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His Fearlessness is Based on Lack of Love
When hope has gone life had ended, actually or potentially. Hope is an intrinsic element of the structure of life, of the dynamic of man’s spirit. It is closely lined with another element of the structure of life: faith. Faith is not a weak form of belief or knowledge; it is not faith in this or that; faith is the conviction about the not yet proven, the knowledge of the real possibility, the awareness or pregnancy. Faith is rational when it refers to the real yet unborn; it is based on the faculty of knowledge and comprehension, which penetrates the surface and sees the kernel. Faith, like hope, is not prediction of the future; it is the vision of the present in a state of pregnancy. The statement that faith is certainty needs a qualification. It is certainty about the reality of the possibility—but it is not certainty in the sense of unquestionable predictability. The child may be still born prematurely; it may die in the act of birth; it may die in the first two weeks of life. This is the paradox of faith: it is the certainty of the uncertain. (In Hebrew the word “faith” (Emunah) means certainty. Amen means certainly.) It is certainty in terms of man’s vision and comprehension; it is not certainty in terms of the final outcome of reality. We need no faith in that which is scientifically predictable, nor can there be faith in that which is impossible. Faith is based on our experience of living, of transforming ourselves. Faith that others can change is the outcome of the experience that I can change. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
There is an important distinction between rational and irrational faith. While rational faith is the result of one’s own inner activeness in thought or feeling, irrational faith is submission to something given, which one accepts as true regardless of whether it is or not. The essential element of all irrational faith is its passive character, be its object an idol, a leader, or an ideology. Even the scientist needs to be free from irrational faith in traditional ideas in order to have rational faith in traditional ideas in order to have rational faith in the power of his creative thought. Once his discovery is “proved,” he needs no more faith, except in the next step he is contemplating. In the sphere of human relations, “having faith” in another person means to be certain of his core—that is, of the reliability and unchangeability of his fundamental attitudes. In the same sense we can have faith in ourselves—not in the constancy of our opinions, but in our basic orientation to life, the matrix of our character structure. Such faith is conditioned by the experience of self, by our capacity to say “I” legitimately, by the sense of our identity. Hope is the mood that accompanies faith. Faith could not be sustained without the mood of hope. Hope can have no base except in faith. There is still another element linked with hope and faith in the structure of life: courage, or, as Spinoza called it, fortitude. Fortitude is perhaps the less ambiguous expression, because today courage is more often used to demonstrate the courage to die rather than courage to live. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
Fortitude is the capacity to resist the temptation to compromise hope and faith by transforming them—and thus destroying them—into empty optimism or into irrational faith. Fortitude is the capacity to say “no” when the World wants to hear “yes.” However, unless we mention another aspect of it: fearlessness, fortitude is not fully understood. The fearless person is not afraid of threats, not even of death. However, as so often, the word “fearless” covers several entirely different attitudes. I mention only the three most important ones: First, a person can be fearless because he does not care to live; life is not worth much to him, hence he is fearless when it comes to the danger of dying; but while he is not afraid of death, he may be afraid of life. His fearlessness is based on lack of love of life; he is usually not fearless at all when he is not in the situation of risking his life. In fact, he frequently looks for dangerous situations, in order to avoid his fear of life, of himself, and of people. A second kind of fearlessness is that of the person who lives in symbiotic submission to an idol, be it a person, an institution, or an idea; the commands of the idol are scared; they are far more compelling than even the survival commands of his body. If he could disobey or doubt these commands of the idol, he would face the danger of losing his identity with the idol; this means he would be running the risk of finding himself utterly isolated, and thus at the verge of insanity. He is willing to die because he is afraid of exposing himself to this danger. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
The third kind of fearlessness is to be found in the fully developed person, who rests within himself and loves life. The person who has overcome greed does not cling to any idol or any thing and hence has nothing to lose; he is rich because he is empty, he is strong because he is not the slave of his desires. He can let go of idols, irrational desires, and fantasies, because he is in full touch with reality, inside and outside himself. If such a person has reached full “enlightenment,” he is completely fearless. If he has moved toward this goal without having arrived, his fearlessness will also not be complete. However, anyone who tries to move toward the state of being fully himself knows that whenever a new step toward fearlessness is made, a sense of strength and joy is awakened that is unmistakable. As if a new phase of life had begun, he feels. He can feel the truth of Goethe’s lines: “I have put my house on nothing, that’s why the whole World is mine.” (Ich hab mein Haus auf nichts gestellt, deshalb gehoert mir die ganze Welt.) Hope and faith, being essential qualities of life, are by their very nature moving in the direction of transcending the status quo, individually and socially. It is one of the qualities of all life that it is in a constant process of change and never remains the same at any given moment. If the stagnation is complete, death has occurred; life that stagnates tends to die. It follows that life in its moving quality tends to break out of and to overcome the status quo. We grow either stronger or weaker, wiser or more foolish, more courageous or more cowardly. Every second is a moment of decision, for the better or the worse. We feed our sloth, greed, or hate, or we starve it. The more we feed it, the stronger it grows; the more we starve it, the weaker it becomes. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
What holds true for the individual holds true for a society. If it does not grow, it decays; it is never static; if it does not transcend the status quo for the better, it changes for the worse. Often, we, the individual or the people who make up a society, have the illusion we could stand still and not alter the given situation in the one or the other direction. This is one of the most dangerous illusions. The moment we stand still, we begin to decay. This concept of personal or social transformation allows and even compels us to redefine the meaning of resurrection, without any reference to its theological implications in Christianity. Resurrection in its new meaning—for which the Christian meaning would be one of the possible symbolic expressions—is not the creation of another reality after the reality of this life, but the transformation of this reality in the direction of greater aliveness. Man and society are resurrected every moment in the act of hope and of faith in the here and now; every act of love, of awareness, of compassion is resurrection; every act of sloth, of green, of selfishness is death. Every moment existence confronts us with the alternatives of resurrection or death; every moment we give an answer. This answer lies not in what we say or think, but in what we are, how we act, where we are moving. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
Modern man is threatened by a World created by himself. He is faced with the conversion of mind to naturalism, a dogmatic secularism and an opposition to a belief in the transcendent. He begins to see, however, that the Universe is given not as one existing and one perceived but as the unity of subject and object; that the barrier between them cannot be said to have been dissolved as the result of recent experience in the physical sciences, since this barrier has never existed. Confronted with the question of meaning, he is summoned to rediscover and scrutinize the immutable and the permanent which constitute the dynamic, unifying aspect of life as well as the principle of differentiation; to reconcile identity and diversity, immutability and unrest. He begins to recognize that just as every person descends by his particular path, so he is able to ascend, and this assent aims at a return to the source of creation, an inward home from which he has become estranged. It is the hope of RELIGIONS PERSPECTIVES that the rediscovery of man will point the way to the rediscovery of God. To this end a rediscovery of first principles should constitute part of the quest. These principles, not to be superseded by new discoveries, are not those of historical Worlds that come to be and perish. They are to be sought in the heart and spirit of man, and no interpretation of a merely historical or scientific Universe can guide the search. The rediscovery of man will point the way to the rediscovery of God. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
To this end, a rediscovery of first principles should constitute part of the quest. These principles, not to be superseded by new discoveries, are not those of historical Worlds that come to be and perish. They are to be sought in the heart and spirit of man, and no interpretation of a merely historical or scientific Universe can guide the search. We are attempting not only to ask dispassionately what the nature of God is, but also to restore to man life at least the hypothesis of God and the symbols that relate to him. It endeavours to show that man is faced with the metaphysical question of the truth of religion while he encounters the empirical question of its effects on life of humanity and its meaning for society. Religion is here distinguished from theology and its doctrinal forms and is intended to denote the feelings, aspirations and acts of men, as they relate to reality. Our souls are nourished by the spiritual and intellectual energy of World thought, by those religious and ethical leaders who are not merely spectators but scholars deeply involved in the critical problems common to all religions. It is important to recognize that human morality and human ideals thrive only when set in a context of transcendent attitude toward religion and when we point to the ground of identity and the common nature of being in the religious experience of man, the essential nature of religion may be defined. Thus, we must be committed to re-evaluating the meaning of everlastingness, an experience which has been lost and which is the content of the visio Dei constituting the structure of all religions. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
It is the many absorbed everlastingly into the ultimate unity, a unity subsuming the fluency of God and the everlastingness of passing experience. Jesus as the Christ is united to God, and man is united to God in Eternal life. Jesus as the Christ has an essential manhood that appears and it is our destiny also to realize this essentialized humanity. Revelation also insists that Jesus as the Christ is the Son of God and promises that we shall become sons of God. Grace is needed somehow to about for their mysterious union. If this is supernaturalism, so be it. However, the problem demands a solution. There is an ambivalent attitude toward the historicity of Jesus as the Christ: on the one hand, it is of supreme importance because the New Being appeared in Jesus, but, on the other hand, the Christ would in no way be affected if no trace of the historical Jesus could be found. Jesus of Nazareth is the historical locale of particularly striking upheaval of creative ontological dynamism. The New Being was manifest in Jesus, but not identified with him. Thus, after the resurrection the power of the New Being is just as operative as it was before the moment of the incarnation, but Jesus lies dead in the tomb. Such an interpretation tends to makes Jesus expendable, once he had manifested the eternal principle that being overcomes nonbeing. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
If the timeless New Being overshadows the historical Jesus, there is danger that an impersonal principle may replace the personal intervention of God. The New Being imparts a metaphysical profundity and stability to the system. Certainly theology must speak intelligibly to man, but revelation far outstrips the range of human questions. Finally, the separation of the New Being from Jesus runs the risk depersonalizing the New Being and making Jesus superfluous. The demand to give up illusions about life and its condition as life humanity demands we give up conditions which need illusions. Men cannot remain children forever; they must in the end go out into “hostile life.” We may call this “education to reality.” If man asks himself how he ever became interested in those fields of thought which were destined to occupy the most important place throughout his life, he will not find it easy to give a simple answer. Perhaps he was born with an inclination for certain questions, or perhaps it was the influence of certain teachers, or of current ideas, or of personal experiences which led him along the path of his later interests—who knows which of these factors have determined the course of life? Indeed, if one wanted to know precisely the relative weight of all these factors, nothing short of a detailed historical autobiography could even attempt to give the answers. There is a strange and mysterious reason for human reactions. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
This was the incident: I had known a young woman, a friend of the family. Maybe she was twenty-five years of age; she was beautiful, attractive and in addition a painter, the first painter I ever knew. I remember having heard that she had been engaged but after some time had broken the engagement; I remember that she was almost invariably in the company of her widowed father. As I remember him, he was an old, uninteresting, and rather unattractive-looking man, or so I thought (maybe my judgment was somewhat biased by jealousy). Then one day I heard the shocking news: her father had died, and immediately afterwards she had killed herself and left a will which stipulated that she wanted to be buried together with her father. I had heard of the Elektria complex—the incestuous fixation between daughter and father. However, I was deeply touched. I had been quite attracted to the young woman; I had loathed the unattractive father; never before had I known anyone to commit suicide. I was hit by the thought “How is it possible?” How is it possible a beautiful young woman should be so in love with her father, that she prefers to be buried with him to being alive to the pleasures of life and of painting? Certainly I knew no answer, but the “how is it possible” stuck. And it was a puzzling and frightening experience at a time when I was beginning to develop into an adolescent. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
Dreams and fantasies are also of eminent importance as a means toward understanding. Since they are relatively direct expression of unconscious feelings and strivings, they must open up avenues for understanding that are otherwise hardly visible. Some dreams are rather transparent; as a rule, however, they speak a cryptic language that can be understood only with the assistance of free associations. The particular point at which the patient turns from co-operation to defensive maneuvers of one kind or another furnishes another help for understanding. As the analyst gradually discovers the reasons for these resistances, he gains increasing understanding of the patient’s peculiarities. Sometimes the fact that a patient stalls or fights, and the immediate reason why he does so, are transparent. More often astute observation is necessary to detect that a blockage exists, and the help of the patient’s free associations is necessary to understand the reasons for it. If the analyst succeeds in understanding the resistance, he will gain an increased knowledge as to the precise factors that hurt or frighten the patient and the precise nature of the reaction they produce. If he touches upon then, similarly illuminating are the themes that the patient omits, or deserts quickly. If, for example, the patient rigidly avoids expressing any critical thoughts concerning the analysts, though he is otherwise overexacting and overcritical, the analyst will have an important. Another example of this kind would be a patient’s failure to tell a specific incident which had occurred the previous day and had upset him. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
All these clues help the analyst to obtain gradually a coherent picture of the patient’s life, past and present, and of the forces operating in his personality. However, they also help toward an understanding of the factors operating in the patient’s relationship to the analyst and the analytical situation. For several reasons it is important to understand this relationship as accurately as possible. If, for instance, a hidden resentment toward the analyst remained under cover, for one thing, it would block the analysis entirely. If he has an unsolvd resentment in his heart toward the person to whom he reveals himself, with the best will in the World, a patient cannot express himself freely and spontaneously. Second, since the patient cannot feel and react differently toward the analyst from the way he does toward other person, he unconsciously displays in analysis the same irrational emotional factors, the same strivings and reactions, that he displays in other relationships. Thus the co-operative study of these factors makes it possible for the analyst to understand the patient’s disturbances in his human relationships in general, and these, as we have seen, are the crucial issue in the whole neurosis. The clues that may help toward a gradual understanding of the patient’s structure are, in fact, practically infinite. However, it is important to mention that the analyst makes use of the clues not only be means of precise reasoning but also, as it were, intuitively. In other words, he cannot always precisely explain how he arrives at his tentative assumption. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
In my own work, for example, I have arrived sometimes at an understanding through free associations of my own. While listening to a patient some incident may emerge in my mind that the patient has told me long ago, without my knowing offhand what bearing it has on the present situation. Or a finding regarding another patient may occur to me. I have learned never to discard these associations, and they have often proved helpful when they were seriously examined. When people are given little to no time to make decision, using this tactic, the manipulator has his mind made up. He has just got to get you to agree. However, the thing you need to agree on is pretty important, and you do not like the rush he is putting you in. The rush people put on others to sign contracts, for instance, before they have time to read the document and think about the subject often times makes one suspicious. Therefore, it is always good to do a bit of research. Sometimes you will find out the person who is trying to force you into a contract is somehow connected to the benefactors of that contract and is going to get a kickback when they get you to sign. It is important to be careful about what you sign because some people can get fired for signing contracts without understanding them or they may lose something valuable. Do not let anyone rush you into making any decision and research things. It seems like since we have not been honouring immigration laws, people have been coming to America, and some of them working at reputable companies, and running scams on consumers, which cause them to get arrested, lose their homes, cars, and several hundreds of thousands of dollars, in some case millions. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
