crouch toward the red glow. Apparently we’re not moving fast enough for him for some reason. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“None of us have smoke masks or SCBAs [self-contained breathing apparatus], so we’re all choking. Then we start cursing, ‘Hey, what the (expletive) is this guy doing?’ And our nozzle man goes running after the guy, following the string of hose that’s dancing in front of him. This big guy pulls up maybe fifteen feet, throws himself on the floor, opens the nozzle, and hits the ceiling. The red glow darkens to blackness. He has stopped the fire. It’s amazing, you can have a whole big room on fire, and a two-and-a-half inch hose will put it out in twelve seconds. My captain was really mad. He said, ‘What the (expletive) are you doing?’ And the guy said, ‘Listen, I got the job done, right?’ Well, the captain let it go. I didn’t say anything because I was new on the job. But I felt that this was our line and our hose, and our territory had been infringed on. Later I heard about the old-time firefighters in Sacramento back in the nineteenth century, when territory was the main thing and there was competition between one firehouse and another. When an alarm came, they’d send one firefighter ahead with a barrel while they got the horses and everything else ready, and he’d slip the barrel over the fire hydrant. And if another gang tried to use it, he’d fight them off. They’d have big fistfights over this hydrant, because the first fire of mine I just knew that somehow we should have put out the fire, particularly, I suppose, in view of the fact that I was well protected by the blessing. What I learned is that it is your job to control the nozzle, and that every fire is a personal confrontation. This is your job, and you have to go in there and put the fire out, and a lot of people are watching you to be assured that the fire is being put out. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
“Firefighting is a highly coordinated job. You don’t begin ventilating a building, for instance, opening windows or doors or breaking windows, until there is water in the hose and the water is shooting out of it. Then you operate in a mathematically correct way. What you’re doing is creating pressure inside the room, and the pressure has to have some way of being released, so you break some windows. This is called ventilation. Otherwise, you have the energy of the fire and the energy of the water shooting from the hose, and you have nowhere for all this energy to go. It will just blow back at you toward the door you came in, where there’s oxygen. That is what creates flashovers fires, when the fire and heat search for oxygen and the fire flashes as it consumes the oxygen. I carried that lesson with me for the rest of my life. The hose is your job, and you have to do the job. If you don’t do it and somebody else does, that’s hard to live with.” Please be sure to donate to the Sacramento Fire Department. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Forsake not wisdom, and wisdom will preserve you; cherish it, and it will keep you. Enter not the path of the wicked, and walk not in the way of evil men. Avoid evil, turn away from it and do good. Now, therefore, hearken unto wisdom, for happy are they that keep its ways. He who find wisdom finds true life, and obtains favour of the Lord. It is not the place that honours the man, but the man that honours the place. Do not consider yourself a gaint, and your neighbour, small as a locust. He who covets things that are not rightfully his, will not only be disappointed in his wish, but even lose the things that belong to him. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
The Winchester Mystery House
One afternoon in December of 1890, at about one o’clock in the afternoon, Mrs. Winchester was sitting with three of the servant’s children in the Venetian Dining Room. She was reading to them. She rang the annunciator for the parlour-maid, when the door opened, Mrs. Winchester looked up. “I saw the figure of a woman come in and walk up to the side of the table,” she recollected. “She stood there a second or two, and then turned to go out again, but before reaching the door she seemed to dissolve away.” Mrs. Winchester described her as a “blue, short-looking woman” dressed in a blue muslin. “I hardly saw the face,” she added, “which scarcely seemed to be defined at all.” It is interesting that none of the three children saw her, and Mrs. Winchester only mentioned the event to Mr. Hansen, one of the carpenters who lived on the estate.
In the succeeding two months two servants saw the same figure in a blue dress in other rooms of the house; one saw her in the daylight, and one saw her in candlelight. Neither servant was aware of Mrs. Winchester’s own experience. The two young women had become accustomed to the “noises” within the house, but the experience of seeing the lady in blue prompted one of them to give her notice. Mrs. Winchester suffered from other manifestations. On one occasion she glimpsed a ball of brilliant light within an otherwise darkened room. She felt an icy wind in a closed room. Then the strange incidents seemed to subside, and from 1891 onwards, the strange events became more serious.
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
The House of Ghosts and Dreams
Ghosts, spirits, lost souls, did not, could not exist. And hopefully in a day or two, everyone will be convinced. A couple by the door, both approaching middle age, sat close enough together for their thighs to touch, and listened overattentively to whatever the other was saying in the manner of a man and woman each married to a different partner. By the fire was a group in tweeds and mufflers, the men mostly satisfied listening to the conversation of their womenfolk while they sipped their gin and tonics and pondered the virtues (or the boredom) of retirement. I turned my back to the group. After a time, the quality of darkness seemed to change. I frowned. I thought I could see the faintest glow of gathering light coalescing near the door-to-nowhere. The light was not strong enough to collect the attention of my guests yet, but it was certainly visible. After several moments, the light began to form an indistinct shape. Of course, everyone in the room was seeing it, too. The chatter suddenly stopped as they gasped for air. With wonder, we were witnessing a supernatural manifestation right before our eyes. Two children, a boy, and a girl, he, in a blue suit and tie, and she in a white communion dress with a blue sash tied around the waist, hovered just out of our reach. My heart leaped with surprise, as I became flushed with tears. My guests, conjuring their own horror, were at a loss for words. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
The children slowly rotated around the room before coming to rest. The girl cried out, “Mommy!” And at that moment, the room was completely darkened. I screamed because the room had become extremely cold. I had a fragile hope, one that was beyond the tight and restricting bonds of sanity, that the faintest essence of my daughter was within the walls of my home. I listened for a moment, wishing that the peripheral voice would rouse my attention. However, there was no sound from the room and grief had exhausted our bodies as well as our spirits. I stared into the darkness, terribly afraid, even more terribly, compelled to ask my guests to leave. At the foot of the stairs I paused, glancing back over my shoulder as if seeking reassurance from the spirit World. There was still no sound from the apparitions. No sounds in the house at all. Not even the voice. From ahead, at the end of the corridor in which I hesitated, came a soft glow, a shimmer strip of amber. Slowly, each footstep measured, I went to the light. I stopped outside the closed door and now there was a sound, a quiet shifting, as though the house had signed. It could be no more than a breeze stealing through. The light was not constant; it flicked. My hands grasped the door handle. My grip was tenuous, slipping over the smooth surface before lodging and turning. A brief thought that there was someone clutching the other side, resisting my effort; then the handle catches and the door is open. I pushed open a heavy door and my face was flushed by the lambent glow. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
The chill followed behind me in darkness. “Is any one there?” I called from the doorway. The room was a display of burning candles: their light bowed with the opening of the door and their waxy smell welcomed me. Shadows momentarily shyed away then rush forward in their own greeting as the myriad flames settled. Against the back wall and facing entrance was a large walk-in fireplace that could easily accommodate a six-foot log. “At least the carpenters made sure I have heat,” I laughed. I started opening the other doors. One disclosed stairs to the servants’ quarters above; another opened a stairway to the basement which contained thirteen rooms. A third door led to a stairwell in the backyard, and it was securely locked. Still another one opened into the butler’s pantry and that was provided with its own exit under the broad stairway that faced the front door. I found myself in the entrance hall. Walking a bit further through a short hallway to the right with a great sliding door of heavy mahogany and leaded glass at its end. Pushing it open, I discovered a library at least twenty-five feet wide that extended to the back of the house, and it had its own exit into the backyard. Filled with bookshelves, at least seven feet tall, extended around three sides fo the room except where deep windows with built-in seats were set into the walls. The spirits had built my house to last. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
There was another immense fireplace in the library. Two 1879 Winchester Rifles were crossed above the mantel like medieval swords. A long antique davenport was placed in front of the fireplace. Behind it was an old-fashioned library table with a lamp for reading before the fire. Two crystal chandeliers gave an ornate touch to an elegant and charming room. However, nothing could prepare me for what I saw. At the furthermost point of the room, resting on lace-clothed tables, were two coffins. I stared. My steps were leaden as I approached the open caskets, and my eyes were wide. The moisture on my skin glistened under the light. I did not want to investigate those coffins. I did not want to see the figure lying there, not in such an alien state. However, there was really no choice. My mind had become open to unnatural possibilities. A voice whispered my name and I had responded; I had my own reasons for grasping the inconceivable possibilities. I drew closer. The forms inside the silklined caskets were gradually revealed. She was wearing a white communion gown, a pale blue sash tied at her waist. And the boy—why these were the same two children we had seen earlier. Their hands rested together on their chests as if in supplication. Dark hair framed their faces, and, in their death, they looked serene, sleeping, untroubled children. The light played upon the corners of their lips so that they suppressed smiles. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