The psychiatrist is a graduate physician. As a holder of the M.D. degree, he has received basic education in medical sciences (anatomy, bacteriology, pathology, physiology, and so on) and supervised experiences with each of the clinical specialties (such as medicine, surgery, neurology, obstetrics). The basic structure of undergraduate medical training is essentially standard in a majority of American medical schools; most commonly there are two years of basic science instruction followed by two years of training and supervised apprenticelike experience in the clinical fields. The basic four years of medical college instruction received by the man who ultimately becomes a psychiatrist (and who may have had this as a goal upon entering medical school) are not different from those of any other M.D. He has spent the same number of class hours as any other physician in the study of chemistry, anatomy, pathology, bacteriology. (He may have entered medical college after completing a four-year college degree; more frequently he will have started his medical training at the end of three years of premedical study. His premedical education has to emphasize the sciences (especially chemistry and physics), and depending upon his initiative and ability and upon the quality of his premedical school, he may have studied more or less of psychology, sociology, history and other subjects.) The amount of instruction and exposure to general human psychology and particularly to psychopathology and to psychiatric illness which he received during the two preclinical years will depend upon the medical college he attended; it may be as little as 20 hours and rarely exceeds 180 hours. By contrast he is likely to have devoted at least 500 hours to the study of anatomy. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
Following medical school, the aspirant psychiatrist must complete a one-year internship in an accredited hospital in which his clinical diagnostic and therapeutic skills are further developed over the full range of medical illness. At the end of this internship, he had satisfied the basic requirement to qualify for the practice of medicine, and he may then undertake specialized training in the field of psychiatry. This training is knowns as a “residency” and encompasses a three-year period of instruction and supervision by the staff of an accredited psychiatric hospital. As a psychiatric resident he will be exposed to some formal, didactic instruction on the subjects of psychiatric nosology, psychopathology, techniques of interviewing, special diagnostic procedures, special medical therapies (exempli gratia, electroshock, drugs), and principles of psychotherapy. How much formal instruction he receives will depend upon the particular psychiatric staff responsible for his training. Also, whether his theoretical orientation is “psychobiologic,” “psychoanalytic,” or “eclectic” will depend upon the setting in which he happens to take his residency. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
Apart from these possible particulars of his training he will over the course of the three years be exposed to a wide variety and large number of patients (hospitalized and outpatient) for which, with varying degrees and emphases of supervision, he will be directly responsible and whose treatment, especially when it is psychotherapy, he will provide. In essence, the psychiatric residency is an intensive and extensive apprenticeship in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with emotional disorders who are referred to clinics or hospitals. At the end of the three years, some eleven or twelve years after his high school graduation, at an average age of thirty-plus, the physician is fully qualified to begin his professional career as a psychiatrist and, if he chooses (and many do), to specialize in psychotherapy with the ambulatory patient. (If he wishes to specialize in the field of child psychiatry, he must complete two years of residence on a children’s service in addition to two years of experience on adult services. Many men take additional specialized training in psychoanalysis; to qualify as a full-fledged analyst the psychiatrist must complete several additional years of training in an analytic institute. If he sees fit to do so–when the analyst has recognized some possible connection, when he has gained an impression as to the unconscious factors that may be operating in a certain context, he will tell the patient his interpretation. If he thinks the patient can stand it and can utilize it, the analyst will offer an interpretation. In the following days, we will cover the clinical psychologist and the psychiatric social worker. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
With all the responsibilities the Sacramento Fire Department and EMS has, such has having to be experts in dealing with weapons of mass destruction, saving people from burning buildings, extracting people from serious cars accidents, and even being shot at and attacked in the line of duty, what makes it even tougher is that they have to do it with little to no funding. The Sacramento Fire Department has to expand their programs and provide additional services without any additional money each time the fire services have been called upon to do something else, and it is usually beyond what they always envisioned was the job of being a firefighter. The fire department is always taking on more responsibilities. And it seems that as son as they learn a new area and skill, expectations and tasks increase. It is going to keep happening as long as the fire service is as talented and as full of as many service heroes as it is. The public is going to continue to call them every time there is a new problem or challenge. When you look at the history of the fire service as a whole, you will see that, given any problem, they will always come up with a solution. Please take time to donate money to the Sacramento Fire Department to insure they are well taken care of and have all the supplies and resources they require. 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 17 of 17
The need to reach out to a loved one is of cardinal importance in the release of a trapped spirit, commonly called a ghost. In the Winter of 2010, a caretaker was shingling the roof, and he was just coming in from the roof on the fourth-floor balcony on a cold day—he had left the window ajar and secured—when suddenly he heard the window sash come down. He turned around on the fourth-floor platform and he saw the young girl, her hair windswept behind her. She was wearing white. He could not see anything blow the waist, and he confronted her for a short period, but could not being himself to talk—and she went away. Another caretaker was in one of the kitchens when she felt the presence of someone in the room. She turned around and saw an older man dressed in black at the other end of the kitchen. Then the cabinets creaked loudly and began to open on their own; she ran out of the kitchen and never went back in that particular one again.
One night, on a Friday the 13th tour, a wild, abnormal impulse came over guest to run all over Mrs. Winchester’s mansion screaming. Then the guest suddenly started rolling on the floor, and groaning and pulling the chairs around, beating on the floor with one’s hands and feet, but the guest eventually distinctly perceived that the impulse had something wild in it, and was contrary to the gentleness and sweetness of Mrs. Winchester. A medium that was present believed that the individual had likely given a fanatical demon admission to one’s emotional nature. Counterfeit workings of evil spirits may take place of a “blank mind” and “passive body” and is the primary condition necessary for evil spirits to work. Evil supernatural powers respond to the law of passivity fulfilled in mind and body. They then can produce manifestations. “I pray that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and all discernments: so that ye may distinguish the things that differ, that ye may be sincere and void of offence.” (Phil. 1.9-10 mg.)
The demonic presence in the atmosphere is felt by the senses of the body, as breath, wind, et cetera, while the mind is passive or inactive. The person affected by this demonic presence will be moved almost automatically to actions one would not perform of one’s own will and with all one’s faculties in operation. One may not even remember what one had done when under the power of this presence, just as a sleepwalker knows nothing of one’s actions when in that state. The inaction of the mind can often be seen by the vacant look in the eyes. Ghosts by their very nature are quite unable to understand fully their own predicament. They are kept in place, both in time and space, by their emotional ties to the spot. Nothing can pry them loose from it so long as they are reliving over and over again in their minds the events leading to their unhappy deaths.
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/
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It is Not Always the Same Time Here
It was a wet November afternoon, rather windy, rather warm. Outside the window great trees were stirring and weeping. Between them were stretched of green and yellow country, and blue hills far off, veiled with rain. Up above was a very restless and hopeless movement of low clouds travelling north-west. If you call it work—I had suspected my work—for some minutes to stand at the window and look at these things, and at the greenhouse roof on the right with the water sliding off it, and the nine story Observational Tower. It was all in favour of my going steadily on; no likelihood of a clearing up for hours to come. I, therefore, returned to my desk. By this time, I was somewhat tried. The clock struck four, and it really was four, for in 1889 there was no saving of daylight. So, I settled myself in the Hall of Fires. And first I glanced over some of the blueprints for additions to Llanada Villa. The clock struck five. This, I knew, meant tea. I lifted myself out of the deep chair, and went to the parlour. As I sat down in my favourite chair, the housemaid, Engrid Sebald, poured my tea. When I pick the cup up, she witnessed it fly out of my hand as it smashed at her feet. She glanced out of the window and saw what appeared to be a man’s face. It was unspeakably evil. There was something curious and ghastly about the way the sun began to sink into the west. The long shadows of the trees obscured the face from sight. Engrid was blanching with fright, as I was in a misery of fear. A considerable degree of darkness came on. I managed to calm Engrid by suggesting she had seen some sort of shadow, but the incessant barking of Zip, for no apparent reason, made matters worse. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
As the blackened darkness reigned, and all was silent. The perfect stillness was interrupted only by the mutterings of distant thunder. Without saying another word, the young lady went crept up the stairs trembling to her room. Shortly after, her things all packed she came down again to say goodbye. Under intolerable distress, I was once again without help. The adventure of the day mightily tormented my dreams that night. As I lay in the early morning recalling the incidents of the pervious night, it seemed curiously subdued and far away—as if it had happened in another World, or in a time long gone by. A few days later, a new housemaid arrived. Her name was Atina Kossert. A simple and quite unimaginative person, she had put no stock into all the tales of goings-on she had heard and was quite willing to prove her point. On going to her room, she found nothing out of order. On the next night, Atina complained of a shuffling or scraping noise in her bedroom. It sounded to her as if the chair was being moved, or as if someone was shuffling across the floor in slippers. She removed the chair from the room. When she turned the light off, however, she herself heard the sound. She turned on the light, and the noise stopped. She turned off the light, and the sound of scraping began again. The phenomena soon increased in intensity. A chest of drawers moved approximately thirteen inches from the wall. Atina pushed it back again. When she turned away the chest of drawer moved out again, and proved impossible to return to its original position. The drawers in the chest also came out, and could not be moved. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Atina, now thoroughly alarmed, changed her tune. “Someone is watching me,” she complained. She complained of things flying off the shelves seemingly by their own volition and of the chest of drawers moving and the drawers opening as if someone were looking for something or other. She wanted to leave, but Atina simply could not afford to, things were difficult enough in the physical World to allow the unseen forces to add to her problems. Atina when on to complain about noisy children in the halls. When she was informed that there were no children running about unattended, she became annoyed. Setting about to prove she was not going crazy, she was determined to catch one of these shouting, squealing, laughing kids who was disturbing her sleep. One night, Atina was extremely frustrated. She heard the kids in the hallway and rushed from her bed and nearly grabbed one of the little rascals, but was astonished to see the child disappeared before her eyes. Amid the chaos taking place, a rumbling sound began in Atina’s bedroom. The sound intensified, and as it did it took on a physical manner, moving out from under the bed towards the center of the room. The floorboards vibrated as the spirit rolled under the floor. The spirit made its way across the room, went out the door and disappeared into the hall. Terrified beyond reason, Atina found her voice and began to pray. She found herself looking over her shoulder, certain someone was there with her, only to see no one. Atina started putting thing back in place. As she was facing the fireplace, he heard a soft rapping at her door. She rushed over to open the door, there was a young man, about six foot, three inches with a hole in his head, signaling that he had been shot. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Atina quickly slammed the door and jumped into bed, shivering with fear. A flush of warmth cascaded over her, and the room turned fuzzy. She tried to regain her equilibrium. As if invisible fingers caressed her hair, Atina’s scalp tingled. Then an inescapable sensation took her breath away. The room seemed infused with a new, unfathomable energy—she had become sensitized to a dimension just beyond the range of normal. Light from the chandelier sparkled, and the tall, stained-glass windows created kaleidoscopic pools throughout the room. Atina wiped the moisture from her eyes, drew a deep breath, and cried herself to sleep. In the following days, Atina became frail and listless. Her once beautiful features became waxy and pale, her gorgeous brown eyes no longer sparkled. She began to believe that the house itself was dangerous prolonged life in it could only destroy those who remain in it. On an early Wednesday morning, Atina saw a form cross from the window, over her bed, and then down the stairs. This brought her out screaming and demanding to know what was going on. The light from the apparition was so intense they it hurt her eyes. She felt an icy chill as the form passed her. “Atina, my dear,” I said. “I insist it was only lightning.” However, instead of triumph, I found terror, and my talk with Atina boasted not of victory but a plea for help and advice in saving both myself and the World from horror beyond all human conception or calculation. I slipped out of the room so quietly that no one had seen me depart or knew that I had gone. I had gone upstairs, where a bit of my fear must has surged back; for I was heard to cry out in a highly terrified fashion upon entering the library, afterward trailing off into a kind of choking grasp. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
When, however, the butler had come to inquire what the troubles was, I appeared at the door with a great show of boldness, and had silently gestured the man away in a matter that terrified him unaccountably. After a time, the shadows began to gather, and the sunset cheer gave place to a vague growing terror which flew shadow-like before the night. Something frightful and unholy seemed to haunt. About the middle of January, a queer nocturnal incident occurred. In the early evening, there had been some noise and thumping in the sewing room upstairs, and I was on the point of investigating when it suddenly quieted down. Meanwhile, although she was more frightened than ever, Atina grew very curious about the mansion. She inspected the walls of her bedroom and found hollow spots. A bookcase turned out to be a false front. She discovered hidden passages. Of course, the house was honeycombed with areas not visible to the casual observer. Atina also discovered that the front portion of the wall seemed to block off another room beyond it, not accounted for when measuring the outside walls. When she managed to pry it open, she found a stairwell, narrow though it was, where apparently a flight of stairs had once been. As she treaded the stairs, the air became still, as a winged demon emerged. He looked like a monstrous gargoyle with large horns curling inward on his head, and he had razor sharp talons; perfect for ripping prey apart. He had two, vampire-like fangs that were bigger than the rest of his teeth and resembled a wolf’s, and his eyes shimmer crimson-red. Atina’s blood went cold. “Demon! He’s a demon.” “Witch!” The demon’s voice shook the walls, his voice deeper and louder than Atina’s. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Atina jumped away as the demon stared at her. Red welt covered her torso and legs, the angular shapes of ancient letters and symbols. “Go home, Witch! Go back to your house and pray to you God.” Smoke rose from where the demon was standing, and he vanished. It was a terror too profound and real, and in conjunction with what Atina already knew evoked too vivid hints of monstrosities from beyond time and space to permit of any sensible explanation. That midnight, after the household had retired, the butler was locking the back door when according to his statement Atina appeared somewhat blunderingly and uncertainly at the foot of the stairs with a large suitcase and made signs that she wised egress. The young lady spoke no word, but the worthy butler caught one sight of her fevered eyes and trembled causelessly. He opened the door and young Atina went out, but in the morning, she presented her resignation to me. There was, she said, something unholy in the glance butler had fixed on her. It was no way for a man to look at an honest woman, and she could not possibly stay another night. I allowed the woman to depart, but I did not value her statement highly. To fancy my butler in a savage state that night was quite ridiculous, for as long as I had remained awake, I had heard faint sounds from the room above; sounds as if of sobbing and pacing, and of a sighing which told only of his despair’s profoundest depths. I had grown used to listening for sounds in the night, and could often hear he was. There were nameless horrors in my home; and no matter how little one might be able to get at them, one ought to stand prepared for any sort of action at any time. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
In 2010, while clean the basement, a ghost of a boy appeared a caretaker, he appeared to be four of five years old. “Mrs. Winchester is dead…but not dead forever,” he said in a faint voice. In terms of psychic research, a ghost appears to be a surviving emotional memory of someone who has died traumatically, and usually tragically, but is unaware of his or her death. Ghosts, then, in the overwhelming majority, do not realize that they have died. Those who do know they are “dead” are confused as to where they are and why they do not feel quite as they used to feel. When death occurs unexpectedly or unacceptably, or when a person has become very attached to a place he or she has lived in for a very long time, sudden, unexpected death may come as a shock. Unwilling to part with the physical World, such human personalities then continue to stay on in the very sport where their tragedy or their emotional attachment had existed prior to physical death.