Despite my yearning to disbelieve, I knew there was no life within these pallid shells. I wished to speak to these children, but my throat was constricted by the wretchedness of my emotion. I blinked, dislodging a swell of tears. I leaned forward as if I might kiss the dead children. And their eyes snapped open. They grinned up at me, their young faces no longer innocent. And their hands stirred as if to reach out to me. I was frozen. My mouth was locked open, lips stretched taut and hard over bone, the scream beginning but only breaking loose a few moments later, a shrilling that cuts through the quietness of the house. My cry wanes, dissolves, and by eyes close as reason seeks sanctuary behind Llanada Villa’s walls. A warm mass of air carried the faint sound of music. Castigating myself in silence, I stepped with authority to the rear of the room, placing my hands on the wooden door. As I turned the handle and opened the door, I had a feeling there was something there, but I let it pass, thinking it was my imagination. However, there was something on the landing upstairs that seemed to stare down at me. Something within me made me say, “Whoever you are, you must be lonely!” On Saturday night, as I was sitting down for dinner, the servants had prepared roasted chickens, sausage pie, and Yorkshire pudding. The servant-girl threw some coal on the boiler fire, only to have it all thrown back again on the floor. No one can explain the cause of the occurrences, and it remained the only topic of conversation for days to come. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
The Winchester Mystery House
Tours had been going on in The Winchester Mystery House for 100 years, when by degrees caretakers decided that it had become rather “noisy.” It began with the windows being violently shaken at night, and then they began to hear steps where no steps should be. They were perturbed still further when they began to hear deep, long sighs at all hours of day and night. There were other odd manifestations. There were occasions when caretakers would approach the door-to-nowhere, when the handle would turn, and the door would fly open. One caretaker wrote that “I have once seen this happen, and it is a curious thing to see, when on the other side of the door there is a two-story fall into the garden.” Then another caretaker heard the sounds of stitching of some hard material in the sewing room; and in the Witches Cap, they would often hear the noise of children playing and a heavy weight being dragged across the floor, when there was no object in sight, and most alarmingly of all there were times when they experienced the sensation of their hair being pulled.
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
We Pay So Much Attention to Where We Live, So Little to When
The individual who wants the spiritual prizes of life must elevate one’s thoughts and ennoble one’s impulses. One will prudently look ahead not only to the consequences of one’s actions but also of one’s thoughts. One must be prepared to spend a whole lifetime in making this passage from aspiration to realization. Petal-by-petal the bud of one’s growing virtues will open as the years pass. One’s character will be transformed. The old Adam will become a new man. The progressing disciple who reaches an advanced state will find that one’s powers of mind and will develop accordingly. Where they are not accompanied by sufficient self-purification, they may become dangerous to oneself and hurtful to others. One’s vigilance over thought and feeling must become greater accordingly. To dwell upon thoughts which belong to a lower level out of which one has climbed may open up a pitfall in one’s path; to hold bitter feelings against another person may throw discord into that person’s life. One’s outer conduct should be brought into agreement with the soaring aspiration of one’s inner life. When the one is antithetical to the other, the result will be chaos. That individual has attained mastery whose body yields to the commands of reason and whose tongue obeys the orders of prudence. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
When the body’s appetites and the intellect’s curiosity get an excessive grip on an individual, they throw an air of unreality on aspiration which soars beyond both. This makes intuitive feeling and metaphysical thinking seem irksome or trivial. Those who do not have the strength of will to translate into practice the ideals which they accept in thought need not despair. It can be got by degrees. Part of the purpose of ascetic exercises is to lead to its possession. There is knowledge available, based on ancient and modern ascetic experiences, which can be applied to liberate the moral nature from its weakness. One who puts one’s lower nature under control puts oneself in possession of forces, gifts, possibilities, and satisfactions that most other humans lack. If a person’s inner life is repeatedly wasted by passion, one will know no assured peace and attain no enduring goal. One must govern oneself, rule one’s passions, and discipline one’s emotions. One must strengthen one’s higher will at the expense of one’s lower one. For the first promotes one’s spiritual evolution whereas the second inflames one’s animal nature. Faith is needed to make the basic change in one’s thinking, the change which takes one out of the past’s grip. If one takes up new thoughts, a new life is possible. If one lets compromise with the World, or lapses from the right moral standard, slip beyond a certain mark, one will pay commensurately