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/
Certain Varieties of Demons Live on the Juices in Human Blood
Hope is a vigorous principle; it is furnished with light and heat to advise and execute; it sets the head and heart to work, and animates a man to do his utmost. Hope is paradoxical. It is neither passive waiting nor is it unrealistic forcing of circumstances that cannot occur. It is like the crouched tiger, which will jump only when the moment for jumping has come. Neither tired reformism nor pseudo-radical adventurism is an expression of hope. If there is no birth in our lifetime, to hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate. There is no sense in hoping for that which already exists or for that which cannot be. Those whose hope is weak settle down for comfort or for violence; those whose hope is strong see and cherish all signs of new life and are ready every moment to help the birth of that which is ready to be born. Among the confusion about hope one of the major ones is the failure to distinguish between conscious and unconscious hope. This is an error, of course, which occurs with regard to many other emotional experiences, such as happiness, anxiety, depression, boredom, and hate. It is amazing that in spite of the popularity of Dr. Freud’s theories his concept of the unconscious has been so little applied to such emotional phenomena. There are perhaps two main reasons for this fact. One is that in the writings of some psychoanalysts and some “philosophers of psychoanalysis” the whole phenomenon of the unconscious—that is, of repression—refers to desires of the pleasures of the flesh, and they use repression—wrongly—and synonymous with suppression of sexual wishes and activities. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
In doing so they deprive Dr. Freud’s discoveries of some of their most important consequences. The second reason lies probably in the fact that it is far less disturbing for the post-Victorian generations to become aware of repressed sexual desires than of those experiences like alienation, hopelessness, or greed. To use only one of the most obvious examples: most people do not admit to themselves feelings of fear, boredom, loneliness, hopelessness—that is to say, they are unconscious of these feelings. (Speaking of the “unconscious” is another form of alienated thinking and speaking. There is no such things as “the unconscious,” as if it were an organ or a thing in space. One can be “conscious of” or “unconscious of” outer or inner events; that is, we deal with a psychic function, not with a localized organ.) This is so for a simple reason. Our social pattern is such that the successful man is not supposed to be afraid or bored or lonely. He must find this World the best of all Worlds; in order to have the best chance for the best of all Worlds; in order to have the best chance for promotion he must repress fear as well as doubt, depression, boredom, or hopelessness. There are many who feel consciously hopeful and unconsciously hopelessness is not primarily what people think about their feelings, but what they truly feel. This can be recognized least from their word and phrases, but can be detected from their facial expressions, their way of walking, their capacity to react with interest to something in front of their eyes, and their lack of fanaticism, which is shown in their ability to listen to reasonable argument. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The dynamic viewpoint applied in this report is to social-psychological phenomena and is fundamentally different from the descriptive behaviourist approach in most social-science research. From the dynamic standpoint, we are not primarily interested in knowing what a person thinks or says or how he behaves now. We are interested in his character structure—that is, in the semipermanent structure of his energies, in the directions in which they are channeled, and in the intensity with which they flow. If we know the driving forces motivating behaviour, not only do we understand present behaviour but we can also make reasonable assumptions about how a person is likely to act under changed circumstances. In the dynamic view, surprising “changes” in a person’s thought or behaviour are changes which mostly could have been foreseen, given the knowledge of his character structure. More could be said about what hope is not, but let us press forward and ask what hope is. Can it be described at all in words or can it only be communicated in a poem, in a song, in a gesture, in a facial expression, or in a deed? As with every other human experience, words are insufficient to describe the experience. In fact, most of the time words do the opposite: they obscure it, dissect it, and kill it. Too often, in the process of talking about love or hate or hope, one loses contact with what one was supposed to be talking about. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Poetry, music, and other forms of art are by far the best-suited media for describing human experience because they are precise and avoid the abstraction and vagueness of worn-out coins which are taken for adequate representations of human experience. Yet, taking these qualifications seriously, it is not impossible to touch upon feeling experience in words which are not those of poetry. If people did not share the experience one talks about, at least to some degree, this would not be possible. To describe it means to point out the various aspects of the experience and thus to establish a communication in which the writer and the reader know that they re referring to the same thing. In making this attempt, I must ask the reader to work with me and not expect me to give him an answer to the question of what hope it. I must ask him to mobilize his own experiences in order to make our dialogue possible. To hope is a state of being. It is an inner readiness, that of intense but not-yet-spent activeness. The concept of “activity” rests upon one of the most widespread of man’s illusions in modern industrial society. Our whole culture is geared to activity—activity in the sense of being busy, and being busy in the sense of busyness (the busyness necessary for business). In fact, most people are so “active” that they cannot stand doing nothing; they even transform their so-called leisure time into another form of activity. If you are not active making money, you are active driving around, playing golf, or just chatting about nothing. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
What is dreaded is the moment in which you have really nothing “to do.” Whether one calls this kind of behaviour activity is a terminological question. The trouble is that most people who think they are very active are not aware of the fact that they are intensely passive in spite of their “busyness.” Even if it is only a new man or woman as a partner for pleasures of the flesh, they constantly need the stimulus from the outside, be it other people’s chatter, or the sight of movies or travel and other forms of more thrilling consumption excitements. They need to be prompted, to be “turned on,” tempted, seduced. They always run and never stand. They always “fall for” and never get up. And they imagine themselves to be immensely active while they are driven by the obsession to do something in order to escape the anxiety that is aroused when they are confronted with themselves. Hope is a psychic concomitant to life and growth. If a tree which does not get sun bends its trunk to where the sun comes from, we cannot say that the tree “hopes” in the same way in which a man hopes, since hope in man is connected with feelings and awareness that the tree may not have. And yet it would not be wrong to say that the tree hopes for the sunlight and expressed this hope by twisting its trunk toward the sun. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Is it different when the child is born? He may have no awareness, yet his activity expresses his hope to be born and to breathe independently. Does the suckling not hope for his mother’s milk? Dos the infant not hope to stand erect and to walk? Does the sick man not hope to be well, the prisoner to be free, the hungry to eat? Do we not hope to wake up to another day when we fall asleep? Do pleasures of the flesh not imply a man’s hope in his potency, in his capacity to arouse his partner, and the woman’s hope to respond to arouse him? Revelation is an unmerited gift, and we can never be sure that our human questions exhaust its riches. Man is not merely a questioner. He is also a hearer of the Word, and he must open himself to its full impact even when it communicates startling truths, such as the Trinity, or hard truths, such as divine punishment, things he might not ask about if the questions were left to him alone to formulate. Furthermore, the question-answer dialogue is not the sole means to express the human attitude before the revelatory events. Questions and answers are, after all, but figures of speech, and their limitation is seen in this, that the mystery of divine revelation can be described in other terms. It is not only an answer; it is also a fulfilment, a transformation, an elevation, and a gratuitous intervention. Man stands before revelation not simply to play the quizmaster; he stands before it as before the sun, to be cheered and warmed and inspire. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
In the transfiguration episode all that Peter could utter was, “Lord, it is well that we are here!” (Mt 17.4 RSV). Man does more than question; he also exclaims in crimes of marvel, of wonder, of awe. They kerygmatic aspect of theology must be given its due. It can still only create the impression that it succeeds, but it can never fully succeed, since the receptacle which is the question remains the old wineskin that is burst by the new wine of the answer. The new wine is the kerygma, the divine good news which far surpasses human expectations. Consequently, the bad news of man’s existential situation cannot be the measure of the good news of revelation. In fact, it is revelation that lays bare the roots of the human condition by revealing the true nature and extent of sin, for the bad news of the existential situation it itself a mystery that needs unveiling. When it comes to the Christian mysteries, we know that creation means that “being” is essentially good, the fall or estrangement means that man is a finite mixture of being and nonbeing, and the New Being means that man always participates in being enough to offset the threat of non-being. The New Being is essential manhood, the complete actualization of human potentialities, the term of the historical process of the essentialization of man, the final reunion with the ground of being. Is this merely an ontological humanism? The lost son who returned home is not simply once again at home. He is at home again in a way other than the fondest remembrance of his father’s house had possibly permitted him to hope, other than the human existential question had possibly permitted him to hope, other than the existential question had possibly permitted him to expect. The New Being that he found is other and more than mere reunion. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
In contrast, the manifestation of demon power—the agency of demons is always brought more conspicuously into notice when God also is at work, in proportion to the manifestation and power of God’s work among souls. When the Son of God was manifest in the flesh, it called forth the activity and outspoken agency of demons more than ever before. Demons are of a multiplied variety. They are of various types, greater in diversity than human beings, and these demons always seek to possess a person congenial to them in some characteristic. The Christian Bible tells us of unclean demons, of fortune telling demons, of despotic demons, theological demons, screeching and yelling demons. There are demons that act particularly on the body, or some organ or appetite of the body. There are others that act more directly upon the intellect, or the sensibilities, and emotions and affections. There are others of a higher order that act directly on man’s spiritual nature, upon the conscience or the spiritual perceptions. These are the ones that act as angels of light, and sidetrack and delude many who are real Christians. How demons fasten on human beings—they seek out those who make-up and temperament is most congenial to themselves, and then seek to fasten themselves on to some part of the body, or brain, or some appetite, or some faculty of the mind—either the reason, or imagination, or perception; and when they get access, they bury themselves into the very structure of the person, so as to identify themselves with the personality of the one they possess. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
In a great many instances, they do not get possession of the individual, but obtain such a hold on some part of the mind as to torment the person with periodical attacks of something strange and abnormal, out of all proportion to the general character and make-up of the individual. These demons feed themselves on the person with whom they are allied. There are allusions in Christian Scripture, and facts gathered from experience, sufficient to prove that certain varieties of demons live on the juices in human blood. There are religious demons, not holy, but nevertheless religious, and filled with a devilish form of religion which is the counterfeit of true, deep spirituality. These pseudo-religious demons very rarely attack young beginners, but they hover around persons who advance into deeper experiences, and seek every opportunity to fasten themselves upon the conscience, or the spiritual emotions of persons of high states of grace, and especially if they are of a vivid or energetic temperament. These are the demons that play havoc among many professors of holiness. One way they get hold of persons is as follows: A soul goes through a great struggle, and is wonderfully blessed. Floods of light and emotion sweep through the being. The shore lines are all cut. The soul is launched out into a sea of extravagant experience. At such a juncture these demons hover round the soul, and make strange suggestions to the mind of something odd, or outlandish, or contrary to common sense or decent states. They make these suggestions under the profession of being the Holy Ghost. They fan the emotions, and produce a strange, fictious exhilaration, which is simply their bait to get into faculty of the soul. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
The degrees of evilness are at the same time the degrees of regression. The greatest evil is those strivings which are most directed against life; they love for death, the incestuous-symbiotic striving to return to the womb, to the soil, to the inorganic; the narcissistic self-immolation which makes man an enemy of life, precisely because he cannot leave the prison of his own ego. Living this way is living in “hell.” There is lesser evil, according to the lesser degree of regression. There is lack of love, lack of reason, lack of interest, lack of courage. Man is inclined to regress and to move forward; this is another way of saying he is inclined to good and evil. If both inclinations are still in some balance, he is free to choose, provided that he can make use of awareness and that he can make an effort. He is free to choose between alternatives which in themselves are determined by the total situation in which he finds himself. If, however, his heart has hardened to such a degree that there is no longer a balance of inclinations, he is no longer free to choose. In the chain of events that lead to the loss of freedom the last decision is usually one in which man can no longer choose freely; at the first decision he may be free to choose that which leads to the good, provided he is aware of the significance of his decision. Man is responsible up to the point where he is free to choose for his own action. However, responsibility is nothing but an ethical postulate, and often a rationalization for the authorities’ desire to punish him. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Precisely because evil is human, because it is the potential of regression and the loss of our humanity, it is inside every one of us. The more we are aware of it, the less are we able to set ourselves up as judges of others. Man’s heart can harden; it can become inhuman, yet never nonhuman. It always remains man’s heart. We all are determined by the fact that we have been born human, and hence by the never-ending task of having to make choices. We must choose the means together with the aims. We must not rely on anyone’s saving us, but be very aware of the fact that wrong choices make us incapable of saving ourselves. Indeed, we must become aware in order to choose the good—but if we have lost the capacity to be moved by the distress of another human being, by the friendly gaze of another person, by the song of a bird, by the greenness of grass, no awareness will help us. If man becomes indifferent to life, there is no longer any hope that he can choose the good. Then, indeed, his heart will have so hardened that his “life” will be ended. If this should happen to the entire human race or to its most powerful members, then the life of mankind may be extinguished at the very moment of its greatest promise. Our hope is to point to a new dimension of morality—not that of constraint and prohibition but a morality that lies as a fountainhead within the human soul, a mortality of aspiration to spiritual experience. It suggests that necessity is laid upon us to infer entities that are not observed and are not observable. For an unseen Universe is necessary to explain the seen. The flux is seen, but to account for its structure and its nature we infer particles of various kinds to serve as the vertices of the changing patterns, placing less emphasis on the isolated units and more on the structure and nature of relations. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The process of knowing involves an immaterial becoming, an immaterial identification, and finally, knowledge itself is seen to be a dependent variable of immateriality. And somewhere along this spiritual pilgrimage man’s pure observation is relinquished and gives way to the deeper experience of awe, for there can be no explanation of a phenomenon by searching for its origin but only by discerning its immanent law—this quality of transcendence that abides even in matter itself. The present situation in the World and the vast accretion of knowledge have produced a serious anxiety which may be overcome by re-evaluating the character, kindship, logic, and operation of man in relation to his work. For work implies goals and intimately affects the person performing the work. Therefore the correlation and relatedness of ideas, facts and values that are in perpetual interplay could emerge from these volumes as they point to the inner synthesis and organic unity of man and his labours. For though no labour alone can enrich the person, no enrichment can be achieved without absorbing and intense labour. We then experience a unity of faith, labour and grace which prepares the mind for receiving a truth from sources over which it has no control. This is especially true since the great challenge of our age arises out of man’s inventions in relation to his life. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Thus Credo Perspectives seek to encourage the perfection not only of man’s work but also and above all the fulfillment of himself as a person. And so now we are summoned to consider not only man in the process of development as a human subject but also his influence on the object of his investigation and creation. Observation alone is interference. The naïve view that we can observe any system and predict its behaviour without altering it by the very act of observation was an unjustified extrapolation from Newton’s Celestial Mechanics. We can observe the moon or even a satellite and predict its behaviour without perhaps appreciably interfering with it, but we cannot do this with an amoeba, far less with a man and still less with a society of men. It is the heart of the question of the nature of work itself. If we regard our labours as a process of shaping or forming, then the fruits of our labours play the part of a mold by which we ourselves are shaped. And this means, in the preservation of the identity of the knower and the known, that cognition and generation, that is, creation, though in different spheres, are nevertheless alike. It is hoped that the influence of such a series may help to overcome the serious separation between function and meaning and may show that the extraordinary crisis through which the World is passing can be fruitfully met by recognizing that knowledge had not been completely dehumanized and has not totally degenerated into a mere notebook overcrowded with formulas that few are able to understand or apply. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
For mankind is now engaged in composing a new theme. Life never manifest itself in negative terms. And hope lies in drawing from every category of work a conviction that nonmaterial values can be discovered in positive, affirmative, visible things. The estrangement between the temporal and nontemporal man is coming to n end, community is inviting communion, and a vision of the human condition more worthy of man is engendered, connecting spiritual energy which breaks for us the bonds of habit and keeps us in touch with the permanence of being through our work. And as, long ago, the Bearers of Bread were succeeded by the Bearers of Torches, so now, in the immediacies of life, it is the image of man and his vocation that can rekindle the high passion of humanity in its quest for light. Refusing to divorce work from life or love from knowledge, it is action, it is passion that enhances our being. We live in an expanding Universe and also in the moral infinite of that other Universe, the Universe of man. And along the whole stretched arch of this Universe, we may see that extreme limit of complicity where reality seems to shape itself within the work man has chosen for his realization. Work then becomes not only a way of knowledge, it becomes even more a way of life—of life in its totality. For the last ed of every maker is himself. “And the places that have been desolate for ages shall be built in thee: thou shalt rise up the foundations of generation and generation; and thou shalt be called the repairer of the fences, turning the paths into rest.” (Isaiah, 58.12). #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
The chain of associations that reveals a connection need not to be a long one. Sometimes a sequence of only two remarks opens up a path for understanding, provided the second is not a brainchild but is born spontaneously. A patient, for instance, came to analysis feeling tired and uneasy, and his first associations were unproductive. He had been drinking white muscatel and popping reds the night before. I asked him whether he had a hangover, which he denied. The last hour had been very productive for it had brought to light the fact that he was afraid of taking responsibility because he was terrified of possible failure. Thus I asked him whether he wanted to rest on his laurels. At this a memory emerged of his mother dragging him through museums and of his boredom and annoyance at the experience. There was only this one association, but it was revealing. It was partly a response to my remark about his resting on his laurels. I was just as bad as the mother pushing him from one problem to another. (This reaction was characteristic of hum because he was hypersensitive to anything resembling coercion, though at the same time his own initiative for tackling problems was inhibited.) Having become aware of his annoyance with me and of his active reluctance to go on, he then felt free to feel and express another sentiment. Its essence was that psychoanalysis was worse than the situation in the museum because it meant being dragged on to see one failure after another. With this association he unintentionally resumed the thread of the preceding hour, which prevented him from functioning smoothly and effectively meant a “failure.” He thereby revealed one of his basic resistances to psychoanalysis. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
The same patient came another time feeling depressed. He had met a friend the night before who told him about his climbing of a Swiss mountain, the Piz Palu. The report had awakened the memory of a time when he was in Switzerland and could not climb this mountain because it was befogged during the days he had at his disposal. He had been furious at that time, and the night before he felt the old rage rising again. He lay awake for hours evolving plans how he could still assert his wish, how he could overcome all obstacles of war, money, time. Even after he fell asleep his mind fought against the obstacles in this way, and awoke depressed. During the analysis an apparently irrelevant picture came up in his mind of the outskirts of a Midwestern town, which for him was the epitome of the drab and desolate. This mental image expressed his feelings about life at that moment. However, what was the connection? That if he could not climb the Piz Palu, then life was desolate? When he was in Switzerland, he had set his heart upon climbing the mountain, but it is true that the frustration of this special wish was on passion of his; the incident had occurred years ago and he had since forgotten about it. Apparently then it was not the Piz Palu that was bothering him. When he calmed down, he realized that he would not even care to climb it now. The revival of that Swiss experience meant something much more incisive. If he set his will on achieving something, he believed that he should be able to do it, but this illusory belief disturbed him. Even if it was so much out of his command as fog in the mountains, any unsurpassable obstacle meant to him a frustration of his will. If he must relinquish this belief, it meant that life was not worth living. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Repetitive themes or sequences in the material presented by the patient are particularly helpful for understanding. If the associations end always with implicit evidence that the patient has superior intelligence or rationality, or is in general a remarkable person, the analyst will understand that his belief in his possession of these qualities is of paramount emotional value to him. A patient who misses no opportunity to demonstrate how analysis has harmed him will lead to analyst to different hypotheses from those suggested by a patient who misses no opportunity to emphasize his improvement. If the demonstrations of impairment coincide with repeated reports of being unfairly treated, injured, or victimized, in the former instance, the analyst will begin to watch for those factors within the patient that explain why he experiences a large proportion of life in exactly this way, and also for the consequences entailed by this attitude. Since they reveal certain typical reactions, repetitive themes also provide a clue for understanding why the patient’s experiences often follow a certain stereotyped pattern; for example, why he frequently starts on an enterprise with enthusiasm and drops it soon after, or why he frequently encounters similar disappointments with friends or lovers. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
The analyst will find valuable clues also in the patient’s contradictions, of which as many are bound to appear as are present in the patient’s structure. The same holds true of exaggerations, such as reactions of violence, gratitude, shame, suspicion, apparently disproportionate to the provocation. Such a surplus of affect always signalizes a hidden problem, and it leads the analyst to look for the emotional significance that the provocation has for the patient. Who are the experts to whim the unhappy and maladjusted citizens of our urban communities take their problems for consultations, hopefully for cure? Since close of World War II, it has been increasingly clear that experts in the management of functional mental illness are being drawn from three professions—medicine, psychology, and social work. The medically trained expert is a clinical psychologist. And the specialist from social works is the psychiatric social worker. To the extent that all three of these highly trained experts do (in increasing numbers) engage in one-to-one personal conversations with the therapeutic intent to relieve psychological symptoms, modify attitudes, and improve adjustment—and to the extent that their respective efforts must partake of the factors common to all psychotherapeutic exchanges—it follows that there must be certain minimal overlap and similarities in their professional preparation. They do have specific knowledges, skills, values and goals in common. We will discuss these themes at a later time. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
We all know at least one know-it-all. They have an infinite amount of useless knowledge—some of it, even questionable. Narcissists are the typical culprits who use this sort of thing to make you feel inadequate, undereducated, and sometimes just plain stupid. Some people can make you feel as if they are so much smarter than you, and that the deserves the best things in life so much more than you do. It is important to realize people who are condescending are manipulating you into perceiving them as superior. And you can politely ignore their impolite behaviour and be the best you can by using real facts and skills to gain the upper hand. When it comes to a job, for example, sometimes when the boss prefers a person who submissive, pretends to be his or her best friend, knows a lot of details about the boss, and this is the type of person who is selected for the job, it could be a blessing that you are not accepted. People like that tend to be involved in unethical and sometimes illegal things and want someone who will cover deviant behaviour up for them or they want a patsy. So, it is really not the type of job you would be interested in anyway. Underlying principles of respect that were once commonplace in society have increasingly given way to unkind behaviour. To help our children and youth set aside the many negative examples that bombard them, we must first understand respect, reasons we sometimes act disrespectfully, gospel principles that apply, and ways we can be better teachers and exemplars of respect. People merit respect for just being human and also for living an honourable life. We admire their commitment or standards. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Over the years, the Sacramento Fire Department has become law enforcement, doctors, psychiatrists, plumbers, electricians, roofers, and building construction and flood experts. The fire department has also had to become experts when dealing with CO2. The job has become even more complex because of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Before September 11, 2001, the Sacramento Fire Department realized just how vulnerable we are to acts of terrorism. As a result, they are trained to maintain situational awareness and be alert for activity that may indicate possible criminal or terrorist activity. Since the horrific incidents of 9/11, the role of Sacramento Fire Department and EMS personnel in protecting the homeland has increased because of the recognition that the need for information and intelligence is vital. Sacramento Fire and EMS personnel provide a critical link in completing the homeland security role. They serve as additional eyes and ears of law enforcement and report suspicious activity so that further investigation by the proper authority can be initiated. As part of an element of homeland security, the Sacramento Fire Department analyzes public and private sector to identify the threat environment, share information, and establish policy for the operation of combatting the threat of terrorism, and have evolved to deal with a range of criminal and terrorist activity. With the crisis at our Southern Boarder posing a national security threat, please make a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department to ensure they have the latest technology and adequate resources to protect the community. 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 20 of 20
To the materialist and the professional skeptic—that is to say, people who do not wish to be disturbed in their belief that death is the end of life as we know it—the notion of ghosts is unacceptable. No matter how much evidence is presented for the reality of the phenomena, they will argue against it and ascribe it to any of several “natural” causes. Either delusion or hallucination must be the explanation, or perhaps a mirage, if not outright trickery on the part of parties unknown. Entire professional groups who deal in the manufacture of illusions have taken it upon themselves to label anything that defies their ability to reproduce it artificially through trickery or manipulation as false or nonexistent. Especially among photographers and magicians, the notion that ghost exist has never been a popular one. However, authentic reports of psychic phenomena along ghostly lines keep coming into reputable report centers such as the various societies for psychic research and to caretakers of The Winchester Mystery House.
Sometimes demons soar round the high altitudes of the spiritual life, like eagles around great mountain tops, and seek to fasten their talons upon the lofty and conspicuous prey. They cause people to run off into things that are odd and foolish, unreasonable and indecent. It leads them to adopt a peculiar voice or twang, or unnatural shouting, or some shaking of the body; or such an influence is manifested by peculiar heresies in the mind, of which there is a nameless variety. It produces a certain wildness in the eye and harshness in voice. Such persons invariably break the law of love, and severely condemn people who do not conform to themselves. As a rule, such persons lose their flesh, for demoniac possession is very wearing on the vital forces and produces a terrible strain on the heart and nervous system.
Granted that even though a certain number of reports about ghosts may be due to inaccurate reporting, self-delusion, or other errors of fact, there still remains an impressive number of cases that cannot be explained by any other means than that of extrasensory perception. In September of 2007, a caretaker felt a cold sport in one of the kitchens, and when others stepped into the room, they felt it, too. Since none of the doors nor windows could be held responsible for the strong cold draft, they knew that its origin was of a psychic nature, as it often is when there are entities present. Moments later, the spirit whispered, “You see me, don’t you? I love everyone…I’ll go, I won’t bother you.” The translucent figure of a boy then floated into the wall.