for it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Man’s drives inasmuch as they are trans-utilitarian, are an expression of a fundamental and specifically human need: the need to be related to man and nature and to confirm oneself in this relatedness. These two forms of human existence, that of food gathering for the purpose of survival in a narrow or broader sense and that of free and spontaneous activity expressing man’s faculties and seeking for meaning beyond utilitarian work, are inherent in man’s existence. Each society and each man has it own particular rhythm in which these two forms of living make their appearance. What matters is the relative strength which each of the two have and which one dominates the other. It is not only a matter of self-betterment but also of self-respect for an honourable man. The man whom he has looked upon as himself must be left behind; the New man, who he is to become, must be continually with him in thought, aspiration, will, and deed. This it is to be truly human for it brings man into a more perfect state. To sneer at the philosophic ideal as being inhuman is really to sneer at it for rejecting the evils and weaknesses and deformities of the Worldly ideal. The moment a negative idea appears, repudiate it automatically by the use of counter-affirmations and imagination, which is the gate to creative subconscious mind. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Such negative thoughts as animosity and jealousy must be rooted out like weeds as fast as they spring up. This is both the easier and more effective way in the end. The man who has not learned to control himself is still only a fractional man, certainly not the true man that Nature is trying to produce. When he cannot live with his negative side any longer, illumination will come and stay. Character is tested by afflictions more than by prosperity. The first stage is to expunge the evil in his heart and to raise the good in it to the highest possible octave. If he holds these as ideals, a personal character which will be beautiful, a way of life which will be the best, a man is more likely to come by them. When allowing thoughts to enter his mind, as when allowing strangers to enter his home, he needs to be as fastidious. If a man lives in mental and emotional negativity, the removal of his physical residence to another place will in the end benefit him less than if he removes himself from the negativity. The building-up of character naturally brings a better sense of proportion in one’s dealings and outlook. Be seeing good in all persons, you become good, but if you see evil, the evil in you will augment. People seem not to see that their opinion of the World is also a confession of character. We can only see what we are. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
He must become thoroughly sick of his mistakes and sins before he will take the trouble to develop by self-training his discriminatory faculties and moral ideals. We can combat feat by remembering that the Overself is always with us. The power of such thinking is its rightness and its constructiveness. It is right bvecause the Overself is the real source of strength and courage so that recalling its ever-presence in us helps to tap that source. It is constructive because it uses up the energy that would otherwise have gone into the fear-thoughts. Both action and thought share in the double nature of this polarity. Activity on the level of survival is what one usually calls work. Activeness on the trans-survival level is what one calls play, or all those activities related to cult, ritual, and art. Thought also appears in two forms, one serving the function of survival and one serving the function of knowledge in the sense of understanding and intuiting. This distinction of survival and trans-survival thought is very important for the understanding of consciousness and the so-called unconscious. Our conscious thought is that type of thinking, linked with language, which follows the social categories of thought imprinted in our thinking from early childhood. Our consciousness is essentially the awareness of such phenomena which the social filter composed of language, logic, and taboos permits us to become aware of. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Those phenomena which cannot pass the social filter remain unconscious or, more accurately speaking, we are unaware of everything that cannot penetrate to our consciousness because the social filter blocks its entry. This is the reason why consciosuness is determined by the structure of society. However, this statement is only descrptive. Inasmuch as man has to work within a given society, his need for survival tends to make him accept the social conceptualizations and hence to repress that which he would be aware of had his consciousness been imprinted with different schemata. If he studies other cultures, this is not difficult for the reader to find in his own example. The categories of thought in the industrial age are that of quantification, abstraction and comparison, of profit and loss, of efficiency and inefficiency. The member of a consumer society of the present day, for example, is encouraged, but not required to repress pleasures of the flesh because so many people are Worldly and pleasures of the flesh seems to be the number one past time for many by the schemata in the age of information. The member of the middle class of the nineteenth century who was busy accumulating capital and investing it rather than consuming it, had to repress pleasures of the flesh because they did not fit into the acquisitive and hoarding mood of his society, or, more correctly, of middle classes. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
If we think of medieval or Greek society or of such cultures as the Pueblo Indians’ we can easily recognize that they were very conscious of different aspects of life to which their social filter granted entry into consciousness while others were tabooed. The most eminent case in which man does not have to accept the social categories of his society is when he is asleep. Sleep is that state of being in which man is free from the need to take care of his survival. While he is awake, he is largely determined by the survival function; while he is asleep, he is a free man. As a result, his thinking is not subject to the thought of categories of his society and shows that peculiar creativity which we find in dreams. In dreams, man creates symbols and has insights into the nature of life and of his own personality which he is incapable of having while he is the creature busy with food gathering and defense. Often, indeed, this lack of contact with social reality can cause him to have experiences and thoughts which are archaic, primitive, malignant, but even those are authentic and represent him rather than the thought patterns of his society. In dreams, the individual transcends the narrow boundaries of his society and becomes fully human. That is why Dr. Freud’s discovery of dream interpretation, even though he looked basically for the repressed instinct for pleasures of the flesh, has paved the way for the understanding of the uncensored humanity which is in all of us. (Sometimes children, before they have been sufficiently indoctrinated by the process of education, and psychotics who have served all relationships to the social World manifest insights and creative artistic possibilities which the adapted adult cannot recover.) #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
However, dreams are only a special case of that trans-survival life of man. Its main expression is in rituals, symbols, painting, poetry, drama, and music. Our utilitarian thinking has, quite logically, tried to interpret all these phenomena as serving the survival function (a vulgarized Marxism has sometimes allied itself in substance although not in form with this type of materialism). More profound observers like Lewis Mumford and others have emphasized the fact that the cave paintings in France and ornaments on primitive pottery, as well as more advanced forms of art, have no utilitarian purpose. One might say that their function is to help the survival of man’s spirit, but not that of man’s body. He has only to resolve that he will always be faithful to his higher self and the trick is done. However, alas! resolution is one thing, execution another. If he finds himself attacked by a strong temptation or about to be overcome by an old obsession, he should at once think of the master, of his name and picture, and call for his help. Whether you live as a labourer or a lord, it is your character that counts most in the end. It is the ego that gives way to moods of sulkiness, bad temper, irritability, and impatience. Remember that on the outcome of your efforts to control yourself, your faults and emotions, your speech and your actions, much will depend for your Worldly and spiritual frame. He who controls the mind controls the body, for the one acts upon and through the other. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
To yearn for something is to value. I have known this yearning “to be good” in all of us. No one is left out. I have known it in a British peer. I have known it in a man who hijacked a truck, got a Native American drunk and threw him off a moving truck, hit a burro and killed it, bashed in the radiator, and then drove the truck until the motor burned out and he landed in jail, while four small children were at home alone because their mother was in the hospital having a fifth one. I got him out of jail so that he could take care of his family, and he got me fired from my job. I also knew it in my best friend that killed himself. Before his suicide, I lived with knowing that he might kill my son and me, both of whom he loved, and that he might seriously injure other people, which he did not wish to do at all. It seemed to me that suicide might have seemed to him the only way to put an end to his hurting people, to doing what he did not want to do. Many people in America are hurting today. Everyone responds in terms of his own humanness, uncontaminated by all the phoney values with which we live. (The only exceptions were two very neurotic men and a few feeble-minded oldfolks who did not know what is going on.) In Hawaii during the week following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, the military expected that the success of the attack would be followed by an invasion: they believed that when the Japanese planes reported to their carriers, then other ships would move in with troops like what was done to Mr. Hitler and Germany during World War II. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
However, fast forward to post 911 America. Currently in 2024, there is an invasion going on at our southern boarder, and as many as 20,000,000 unknown people have flooded into this country and have been committing major crimes. The leaders of industry have warned the government that this is a serious crisis and they suspected that these people who are invading America could be preparing for an attack larger than 911, but no one in a position of power is doing anything to track these people, nor stop them from invading the nation. The problem is not only a lack of God, but also a lack of love. Many people are cafeteria Americans. They fly the flag, pretend to be proud of the country, but all they care about is American money. They disrespect the land, disrespect the people, ignore the needs of America and bleed her dry. These posers forget that people have died and become severely disabled from serving their country, and are doing nothing to protect it, but supposedly are trying to instill democracy in other places, while America is becoming a hostile, communist nation. It is very difficult for me to go on writing this. Tears blur my vision, no matter how many times I wipe them away. I sob, and that shakes me so that I cannot use the typewriter very well. I feel, “Oh, what is the use? How can I possibly convey it?” Many of us are silent. Trying to show respect or trying to feel for someone else. When they are scared, people can do the most frightful things. People fear that they could be wiped out at any moment, and that there is onluy now to live. We pay so much attention to where we live, so little to when. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Alienation corrupts and perverts all human values. By making economic activities and the values inheret in them, like gain, work, thrift, and sobriety, the supreme value of life, man fails to develop the truly moral values of humanity, the riches of a good conscience, of virtue, etcetra, but how can I be virtuous if I am not aware of anything? In a state of alienation, each sphere of life, the economic and the moral, is independent from the other, “each is concentrated upon a specific area of alienated activity and is itself alienated from the other. The needs of man in an alienated society are preverted into true weakness. Every man speculates upon creating a new need in another in order to force him to sacrifice, to place him in a new dependence, and to entice him into a new kind of pleasure and thereby into economic ruin. Everyone tries to establish over others an alien power in order to find there the satisfaction of his own egoistic need. With the mass of objects, therefore, there also increases the realm of alien entities to which man is subjected. Every new product is a new potentiality of mutual deceit and robbery. Man becomes increasingly poor as a man; he has increasing need of money in order to take possession of the hostile being. The power of money diminishes directly with the growth of the quantity of production, id est, his need increases with the increasing power of money. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The need for money is therefore the real need created by the modern economy, and the only need which it creates. The quantity of money becomes increasingly its only important quality. Just as it reduces every entity to its abstraction, so it reduces itself in its own development to a quantitative entity. Excess and immoderation become its true standard. This is shown subjectively, partly in the fact that the expansion of production and of needs becomes an ingenious and always calculating subservience to inhuman, depraved, unnatural, and imaginary apopetities. Americans are blessed with private property, but they do not know how to change crude need into human need; their idealism is fantasy, caprice and fancy. No eunch flatters his tyrant more shamefully or seeks by more infamous means to stimulate his jaded appetite, in order to gain some favour, than does the eunch of industry, the entrepreneur, in order to acquire a few silver coins or to charm the gold from the purse of his dearly beloved neighbour. Every produce is a bait by means of which the individual tries to entice the essence of the other person, his money. Every real or potential need is a weakness which will draw the bird into China’s pockets. As every imperfection of man is bound with Heaven, a point at which his heart is accessible to the priest, so every want is an opportunity for approaching one’s neighbour with the air of friendship, saying, “Dear Friend, I will give you what you need, but you know the conditio sine qua non. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
“You know what the ink you must use in sining yourself over to me. I shall swindle you while providing your enjoyment.” All this constitues a universal exploitation of human commual life. The entrepreneur accedes to the most depraved fancies of his neighbour, plays the role of pander between him and his needs, awakens unhealthy appetities in him, and watched for every weakness in order, later, to claim the remuneration of this labour of love. The man who has thus become subject to his alienated needs is a mentally and physically dehumanized being…the self-conscious and self-acting commodity. This commodity-man knows only one way of relating himself to the World outside, by having it and by consuming (using) it. The more alienated he is, the more the sense of having and using constitutes his relationship to the World. The less you are, the less you express your life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life and the greater is the saving of your alienated being. You have to listen hard to spot a liar. Often they shift from past to present tense. Moving from the past tense to the present means the person is getting into their brain–reliving the story they have made up to cover up what they have done. People will often tell a story as if they see it because in their minds, they see the story they have made up. It take a keen ear to pick up on the change in tense and why a person would do such a thing. When people are telling the truth, especially a breach of national security, they tend to stick with the most important details and speak in the past tense, since it already happened. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Sometimes when it comes to self-analysis, the analytical work at oneself will recede into the background. One will still observe one or another striking reaction and try to understand it, thus continuing the process of self-recognition, but in distinctly diminished intensity. One may be absorbed in personal work or in group activities; one may be engaged in a battle with external hardships; one may be concentrated on establishing one or another relationship; one may simply feel less harassed by one’s psychic troubles. At this time the mere process of living is more important than analysis, and it contributes in its own way to one’s development. The method in self-analysis is no different from that in work with an analyst, the technique being free associations. Whereas in working with an analyst the patient reports whatever comes into his mind, in working alone he begins by merely taking note of his associations. Whether he only notes them mentally or write them down is a matter of individual preference. Some people can concentrate better when they write; others find their attention distracted by writing. There are undoubtedly certain advantages in writing down one’s associations. For one thing, if he makes it a rule to put down a short note, a catchword, of every association, almost everything one will find that his thoughts do not wander off on a tangent so easily. At any rate he will notice the wandering more quickly. It may be, too, when it is all down on paper that the temptation to skip a thought or feeling as irrelevant is lessened. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
However, the greatest advantage of writing is that it affords the possibility of going over the notes afterward. Frequently when he lets his mind dwell on his notes, a person will miss the significance of a connection at first sight, but will notice it later. Findings or unanswered questions that are not well entrenched are often forgotten, and a return to them may revive them. Or he may see the old findings in a different light. Or he may discover that he has made no noticeable headway, but is essentially still at the same point where he was several months ago. These two latter reasons make it advisable to jot down findings, and the main paths leading up to them, even though they may have been arrived at without taking notes. The main difficulty in writing, the fact that thoughts are quicker than the pen, can be remedied by putting own only catchwords. If most of the work is done in writing a comparison with diary-keeping is almost unavoidable, and an elaboration of this comparison may serve also to highlight certain characteristics of analytical work. If the latter is not a simple report of factual occurrences but is written with the further intention of truthfully recording one’s emotions experiences and motivations, the similarity with a diary suggests itself particularly. However, there are differences. A diary, at its very best, is an honest recording of conscious feelings, thoughts, and motivations. The revealing character it may have concerns emotional experiences unknown to the outside World rather than experiences unknown to the writer himself. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
When Rousseau, in his Confessions, boasted of his honesty in exposing his masochistic experiences, he did not uncover any fact of which he himself was unaware; he merely reported something that is usually kept secret. Furthermore, in a diary, if there is any search for motivations, this does not reach beyond one or another loose surmise that carries little if any weight. Usually no attempt is made to penetrate beneath the conscious level. Culberston, for instance, in The Strange Lives of One Man, frankly reported his irritation and moodiness toward his wife but gave no hint as to possible reasons. These remarks do not implay a criticism of diaries or autobiographies. They have their value, but they are intrinsically different from an exploration of self. No one can produce a narrative about himself and at the same time let his mind run in free associations. There is still another difference which it is of practical importance to mention: a diary often glances with one eye toward a future reader, whether that reader be the writer at a future time or a wider audience. Any such side glance at posterity, however, inevitably detracts from pristine honesty. Deliberately or inadvertently the writer is bound, then, to do some retouching. He will omit certain factors entirely, minimize his shortcomings or blame them on others, protect other people from exposure. If he takes the least squint at admiring audience or at the idea of creating a master piece of unique value, when he writes down his associations, the same will happen. He will them commit all those sins that undermine the value of free associations. Whatever he sets down on paper should serve one purpose only, that of recognizing himself. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The mental hygiene movement has had a very significant beneficial impact on the problem of mental illness. There can be little doubt that it has contributed to an enhanced general level of mental health in our country. Certainly it has achieved marked improvement in public attitudes toward mental illness. As a perhaps unavoidable consequence of its educational effort it has created new and greater demands for psychotherapy and not all of the increased demand is fully appropriate. The pattern of psychotherapeutic practice in America is seriously unbalanced in that too many of the ablest, most experienced psychiatrists spend most of their time with patients who need them least. This has been unfortunate, though probably inevitable, consequence of the concept of mental illness as personal malfunctioning which in itself represents a gain in understanding. The trouble is that this view makes it impossible to draw the line, so that many persons who are showing essentially normal responses to the wear and tear of life or who are unhappy for reasons other than personal malfunctioning see themselves–and are seen by others–as proper candidates for psychotherapy. Philosophy is that disease for which it should be the cure. The mental hygiene movement has inadvertently added to the problem which it intended to reduce. It is time for the leaders of the mental health movement to put their minds to a touch philosophical analysis of problems which psychiatry and psychology have tended to neglect: to criteria of mental health, to delimitation of the meanings and forms of mental illness, to specification of precisely what are and what are not psychiatric problems. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