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/
Evilness is Not Only Human, but Tragic
The charismatic and his society are bonded in crisis through a mutual attempt to break free of anomie and alienation, and a sense of powerlessness. Hope is a decisive element in any attempt to bring about social change in the direction of greater aliveness, awareness, and reason. However, the nature of hope is often misunderstood and confused with attitudes that have nothing to do with hope and in fact are the very opposite. What is it to hope? Is it, as many think, to have desires and wishes? If this were so, those who desire more and better Ultimate Driving Machines, Millhaven Homes, and gadgets would be people of hope. However, they are not; they are people lusty for more consumption and not people of hope. If hope’s object is not a thing but a fuller life, a state of greater aliveness, a liberation from eternal boredom; or, to use a theological term, for salvation; or, a political term, for revolution, is it to hope? Indeed, this kind of expectation could be hope; but if it has the quality of passiveness, and “waiting for”-until the hope becomes, in fact, a cover for resignation, a mere ideology, it is non-hope. Kafka has beautifully described this kind of resigned and passive hope in a story The Trial. A man comes to the door leading into Heaven (the Law) and begs admittance from the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper says he cannot admit the man at the moment. Although the door leading into the Law stands open, the man decides that he better wait until he gets permission to enter. So he sits down and waits for days and years. He repeatedly asks to be allowed in, but is always told that he cannot be allowed to enter yet. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
During all these long years the man studies the doorkeeper almost incessantly and learns to know even the fleas in his fur collar. Eventually, he is old and near death. For the first time, he asks the question, “How does it come about that in all these years no one has come seeking admittance but me?” The doorkeeper answers, “No one but you could gain admittance through this door, since this door was intended for you. I am now going to shut it.” The old man was too old to understand, and if he had been younger, maybe he would not have understood. The bureaucrats have the last word; if they say no, he cannot enter. If he had had more than this passive, waiting hope, he would have entered and his courage to disregard the bureaucrats would have been the liberating act which would have carried him to the shining palace. Many people are like Kafka’s old man. They hope, but it is not given to them to act upon their heart’s impulse, and as long as the bureaucrats do not give the green light, they wait and wait. (The Spanish word esperar means at the same time waiting and hoping, and quite clearly it refers to that particular kind of passive hope that I am trying to describe here.) This kind of passive hope is closely related to a generalized form of hope, which might be described as hoping for time. Time and the future become the central category of this kind of hope. Nothing is expected to happen in the now but only in the next moment, the next day, the next year, and in another World if it is too absurd to believe that hope can be realized in this World. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Behind this belief that hope can be realized in this World is the idolatry of “Future,” “History,” and “Posterity,” which began in the French Revolution with men like Robespierre, who worshipped the future as a goddess: I do nothing; I remain passive, because I am nothing and impotent; but the future, the projection of time, will bring about what I cannot achieve. This worship of the future, which is a different aspect of the worship of “progress” in modern bourgeois thought, is precisely the alienation of hope. Instead of something I do or I become, the idols, future and posterity bring about something without my doing. The Stalinist concept that history decides what is right and wrong and good and evil is a direct continuation of Robespierre’s idolatry of posterity. It is the extreme opposite of the position of Marx, who said, “History is nothing and does nothing. It is man who is and does.” Or, in Theses on Feuerbach, “The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men that change circumstances and that the educator himself needs educating. While passive waiting is a disguised form of hopelessness and impotence, there is another form of hopelessness and despair which takes exactly the opposite disguise—the disguise of phrase making and adventurism, of disregard for reality, and of forcing what cannot be forced. This was the attitude of the false Messiahs and of the Putsch leaders, who had contempt for those who did not under all circumstances prefer death to defeat. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
In these days, the pseudo-radical disguise of hopelessness and nihilism is not rare among some of the most dedicated members of the young generation. They are appealing in their boldness and dedication but they become unconvincing by their lack of realism, sense of strategy, and, in some, by lack of love for life. Such hopelessness shines through Herbert Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955) and One-Dimensional Man (Beacon Press, 1964). All traditional values, like love, tenderness, concern, and responsibility, are supposed to have had meaning only in a pretechnological society. In the new technological society—one without repressed and exploitation—a new man will arrive who will not have to be afraid of anything, including death, who will develop yet-unspecified needs, and who will have a chance to satisfy his “polymorphous sexuality” (I refer the reader to Dr. Freud’s Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex); briefly, the final progress of man is seen in the regression to infantile life, the return to the happiness of the satiated baby. No wonder that Marcuse ends up in hopelessness. “The critical theory of society possesses no concepts which could bridge the gap between the present and its future; holding no promise and showing no success, it remains negative. Thus it wants to remain loyal to those who, without hope, have given and give their life to the Great Refusal” (One-Dimensional Man, p. 257). These quotations show how wrong those are who attack or admire Marcuse as a revolutionary leader; for revolution was never based on hopelessness, nor can it ever be. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
However, Marcuse is not even concerned with politics; for if one is not concerned with steps between the present and the future, one does not deal with politics, radical or otherwise. Marcuse is essentially an example of an alienated intellectual, who presents his personal despair as a theory of radicalism. Unfortunately, his lack of understandings and, to some extent, knowledge of Dr. Freud builds a bridge over which he travels to synthesize Freudianism, bourgeois materialism and sophisticated Hegelianism into what him and other like-minded “radicals” seems to be the most progression theoretical construct. This is not the place to show in detail that it is a naïve, cerebral daydream, essentially irrational, unrealistic, and lacking love of life. Credo Perspectives constitute an endeavour to alter the prevailing conceptions, not only of the nature of knowledge and work, but also of creative achievements in general, as well as of the human agent who inquires and creates, and of the entire fabric of the culture formed by such activities. In other words, this is an endevour to show that what we do are no more and no less than what we are. It is the endeavour of Credo Perspectives to define the new reality in which the estrangement of man from his work, resulting in the self-estrangement in man’s existence, is overcome. This new reality is born through the reconciliation of what man knows with what a man is. Being itself in all its presuppositions and implications can only be understood through the totality, through wholeness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
St. Paul, who, like Isaiah before him, went into the marketplace not to secularize truth but to proclaim it, taught man that the “new creation” could be explained only by conquering the daemonic cleavages, the destructive split, in soul and cosmos. And that fragmentation always destroys a unity, produces a tearing away from the source and thereby creates disunity and isolation. The fruit can never be separated from the tree. The Tree of Life can never be disjoined from the Tree of Knowledge for both have one and the same root. And if man allows himself to fall into isolation, if he seeks to maintain a self-segregated from the totality of which he too has his place—including his own labours—then this act of apostasy bears fruit in the demiurgical presumption of magic, a form of animism in which man seeks an authority of the self, placing himself above the law of the Universe by attempting to separate the inseparable. He thus creates an unreal World after having destroyed or deserted the real. And in this way the method of analysis, of scientific objectivity, which is good and necessary or deserted the real. And in this way the method of analysis, of scientific objectivity, which is good and necessary in its right place, is endowed with a destructive power when it is allowed to usurp a place for which it is not fitted. The naturalist principle that man is the measure of all things has been shattered more than ever in our own age by the question, “What is the measure of man?” Postmodern man is more profoundly perplexed about the nature of man than his ancestors were. He is on the verge of spiritual and moral insanity. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
And having lost the sense of who and what he is, man fails to grasp the meaning of his fellow man, of his vocation and of the nature and purpose of knowledge for itself. For what is not understood cannot be known. And it is this cognitive faculty which is frequently abrogated by the “scientific” theory of knowledge, a theory that refuses to recognize the existence of comprehensive entities as distinct from their particulars. The central act of knowing is indeed that form of comprehension which is never absent from any process of knowing and is finally its ultimate sanction. Science itself acknowledges as real a host of entities that cannot be described completely in materialistic or mechanistic terms, and it is this transcendence out of the domain of science into a region from which science itself can be appraised that Credo Perspectives hope to define. For the essence of the ebb and flow of experience, of sensations, the richness of the immediacy of directly apprehended knowledge, the metaphysical substance of what assails our being, is the very act itself of sensation and affection and therefore must escape the net of rational analysis, yet is intimately related to every cognitive act. It is this increasing intellectual climate that is calling into birth once more the compelling Socratic questions, “What is the purpose of life, the meaning of work?” “What is man?” Plato himself could give us only an indirect answer: “Man is declared to be that creature who is constantly in search of himself, a creature who at every moment of his existence must examine and scrutinize the conditions of his existence. He is a being in search of meaning.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
From this it is evident that there is present in the universe a law applicable to all nature including man and his work. Life itself then is seen to be a creative process elaborating and maintaining order out of the randomness of matter, endlessly generating new and unexpected structures and properties by building up associations that qualitatively transcend their constituent parts. This is not to diminish the importance of “scientific objectivity.” It is, however, to say that the mind possesses a quality that cannot be isolated or known exclusively in the sense of objective knowledge. For it consists in that elusive humanity in us, our self, that knows. It is that inarticulate awareness that includes and comprehends all we know. It consists in the irreducible active voice of man and is recognized only in other things, only when the circle of consciousness closes around its universe of events. We have to recognize the cause of human suffering—greed. Man must be confronted with the choice between remaining chained to the wheel of terrestrial life, or of renouncing greed and thus ending suffering and focusing more on Godly qualities. Man can choose between these two real possibilities: there is no other possibility available to hm. We have examined man’s heart, its inclination for good and evil and should be more on solid ground than we had been in the past. As far as we know at this time, evilness seems to be a specifically human phenomenon. It is the attempt to regress to the pre-human state, and to eliminate that which is specifically human: reason, love, freedom. Yet evilness is not only human, but tragic. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Even if man regresses to the most archaic forms of experience, he can never cease being human; hence he can never be satisfied with evilness as a solution. The animal cannot be evil; it acts according to its built-in drives which essentially serve his interest in survival. Evilness is the attempt to transcend the realm of the human to the realm of the inhuman, yet it is profoundly human because man cannot become an animal as little as he can become “God.” Evil is man’s loss of himself in the tragic attempt to escape the burden of his humanity. And the potential of evil is all the greater because man is endowed with an imagination that enables him to imagine all the possibilities for evil and thus to desire and act on them, to feed his evil imagination. (It is interesting to note that the word for the good and evil impulse is jezer, which in biblical Hebrew means “imaginings.”) The idea of good and evil expressed here corresponds essentially to the one expressed by Spinoza. “In what follows, then,” he says, “I shall mean by ‘good’ that which we certainly know to be a means of approaching more nearly to the type of human nature, as Spinoza also calls it]; by ‘bad’ that which we certainly know to be a hinderance to us in approaching the said as completely destroyed by being changed into a man, as by being changed into an insect.” Good consists of transforming our existence into an ever-increasing approximation to our essence, evil into an ever-increasing estrangement between existence and essence. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Evil is often present in even the best intended situations. For example, a young girl tells e that she had an attack of heart pounding when shopping. Her heart was not strong, but she did not see why shopping should affect it since she could dance for hours without harm. Nor could she see any psychic reasons for the heart-pounding. She had bought a superbly beautiful blouse for her older sister as a birthday gift, and was delighted to do so. She anticipated with pleasure how much the sister would enjoy and admire the gift. Actually, she had spent her last penny on it. She was short of money because she had straightened out all her debts, or at any rate had made arrangements by which she could pay them off in several months. This she said with distinct self-admiration. The blouse was so beautiful that she would have liked to have it herself. Then, after having apparently dropped the subject, a number of grievances against the sister appeared. She complained bitterly about how the sister interfered with her, how she made nonsensical reproaches. These grievances were intermingled with derogatory remarks which made the sister appear quite inferior to the patient. Even at first sight, this unpremeditated sequence of emotions indicates conflicting feelings toward the sister: a wish to win her love, on the other hand, resentment. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
When shopping, this conflict was accentuated. The loving side asserted itself in the purchase of the present; the resentment had to be suppressed for the time being and thus clamoured all the louder for its share. The result was the heart pounding. Such clashes of contradictory feelings will not always elicit anxiety. Usually one of the incompatible feelings is repressed, or both join in some compromise solution. Here, as the associations show, no side of the conflict was altogether repressed. Instead, love and resentment, both on a conscious level, were placed on a seesaw. When the one feeling went up, in awareness, the other went down. On closer scrutiny the associations disclosed more details. The theme of self-admiration, blatant in the first series, reappears implicitly in the second. The derogatory remarks about the sister not only express diffuse hostility but serve to make the patient’s own light outshine the sister’s. The tendency to put herself above the sister is evident throughout the associations, in the fact that she continually, even though inadvertently, contrasted her own generosity and sacrificing love with the sister’s bad behaviour. This close connection between self-admiration and rivalry with the sister suggests the possibility that the need to be superior to the sister was an essential factor in the development and maintenance of the self-admiration. This assumption also sheds another light on the conflict that occurred in the store. The impulse to buy the expensive blouse represented not only, as it were, a heroic determination to resolve the conflict but also a wish to establish her own supremacy over the sister, partly by winning her admiration, partly by showing herself the more loving, sacrificing, forgiving. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
On the other hand, by giving to the sister a more beautiful blouse than she had, she actually placed her in a “superior” position. In order to understand the importance of this point, it should be mentioned that the question of who was better dressed played a significant role in the battle of rivalry; the patient, for instance, had often appropriated the sister’s dresses. Therefore, it is clear, that no observation should be regarded as unimportant. Just as the patient should express without reserve everything that comes to his mind, the analyst should regard every detail as potentially meaningful. He should not discard offhand any remark as irrelevant but should take seriously every single observation, without exception. Furthermore, he should constantly ask himself why this particular feeling or thought of the patient comes up just now. What does it mean in this specific context? A friendly feeling toward the analyst, for instance, may in one context indicate genuine gratitude for help and understanding; in another it may connote the patient’s increased need for affection because in the preceding hour the tackling of a new problem aroused anxiety; in a third it may be the expression of a desire to one the analyst body and soul because a conflict has been uncovered which the patient hopes that “love” will solve. Sometimes people feel it is unfair that their expectations are not met. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
A failure to examine an association’s exact connections with preceding and succeeding associations, and with preceding experiences, may not only lead to wrong interpretations but also deprive the analyst of an opportunity to learn something about the patient’s reactions to a specific occurrence. Nonetheless, in confrontational situations, beware of tactic of someone wanting to get you on his turf. To further highlight the illustration, your boss comes to your office and asks you to come to his office, he would like to talk to you about something. Some people would get right up and follow their boss without asking a thing. Others might want to know why the conversation could not occur right where they are not. Savy people would ask why they need to take the walk down the long hallway when they could talk it right there. That is because they are aware of the home court advantage. Maybe your boss wants to ask you to do something that is not in your job description. Maybe he wants to ask you questions about a fellow employee he is pretty sure you will not want to give him information on. Whatever his motive is, he is not wanting to risk having the conversation anywhere but, on his turf, the place he feels the most powerful. Before you go to meet anyone in a place you know they feel the most at home in, think about why they want to meet there. You can still go, just be prepared for what they might ask of you and be ready to say no if you feel you should not. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
In the prolonged relationships of intensive psychotherapy, it must be recognized that the patient has opportunity for repeated expression of “punishable” ideas and feelings which do not lead in therapy to punishment or rejection. The anxiety originally accompanying the thoughts is gradually extinguished or reduced through repeated expression without pain. Then it is possible for the patient to see his betes noires differently, to think differently about them, and to plan imaginatively to react differently to their real-life representations. Eventually, with the support and positive suggestion of the therapist, he is able to experiment with new modes of response to those persons and situations which are anxiety symbols and, eventually, to extend the process of learning (and extinction of inappropriate, anxious responses) to the “real” World outside of his therapist’s office. Although there are differences in interpretation as to the elements of the process, differences in emphasis as to whether it is mostly an extinction of old, inappropriate responses or an acquisition of new more appropriate responses, differences as to whether there are basic generalities or necessary specifics in the content of neurosis, nearly all psychotherapists agrees that psychotherapy is a learning process. In this learning, the therapist serves as guide, tutor, model, and primary source of reward. To the extent that all therapists partake of the role of teacher, self-acknowledged or not, we have yet another common dimension. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Considering the range and basic nature of these dimensions and processes which are common to all forms of conversation with therapeutic intent, it is remarkable that so many have found so much to say about such a variety of apparent diversities in theory and practice. However, in our culture it is far more acceptable to present oneself as an expert in some moderately occult and complex professionalized technique than to suggest the more modest (grandiose?) claims of being generally perceptive and intelligent about personal problems. Certainly the average counselor can much sooner be confident that he is technically proficient than he can be assured that he is wise. In view of the extensive variety and possibly sizable therapeutic power of those factors which do appear to be shared by all schools of psychotherapy, it is suggested that we might do well to concentrate our researchers on these potential mechanisms of the psychotherapeutic effect, and to emphasize carefully the methods of optimizing their influence when selecting and training psychotherapists, rather than to pursue almost exclusively the search of differences in therapeutic practice that theoretically should be there and theoretically should make a difference. There are men who come as ambassadors from Heaven, and the writings or arts of men, which come as revelators. However, unless the reaction includes recognition, the contact is fruitless, the meeting useless. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
The Holy Spirit dwells in and acts through the spirit of man, and not through either nerve center, which have both to be under the control of the spirit. If in any way he is given ground, exempli gratia, if the cerebral nerves cease to act by “letting the mind go blank,” and the vegetative nerves are awakened to act in their “streams of life” though the body, then “claiming the blood” cannot protect us from the enemy. No claiming of the precious blood of Christ will prevent these physical laws acting when the conditions for action are fulfilled. Hence, the strange fact which has perplexed many, that abnormal experiences manifestly contrary to the Spirit of God have taken place while the person was earnestly repeating words about the “blood.” Moreover, the arousing of the “vegetative nerves” to such abnormal activity that “floods of life” have appeared to pour through the whole body—the enemy whispering at the same moment. “This is divine!”—(1) dulls the mind and makes it inert in action, (2) causes a craving in the recipient for more of this “divine” life, (3) leads to the danger of ministration of it to others, and all that follows, as the path is pursued in honest faith and confidence of being “specially advanced” in the life of God. Should any who are reading this discover their own case depicted, let them thank God for knowledge of the truth, and (1) simply reject by an attitude of will all that is not of God; (2) consent to trust God in His Word without any “experiences”; (3) stand on Romans 6.11, with James 4.7, in respect to the Adversary, and on John 16.12 in respect to the Holy Spirit. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
It is important to invigorate the dry bones of being, finitude, essence, existence, potentiality, actuality, and teleology by interpreting them in terms of courage, power, anxiety, estrangement, fulfilment, and the ambiguities of life. Whether this procedure is a happy wedding of metaphysics to psychology or a betrayal of one or the other is a problem which we leave to the philosophers to decide. However, there is an awareness that pure ontology is too strong a medicine for the modern palate. When one reflects upon man’s existential condition, the mind is positively staggered by the enormity and complexity of the task. Who is competent to venture into “all the areas of culture” in order to formulate man’s basic problems? Yet this is what the method of correlation requires: The analysis of the human situation employes materials made available by man’s creative self-interpretation in all realms of culture. Philosophy contributes, but so do poetry, drama, the novel, therapeutic psychology, and sociology. The theologian organizes these materials in relation to the answer given by the Christian message. They only way such a project could conceivably be executed would be to suppose from the beginning that all these cultural areas are ultimately rooted in ontology. The human situation is structured according to his basic metaphysical concepts. The divine is the true Subject to the human being, and thus from Spirit to life, and the Kingdom of God to history. Each quest thus has its own character and its own personality. This it shapes by the act of dedicating itself to the incorruptible integrity of the higher life. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
After the Sacramento Fire Department was formed nearly 200 years ago, it was not long before it was realized that they could provide first aid. When you are hurting, call the fire department. They started with this basic first aid, Red Cross first responders, and the like, and then moved into the emergency medical technician field—you know the men and women with the big patches—which elevated the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) platform just a little bit higher. And then came paramedicine. Shortly after their introduction to paramedicine, the fire department began getting called to chemical spills and releases, because, when it came down to it, no one else would respond or take care of them due to the serious nature of these incidents. The hazardous waste team if referred to as the “mop” n’ glow crew.” However, anyone who has been around an incident involving hazardous materials, especially a bad one, knows that the haz-mat technicians are definitely the people you want to rely on when the ethyl-methyl-bad-stuff ends up on the ground or in the air. Please be sure to donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to make sure they have the resources necessary to protect the community. Also, Kevin McCarty is running for Mayor of Sacramento. He is a Democrat for Sacramento—on the City Council and in the State Assembly, he had led on housing and homelessness. Sacramento Firefighters endorse McCarthy for Mayor. 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 18 of 18
Ever since the dawn of humankind, people have believed in ghosts. The fear of the unknown—the certainty that there is something in The Winchester Mystery House, bigger than life, beyond its pale, and more powerful than anything walking the Earth—has persisted for nearly century a half. These fears had their origin from Mrs. Winchester and her staff. To them, there were good and evil forces at work in the mansion and on the estate, both ruled over by supernatural beings, and to some degree capable of being influenced by the attitudes of humans and séances. The fear of death was, of course, one of the strongest emotions, which lead Mrs. Winchester to construct the World’s most beautiful and bizarre mansion over nearly forty years of non-stop construction.
In 1906, Daisy, Mrs. Winchester’s niece told a friend in confidence that the hauntings of The Winchester Mansion were not the usual array of footfalls, presences, and the dog starting at someone unseen. It was around the middle of January, Daisy and Mrs. Winchester were having supper, when Daisy looked up, she saw a man. He was standing by the fireplace wearing a white shirt, dark trousers with suspenders, and glasses with round metal frames. He was tall and sturdy. Then suddenly he was gone. No disappearing act or anything fancy, just vanished. Then the brass candlesticks next flew off the mantelpiece, going towards the back door. Everything flew towards the door. Mrs. Winchester nor Diasy could account for the occurrences; but both agreed in attributing the spiritual demonstration to powers higher than human.
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/
Ghostly Encounters
Time moved slowly in Llanada Villa, if at all. Footsteps echoed along the corridors and up stairwells, but the sound seemed muted and out of synch with any motion amidst the shadows. It was dark out when my eyes fluttered open. Evening sunlight slanted across the countryside in a blaze of copper. Llanada Villa was hidden by trees and set in large Victorian gardens, the elegant mansion could only be glimpsed by walkers. Red roses bloomed on the trellis by the from doors. A cool breeze stirred the leaves of the shrubbery. If beauty really went on decaying, as the ancients say, by this time there could be no beauty left. Those who had the powers to see beyond the beautiful flowers, trees and towers, the inviting lawns, or the richness of the interior, when the doors are thrown open, knew my home harboured a terrifying evil and those who lived within its walls faced unspeakable dangers. A sound pierced the stillness like a clap of thunder. My heart raced, but I walked through the downstairs parlour and up the stairs. At the top of the landing, I pushed open the door, and my eyes still adjusting from the darkness to the light, walked down the long halls, dark, wining hallway past several bedrooms, turned the corner and headed toward the Grand Ballroom. As I rounded the corner, I stumbled over something on the floor. Heinz Bongartz, one of the carpenters, lay face down on the mahogany floor, his whole body scratched and bruised, his skull smashed to pieces, and blood everywhere. Someone had taken this man straight to the Devil. No one—no one—could imagine my fear. I was struggling with my own conscience about what to do. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
Poor weather seemed to deepen my malaise: the winds that buffeted the house, shuddering the windows and ratting the doors, inflicted particular torment. If I was alone in the house, I did not know. I gingerly stepped around Heinz, and fled down the hallway, toward the front of the house, through the morning room. From the window, I could see huntsmen mounted on horses as black as the Devil, wrapped in black cloaks. Hoods drawn right over their faces. Eyes glowing red. They give me a scare causing me to shiver. I felt my heart pounding, felt the blood stirring in my body, and began shuffling away from the wind, deeper into a passage. I walked toward the glow and away from the light. That is when the screaming started. At first, it was so loud that I thought it was some strange, high-pitched thunder from the storm that was still darkening the sky beyond the windows. However, it was too high, too shrill, and lasted too long to be part of the storm, even though it sounded like nothing human. The noise seemed to come from above…from up the stairwell on the darkened third floor…but it seemed to echo from the walls, from down stairs, even from the pipes and metal radiator. It went on and on. I froe and turned toward the doorway and stared at it for a full moment after the terrible noise stopped, expecting the source of the scream to appear there. A dark shape appeared in the gloom of the doorway. When I narrowed my eyes to make out the visage, I gasped, for was this not the same countenance that I had seen in the mirror the previous morning, the reflection of my own late mother? My eyes were swelled with crying. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
It was so cold, forcing me to wrap a shawl more closely around my shoulders. I shivered and longed to return to the warmth of my bed. It was not Mother, of course, how could it be? The rain began almost immediately then, falling heavily, great drops tumbling on the roof. I shivered again; a ghost walked over my grave terrifying me into the depths of my very soul. I began to fear that I might not sleep this night, so certain was I that I was surrounded by the spirits of those who had left their corporeal form being but had not yet been admitted through the gates of Heaven and so were left to trawl through my home, crying aloud, desperate to be heard, causing disarray and torment wherever they went, uncertain when they would be released to the peace of the afterlife and the quiet promise of eternal rest. I was terrified at the horror I knew was sure to come my way. It was dark in the room and illuminated only by the glow of the reddened coals with the colour of the sporadic flames. I fell asleep quite soon after going to bed but it was a fitful and unhappy sleep. My dreams were supplanted by nightmares. I encountered spirits where I should have undertaken adventures. My landscape was dark graveyards and irregular vistas rather than mansions and castles. However, nevertheless I slept through the night, and when I woke, feeling groggy and out of sorts, the morning light was already coming through my curtains. I looked at my clock; it was almost half past seven and I cursed myself, knowing that I would certainly be late for breakfast. Plucking up all my courage, I put my bar feet out of bed. It was cold in the room. The chill seemed to have entered into my very bones. I pushed the covers aside. Very quietly, I cautiously tiptoed to the door in case the floorboards creak. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
The morning fog was beginning to descend on the garden and a persistent wind was forcing its way down the chimney, tracking a path along the stonework. I gradually learned about the horrific murder of Heinz Bongartz. However, my heat bleed for this distressed, and the temptations I was exposed to. I resolved to tarry to see how things went. “Mrs. Winchester!” Millicent, the housemaid’s voice interrupted. As I made my way to the breakfast room, Millicent obediently stood next to the to the door. As Millicent opened the door, “Mrs. Winchester, you’re getting a late start. Maybe you need to stop consulting the spirits so late a night?” she said. “And so I am to be exposed, in my own house, and out of my house, to the whole World, by such a sauce-box as you?” I replied. “No, Mrs. Winchester, and I hope your honour won’t be angry with me; it is not I that exposed you, if I say nothing but the truth.” Millicent, I am very much displeased with the freedoms you have taken with my name.” Millicent silently went over to the table and delicately placed my meal before me. Then she went to put another log on the fire. Millicent, serve the tea, and then you can go. I will probably have a little rest after you leave, so you do not need to return until four.” Millicent bobbed a curtsy and went over to a table covered in burgundy velvet that was located near the door to pour my cup of she. She also removed a thick linen napkin, revealing a plate piled high with slices of ham, Swiss cheese, and soft rolls. Millicent signed, since she knew that even the tea would remain untouched by me as long as I was handling the delicate satin material, but she did appreciate the gesture. Thank goodness for the excellent breakfast served this morning. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
Later that evening, a peculiar incident occurred. At about midnight, I heard a chanting ritual whose weird cadence echoed unpleasantly through the house, there came a sudden gust of chill wind, and a faint obscure trembling of the earth which everyone noted. At the same time, Zip exhibited phenomenal traces of fright. This was the prelude to a sharp thunderstorm, anomalous for the season, which brought with it such a crash that I believed the house had been struck. Daisy and I rushed upstairs to see what damage had been done, but Millicent met us at the door to the attic; pale, resolute, and portentous, with an almost fearsome combination of triumph and seriousness on her face. She assured us that the house had not really been struck, and that the storm would soon be over. We paused, and looking through a window saw that she was indeed right; for the lightning flashed father and father off, whilst the trees ceased to bend in the strange frigid gust from the water. The thunder sank to a sort of dull mumbling chuckle and finally died away. Stars came out. A chill shot through me and threated to reduce me to the very state from which I was emerging. It was of a quality profoundly disturbing to the soul. Ever since I had been in my home, I had known that something was amiss, and at last it dawned upon me what it was. I just remember I got my chamber for I knew nothing further of the matter till afterwards; for I fell into a fit with my terror, and there I lay. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
The following day, I took a turn or two in the garden, but in sight of my home, for fear of the worst; and breathed upon my hand to dry my eyes, because I would not be too disobedient. Close upon this, there was a thundering and with it came a momentary darkening of the daylight, though the sunset was still an hour distant. A second later all previous memories were effaced by the wailing scream which burst out with frantic explosiveness and gradually changed from a paroxysm of a diabolic and hysterical laughter. I ran back into my home and was greeting by Daisy. We traversed up the stairs just in time to see a cryptic soul creep through an opening in the door to nowhere, as we glimpsed the frightful vista of the void beyond. There was something hideous, blasphemous, and abnormal about it. As it was, I was seized my niece in her arms and bore her quickly downstairs before she could notice the voices which had so horribly disturbed me. Even so, however, I was not quick enough to escape catching something myself which caused me to stagger dangerously with my burden. The cry had been evidently heard by others. Every minute, as it grew near, my terrors increased; and sometimes I had great courage, and sometimes none at all; and I thought I should faint. “Answer me then, I bid you!” I shouted. And it did. However, the voice had a depth and hollowness which I could not comprehend. “Aunt Sarah, all of this must be stopped or you will be made ill and the keeping of servants become an impossibility!” In our tracks, however, I paused at the sounds which I heard proceeding from the now disused library. Books were apparently being flung about and papers wildly rustled. For the fright of fainting, Daisy rushed me to the Crystal Bedroom. The strangeness was a poignant sensation, and almost clawed at my chest as I strove to see just what was wrong around me. Something was indeed wrong, and tangibly as well as spiritually so. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
It can happen to anyone: Ghost are, after all, people who had unfinished business on their minds when they passed on. Ghosts are not figments of the imagination. Those who have studied parapsychology have come to understand that human life does continue beyond what we commonly call death. Once in a while, there are extraordinary circumstances when death occurs, and these exceptional situations create what we popularly call ghost and haunted houses.