It would be a beneficial contribution for mental health educators to develop ways of communicating to the public on such questions as: “When not to go to the psychiatrist,” or “What to do before you see a psychiatrist”; “What psychotherapy cannot do for you”; “Ten sources of helpful conversation”; “Problems which do not make you a ‘Mental Case.'” He who controls the mind controls the body, for the one acts upon and through the other. It is not enough to overcome the jealousy which begrudges other people’s having advantages denied us: we must also take the next step and overcome the envy which feels discontented at not having those advantages and continues to desire them for itself. Jealousy would go out of its way to hurt those others by depriving them of their possessions, but envy would not fall so low. When they oppose emotion and passion, once he forms this resolve to follow the bidding of intuition and reason, he will find it both a safeguard and a test. If at any time he should temporarily weaken from this resolve, he may become uncertain as to the correct course to pursue when at the crossroads. A willing discipline of the character by one’s own self may often take the place of an unwanted and unwilling discipline by outer events. He is to become an exemplar to the aspiring, a pattern-setter for those who would ennoble themselves. He must establish, for and over himself, an emotional discipline and intellectual control. He cannot successfully do this all at once, of course. Emotional tendencies and mental habits engendered by years of materialism cannot be overturned and eliminate in a single night. However, the goal must be there and must be kept in view. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
A firefighter we will call Helmut share his experience about becoming a fireman. “When I got out of the military, I had the opportunity to get into the trucking industry. I was in it for ten years. I started out as an assistant to a dispatcher and worked up to operations manager. I trained people coming into the industry. I was doing pretty good, and I enjoyed it. The problem was that there was no real job security, and though the pay was good I was putting in too many hours. I was missing a lot of time with my family. I had to do it, though because I needed the job. Then I heard that the Sacramento Fire Department was giving a test. Up to that point, I’d actually thought about becoming a policeman. I was an MP in the military, and I thought maybe it would be a good field to get into. So I went down to City Hall and filled out the fire department application. I didn’t do it reluctantly, I just did it with a little bit of skepticism. I said to my wife, ‘Oh, I don’t really think anything is going to come of this, because I don’t think I’m going to make it.’ I knew that the cutoff age was thirty-six years, and at the time I was thirty-five, and I thought I really had to get in on this first class, otherwise I’m not going to make it. So they scheduled the test, and I studied hard for it while I was still doing trucking. And I was fortunate to have the ten-point veteran’s preference, so that added ten points to whatever score I got on the test. But I was concerned because so many people had taken the test. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
“My sister called and told me, ‘Twenty-six thousand people took the test, so your changes of getting on are small.’ That depressed me, but I felt I’d done good because I did study hard and the test wasn’t that difficult. So my brother called me the next day and said, ‘Six thousand people walked out halfway through the test.’ So that lowered the odds. I thought, well, twenty thousand, that’s starting to sound better all the time. I kept calling, and some months later I was notified that I had aced the test, I was number six on the list. I was ecstatic, I thought, now I’ve got to be in first class. As it turned out, I was. And from then on, everything has been running smoothly. Everything has been great.” To make sure the Sacramento Fire Department is receiving all of the required resources, please make a donation. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The ideal man that he wants to be should be evoked, pictured, and adored daily. If greater wisdom brings an immunity to other men’s negative thoughts, it also brings the responsibility to stifle one’s own. When all malice and all envy are resolutely cast out of his nature, not only will he be the gainer by it in improved character and pleasanter blessings, but also those others who would have suffered as victims of his barbed words or ugly thoughts. The past is beyond recall, but the present is at our command. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
The Winchester Mystery House
Farewell Week is here! The last day to experience our Walk With Spirits Tour is April 14, 2024!
Beginning today, all guests who participate will have the opportunity to sign a special guest book that will be preserved in our archives which will become a part of Winchester Mystery House history. And as a bonus, enjoy 13% off our upcoming Halfway to Halloween Flashlight Tours.
Come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Randolph Harris II International Institute 