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/
Why Art Thou So Foolish and Fearful!
I was spending the first week of January alone in Llanada villa. A combination of circumstances had driven me to this drastic course: my nearest relations were enjoying winter sports abroad, and the friends who had been kindly anxious to replace them had an infectious complaint in the house. Doubtless I might have found someone else to keep company with me. “However,” I reflected, “most of them have made up their parties, and, after all, it is only for three or four days at most that I have to fend for myself, and it will be just as well if I can get a move on with my blueprints. I might she the time by going down to the garden and listening to my estate about plans to incorporate in the architecture.” The first day alone in Llanada Villa, it was so stormy that I got no father the designing stained-glass windows. As I sat in the Hall of Fires, I felt uncomfortable, and this feeling persisted. I felt like I was being watched by some unseen force, and my nerves began to tense under the strain. I reflected on how some of my staff had left not because they wanted to but because they were driven, driven by forces greater than themselves that they could not resist. On this very night, I had seen vivid apparition of my butler, then miles away, in San Francisco. He was a plump, amicable man who I distinctly saw walking down the hall in a bathrobe, with blooding running down his leg. A small pool of blood was forming on the floor. The frightened me terribly. My hair stood up on my head and chills shook my body. The apparition looked so stern that my heart failed me, and I wished myself anywhere but there, though I had before been summoning up my courage. “Good Heaven,” said I to myself, “give me the courage to stand before this spirit. O soften him, or harden me!” I knew this was a glimpse into eternity. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
The following day, I received news that my butler, Chaleb Heroldsbach, had died after being attacked by a dog. My home is built in what some have called a “trinity triangle,” it has forged a mystical link with other pilgrimage sites and is supposed to help bring the Devil’s power on Earth to an end. This is being prevented by Satan, however, with the help of The Curse of the Winchester Fortune. That evening, I was awakened at three o’clock in the morning, seemingly for no reason with the same uncanny feeling that something was wrong. Being a sensible person, I put all my energies into polishing furniture and getting newly added rooms into proper condition. However, somewhere not so far away, a baby was crying: a mournful wail of a sound that—though it was surely human—reminded me of the noises the coyotes would make some nights. After a few moments of listening, the baby’s cry seemed to falter for a moment, and I feared it would fade completely before I could find the little darling. Then, the infant seemed to find a new seam of grief to mine, and the wail rose up again, more plaintive than ever. I was alone, but trying to figure out which direction the sound was coming from. I mused for a moment, and realized a lifetime of suffering had caught up with me. I knew in my heart that I deserved to know everything, after all I have been through. I have earned the truth. Maybe the dead are close to the threshold of reality in this house. I only know it is real. I have seen them. Others have seen them. They are hybrids. Sometimes there is a kind of beauty in them. However, sometime all I see is ugly sin. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
The sky was dark and cloudy, and by the time I woke up, I could hear a steady soaking rain pounding on the roof. I was preparing breakfast in one of the kitchens. As I was buttering a piece of toast, I happened to glance up toward the doorway. There, immaculately dressed, stood a man. The stranger, I noticed, wore shiny black shoes, black pants, and a white shirt. I could see him so clearly that I could make out the way the man’s jet-black hair was parted. Immediately, I was shocked that he had somehow entered my house, and I was about to greet him, when it occurred to me that I had not heard the door opening or any other sound—no footsteps, nothing. I turned around to grab my revolver, but by the time I turned around, the man was gone like a mist. I was not too frightened by what I had witnessed, I was growing accustomed to apparitions. I had often wondered what had taken place a century and a half on the land this eighteen-room farmhouse I purchased was on, and what the former owner really had been. However, it is fortunate that they carpenters were all strong men of action and simple, orthodox religionists, for with more subtle introspectiveness and mental complexity they would have fared ill indeed. Herford Hulsmann was the most disturbed; but even he outgrew the darkest shadow, and smothered memories in prayer. While I was alone, I did my best in the blotting out of unwholesome images, and was thankful that the carpenters, Daisy, and other caretakers would be returning to Llanada Villa soon. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
My house was not altogether liked by sensitive people because of the sounds heard here at night. It was said that I entertained strange visitors, and the lights seen from my windows were not always the same colours. The knowledge I displayed concerning long-dead persons and long-forgotten events was considered distinctly unwholesome. Frau Maassen swore that on 13 June 1889, in the fruit orchard, that “forty Witches and the Blacke Man were wont to meete in the Woodes behind Mrs. Winchester’s house.” Then several people claimed to have found William’s unfinished manuscript in his handwriting, couched in a cipher none could read. After a year of possessed this manuscript, Mr. Maassen had intensely and feverishly tried to decipher, he never stated whether or not he had succeeded. I confronted Mr. Maassen, “Why are you so foolish and fearful! You have done no harm! What, if you fear an unjust judge, when you are innocent, would you do before a just one, if you were guilty? Have courage, Mr. Maassen; you know the worst! And how easy a choice poverty and honesty is, rather than plenty and wickedness.” “Mrs. Winchester, do not let your heart ake for me?—I am sure mined flutters about like a new-caught bird in a cage,” said Mr. Maassen. “O how can wicked men seem so steady and untouched with such black hearts, while poor innocents stand, like malefactors, before them!” Mr. Maassen cheered himself up; but yet I could tell his poor heart sunk, and his spirits were quite broken. Everything that stirred, he thought was to call her to her account. Shortly after, he restored to a sojourn abroad, and did not return to claim his lands. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
Mr. Maassen had apparently been careful to destroy most of his correspondence, but the citizens who took action in 1892 found and preserved a few letters and papers which excited their wonder. There were cryptic formulae and diagrams in his and other hands which Mr. Maassen either copied with care or had photographed, and one extremely mysterious letter was written in blood. I had to learn to live with my ghosts, especially considering some of these had ben here before me. Perhaps some of these ghosts could even become friendly. One night at dinner, Daisy, myself and Zip were enjoying stuffed pheasant, when an enormous crash shook the house. It felt as if a boulder had fallen on the parlour floor. When we rushed to the parlour, everything was in order, nothing misplaced. We said a silent prayer for the souls of the disturbed. However, moments later, things got worse. The lights started going off and on by themselves. When we tried to return to the dining room and finish supper, the atmosphere was so thick that we could not get near the table. Enveloped by the strong vibrations, I felt myself levitating, and when I came to my senses, I was lying on the floor. I had given Daisy such a scare. Daisy clearly senses the presences of the spirits and she started to cry. “Oh, God, it can’t be true, Aunt Sarah,” she said. With a piercing scream, she ran up the stairs, weeping out of control. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
“I have great trouble, and some comfort, to acquaint you with. The trouble is, that my good lady began to have her bad nights, and complained to me and other persons, in particular what discomfort she suffered from her pillow and bedclothes. She said she must buy some to suit her, and should do her own marketing. And accordingly brought home a parcel which she said was of the right quality, but where she bought it we had then no knowledge, only they were marked in thread with a coronet and a bird. The merchant said they were of a sort not commonly met with and very fine, and Mrs. Winchester said they were the comfortablest she ever used, and she slept now both soft and deep. Also the feather pillows were the best sorted and her head would sink into them as if they were a cloud: which I have myself remarked several times when I came to wake her of a morning, her face being almost hid by the pillow closing over it. I had never any communication with Dr. Wayland after I came back to Llanada Villa, but one day when he passed me in the garden and asked me whether I was not looking for another service, to which I answered I was very well suited where I was, but he said I was a tickleminded maidan and he doubted not he should soon hear I was on the World again, which indeed proved true.”
Dr. Wayland is next taken up where she left off.
“On the 5th I was called up out of my bed soon after it was light—that is about five—with a message that Mrs. Winchester was dead or dying. Making my way to her house, I found there was no doubt which was the truth. All the persons in the house expect the one that let me in were already in her chamber and standing about her bed, but none touching her. She was stretched in the midst of the bed, on her back, without any disorder, and indeed had the appearance of one ready laid out for burial. Her hands, I think, were even crossed on her breast. The only thing not usual was that nothing was to be see of her face, the two ends of the pillow or bolster appearing to be closed quite over it. These I immediately pulled apart, at the same time rebuking those present for not at once coming to the assistance of their master. However, I was informed that only one person had stayed with her until her dying moment and most had fallen asleep. She looked at me and shook her head, having no more hope than myself that there was anything but a corpse before us. Indeed it was plain to anyone possessed of the least experience that Mrs. Winchester was not only dead, but had died of suffocation. Nor could it be conceived that her death was accidentally caused by the mere folding of the pillow over her face. How should she not, feeling the oppression, have lifted her hands to put it away? whereas not a fold of the sheet which was closely gathered about her, as I now observed, was disordered.
“I could tell no more, at least without opening the body, then we already knew. As to any person entering the room with evil purpose (which was the next point to be cleared), it was visible that the bolts of the door were burst from their stanchions, and the stanchions broken away from the door-post by main forced; and there was a sufficient body of witness, the smith among them, to testify that this had been done but a few minutes before I came. The chamber being, moreover, at the top of the house, the window was neither easy of access nor did it show any sign of an exist made that way, either by marks upon the sill or footprints below upon soft mould. My evidence forms of course part of the report of the inquest, the large organs were in a healthy state and there was coagulation of blood in various parts of the body. My verdict was ‘Death by visitation of spirits.’ Upon further consideration, I think I can divine a reason for Mrs. Winchester’s death. It related to the rifling of her mansion. This is the property of a noble family. The outrage was not that of a natural death. The object, it seemed likely, was theft. The account is blunt and terrible. I shall not quote it here. A dealer in San Francisco suffered heavy penalties as a receiver of stolen goods in connexion with the affair.
“Mrs. Winchester has left us all much grieved for the loss of her; for she was a good lady, and kind to all her caretakers. Much I feared, that as I was taken by her ladyship to wait upon her person, I should be quite destitute again. Mrs. Winchester has given mourning and a year’s wages to all her caretakers; and she game me with her own hand four golden guineas, and some silver, which were in her pocket when she died. And I sent Daisy those four guineas for her comfort; for Providence will not let me want: and so you may pay some old debt with part, and keep the other part to comfort yourself.” 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/
What if I Do Not Believe in Ghosts?
Once when I was little, my dad took me to this placed called Sodom Hill. It must be some kind of gateway because the curious thing is, you feel like you are driving down a hill along this road. This was the first time that I believe I saw a ghost. As our carriage passed by Saint Mary Parish, a woman was standing near the church, starring at us. However, she was really looking at my father. Though the weather was warm, she was wearing a long black dress beneath a hooded cloak. She was hugging herself, and she looked cold. Beneath the hood, her face was pale, and even from a distance I could tell that she was distresses. And she was very beautiful. The hood slipped down to her shoulders. I saw her hair was red. Her dark eyes were trusting and innocent. And suddenly I knew where I had seen her before. Onn the Rocky Hill-Glastonbury Ferry. She had been weeping on deck. The beautiful maiden with the red hair kept staring at my father. He did not notice. I was curious to know if my father could see the woman. I said, “Father, what is that pretty tree over there? By the tower of the church?” I pointed toward the woman. The woman saw me point. She looked at me, questioningly, but only for a moment. Then she looked back at my father. The woman did not care if I was being immodest. She just looked through me, just as she had on the deck of the ferry. How had she gotten here, and what did she want from me and my father? All this seemed to take forever. However, I do not think more than a minute passed before my father said to me, “What tree? I don’t see any trees near the tower of the church.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
“Father, what do you see?” I asked. “The lawn,” he said. I watched him for a sign. I could not believe that he could not see the lady with crimson hair near the tower of the church. “Nothing else? I said. “No one?” “Nothing,” he replied. “No one? Who would be there?” When I looked again there was no one there. The woman had vanished. I felt as if I had lost something. “What’s wrong?” said my father. “Nothing,” I said. “I think I must have been having a daydream.” “Poor Sarah,” said my father. “It must be the sun. Let’s get you inside and get you something to drink.” We made our way back home. My mother was in the garden, kneeling down among the tall plants and rut niblicks. My father poured me some milk and gave me a cracknel, baked by my mother. “Eat this,” he said. “It’ll help you get your strength back.” My father nibbled on one himself. I told myself: No man sees a ghost and starts nibbling a cookie like nothing happened. If he said there was no woman near the tower of the church, it meant he had not seen her. It meant something was seriously wrong with me. I had not been feeling all that well lately. I felt as if the colours of everything had gotten a little brighter, and sounds a little louder, and when people speak to me, their voices have a tiny echo, like I am hearing them from the far end of a tunnel. It does not happen all of the time. I have these little spells, and then they pass, and I am normal again. Spirits whispered in the rustling leaves, ghost lurked in the murky nooks, the deep baying of a hound floated up out of the distance, an owl answered with his sepulchral note. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
Millions of spiritual creatures walk the Earth unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep. What place do these spirit beings hold in the scheme of creation which by some are thought neither to have stood fast when the rebel angels fell, nor to have joined with them to the full pitch of their transgression? It was the middle of the moonlight in October night with heavy rain underfoot, I was sitting by the fire—it was a cold evening—and I stretched out my hand towards the warmth, and just then the fire-irons, or at least the poker, fell over towards me with a great clatter. There resourced over the estate and the surrounding land a series of cries which brought sleepy heads to every window; we all saw a ghost ship. It was a 26-gun frigate. There were distant gunshots, and I could feel the throb of titanic and thunderous words resounding in the upper air. Muskets flashed and cracked, and the flaming ship fell to the ground. A second flaming thing appeared, and a shriek of human origin was plainly distinguished. Then just before dawn when a howling darkness descended upon the ships and they vanished. As I ran up the stairs, I hit what felt like an ice wall and was momentarily stopped in my tracks. The air around me became instantly chilled, and although every fireplace was lit, I was cold and could see my breathe. I was then able to get up the last six steps, but when I turned around, I saw an opalescent fog crystalize into the form of a woman. She wore a long dress, and a hat, and when she turned towards me, I realized in was the woman with red hair that I had seen at the tower of the church with my father when I was a child. In her face, I could see uncountable horrors and sorrows written in the depth of her dark eyes. She then vanished, and the air around me returned to its warm state. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
There was certainly a time when I was so much harassed by my dreams that I could not keep them to myself, but would tell them to my friends. There was a dream which had come to me several times of late, and even more than once in a night. It was to this effect, that I seemed to myself to wake under an extreme compulsion to rise and go outdoors. So I would dress myself and go down to the garden door. By the door there stood a spade which I must take, and go out into the garden, and at a particular place in the boxwood hedges, somewhat clear, and upon which the moon shone (for there was always in my dream a crescent moon), I would feel myself forced to dig. And after some time, the spade would uncover something light-coloured, which I would perceive to be a stiff, linen or woolen, and this I must clear with my hands. It was always the same: of the size of a man and shaped like the chrysalis of a moth, with the folds showing a promise of an opening at one end. I could not describe how gladly I would have left all at this stage and run to the house, but I mist not escape so easily. So with many groans, and knowingly only too well what to expect, I parted these folds of stuff, or, as it sometimes seemed to be, membrane, and disclosed a head covered with a smooth pink skin, which breaking as the creature stirred, show me my own face in a state of death. Upon ever recurrence of this dream, I woke and found myself, as it were, fighting for my breath. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
Moments later a chill wind blew up. It produced a kind of clutching, amorphous fear beyond that of the tomb or the charnel-house. Close upon it came the awful voice which no hapless hearer will ever be able to forget. It thundered out of the sky like a doom, and windows rattled as its echoes dies away. It was deep and musical; powerful as a bass organ, but evil as the forbidden books in the secret library. What it said, no one can tell, for it spoke in an unknown tongue. Objects were being hurled about the room. Puddles of water appeared on the floor. The sheet and blankets were torn off the bed. Then I was alarmed when I heard a very loud vibration as if a hole were being drilled through the all. I went into the chamber next to mind and saw that a Victorian fireplace had been ripped from its casing and hurled upon the floor. A wailing distinctly burst out. It was almost articulate, though no one could trace the exact words; and at one point it seemed to verge toward the confines of diabolic and hysterical laughter. Then a yell of utter, ultimate fright and stark madness wrenched from scores of demon throats—a yell which came strong and clear despite the depth from which it must have burst; after which a darkness and silence ruled all things. Spirals of acrid smoke ascended, though no flames appeared. This must have been the witches’ Sabbath. Death does not mean that your loved one’s have left your mind, and your mind sends messages to your eyes that sometimes have nothing to do with what you actually see. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
The Winchester Mystery House
Santa Clare Valley was in an uproar after the death of Mrs. Winchester. On Wednesday (October 3, 1923) consequently on the circulation of a report that the household goods of Sarah Winchester were being smashed and removed by some unknown agency. All day long crowds of excited people wended their way towards the Winchester Mansion, drawn thither by the accounts of the mysterious occurrences said to have been witnessed by the inmates and others. “As I enter the door I myself saw an eleven-foot-tall 18th century George I burl walnut longcase clock by James Marwick levitate several feet into the air before relocating itself to the other side of the room. After hearing what the folks had to say, I was joining in the conversation, when a late 18th century crystal chandelier began to raise in a slanting direction over my head and then fell as my feet, smashing into bits. I had not the slightest belief in the supernatural. I cannot account for what I saw. No one was nearer to the chandelier than myself and, as far as I saw, there was no cause for the phenomenon. The room was dimly lighted by a lamp. We were talking about things, and the caretaker were saying, “It is a very mysterious thing,” with his back turned Neoclassical Italian Crystal vase suddenly flew up slantingly over his head, and fell down and smashed at his feet. The caretaker looked at the mess on the floor, and thinking the devil was in the place, he left and went home. About half-a-dozen people were in the parlour whilst these things happened.
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/
They Have Everything a Man Could Want
Twenty-first century man is living in one of the World’s most challenging periods, unprecedented in history. People are hollering about enforcing gun control, but then have allowed 14 million people illegal immigrant into this country without background checks. One cannot even say that they are “undocumented” because some do have fake identity documents or stolen identities. These days people can rent or buy guns on the underground market. While allowing states to legalize marijuana, and considering it federally, Americans seem to be unaware that in 2021, approximately 107,000 people died from drug overdose. In 2023, approximately 46,000 people died from gun shot wounds. How can we restrict the rights of Americans to bear arms, which they may need to protect themselves, but allow people into this country that we know nothing about? Already, county, city, state, and federal budgets are insufficient, the country is running a historic deficit, record numbers of people are homeless, people are underpaid, there is soaring inflation, record high home prices and rents, and these refugees are costing taxpayers $20 billion. As anyone can see, the country is in a state of crisis. Furthermore, if a group of people carried out 911, think about the risk we are putting the nation in by allowing 14 million people to invade the county without knowing anything about them. Whatever it is, White Guilt, greed, racism, or malicious intentions, America need come to their senses and understand we are facing a greater risk than we ever have in the past. This is a dynamic period when man has almost unlimited choices for good and evil. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
In all civilizations of the World our modern epoch, in both socialistic and capitalistic societies, we are face with the compelling need to understand more clearly the forces that dominate our World and to modify our attitudes and behaviour accordingly. If our best minds are persuaded and assembled to concentrate on the nature of this new epoch in evolutionary and moral history, this it the only way it will happen. For we are confronted with a very basic change. Man has intervened in the evolutionary process, and he must better appreciate this fact with its influence on his life and work, and then try to develop the wisdom to direct the process, to recognize the mutable and the immutable elements in his moral nature and the relationship between freedom and order. Science now permits us to say that “objective” nature, the World which alone is “real” to us as the one in which we all, scientists included, are born, love, hate, work, reproduce and die, is the World given us by our senses and our minds—a World in which the Sun crosses the Sky from East to West, a World of three-dimensional space, a World of values which we, and we alone, must make. It is true that scientific knowledge about macroscopic or subatomic events may enable us to perform many acts we were unable to perform before. However, it is as inhabitants of this human World that we perform them and must finally recognize that there is a certain kind of scientific “objectivity” that can lead us to know everything but to understand nothing. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Man sees in two ways: with his physical eyes, in an empirical sensing or seeing by direct observation, and also by an indirect envisaging. He possesses in addition to his two sensing eyes a single, image-making, spiritual and intellectual Eye. And it is the in-sight of this inner Eye that purifies and makes sacred our understanding of the nature of things; for that which was shut fast has been opened by the command of the inner Eye. And we become aware that to believe is to see. The creator in any realm must surrender himself to a passionate pursuit of his labours, guided by deep personal intimations of an as yet undiscovered reality. We must learn to unlock a consciousness that at first sight may seem to be remote but is proved on acquaintance to be surprisingly immediate, since it stems from the need to reconcile the life of action with the life of contemplation, of practice with principle, of thought with feeling, of knowing with being. For the whole meaning of self lies within the observer, and its shadow is cast naturally on the object observer. The divorce of man from his work, the division of man into an eternal and temporal half, results in an estrangement of man from his creative source, and ultimately from his fellows and from himself. If it does not converge in the person, the Universe itself is a vast entity where man will be lost; for material forces or energies, or impersonal ideals, or scientifically objectified learning are meaningless without their relevance for human life and their power to disclose, even in the dark tendencies of man’s nature, a low of transcending man’s arbitrariness. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
For the personal is a far higher category than the abstract universal. Personality itself is an emotional, not an intellectual, experience; and the greatest achievement of knowledge is to combine the personal within a larger unity, just as in the higher stages of development the parts that make up the whole acquire greater and greater independence and individuality within the context of the whole. Reality itself is the harmony which gives to the component particulars of a thing the equilibrium of the whole. And whole physical observations are ordered with direct references to the experimental conditions, we have in sensate experience to do with separate observations whose correlation can only be indicated by their belonging to the wholeness of mind. Man’s relationship with his creativity demands a clarification that can widen and deepen his understanding of the nature of reality. Work is made for man, not man for work. There is a sacramenta character of work, which is more easily achieved when the principal objects of our attention have taken on a symbolic form that is generally recognized and accepted; and this suggests a law in the relationship of a person and his chosen discipline: that only when the spiritual, the creative, life is strong enough to insist on some expression through symbols is it valuable. For no work can be based on material, technological, historical, or physical aspirations alone. The human race is not entering upon a new phase of evolutionary consciousness and progress, a phase in which, impelled by the forces of evolution itself, it must converge upon itself and convert itself into one single human organism infused by a reconciliation of knowing and being in their inner unity and destined to make a qualitative leap into a higher form of consciousness as we know it, or otherwise destroy itself. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
For the entire Universe is one vast field, potential for incarnation and achieving incandescence here and there of reason and spirit. And in the whole World of quality with which by the nature of our minds we necessarily make contact, we here and there apprehend pre-eminent value. If we recognize that we are unable to focus our attention on the particulars of a whole without diminishing our comprehension of the whole, and of course, conversely, we can focus on the whole only by diminishing our comprehension of the particulars which constitute the whole, only then can this be achieved. The kind of knowledge afforded by mathematical physics ever since the seventeenth century has come more and more to furnish mankind with an ideal for all knowledge. This error about the nature of knowledge needs to be exposed. For knowledge is a process, not a product and the results of scientific investigation do not carry with them self-evident implications. There are now, however, signs of new centers of resistance among men everywhere in almost all realms of knowledge. Many share the conviction that a deep-seated moral and philosophical reform is needed concerning our understanding of the nature of man and the nature of knowledge in relation to the work man is performing, in relation to his credo and his life. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
We are at a crossroads: one road leads to a completely mechanized society with man as a helpless cog in the machine—if not to destruction by a thermonuclear war; the other to a renaissance of humanism and hope—to a society that puts technique in the service of man’s well-being. We can find the necessary new solutions with the help of reason and passionate love for life, and not through irrationality and hate. For many of the young generation who belittle the value of traditional thought, keep in mind the most radical development must have its continuity with the past; we cannot progress by throwing away the best achievements of the human mind—and to be young is not enough. “For him that is joined to all the living, there is hope,” reports Ecclesiastes 9.4. A specter is stalking in our midst whom only a few see with clarity. It is not the old ghost of communism or fascism. It is a new specter: a completely mechanized society, devoted to maximal material output and consumption, directed by computers; and in this social process, man himself is being transformed into a pater of the total machine, well fed and entertained, yet passive, unalive, and with little feeling. With the victory of the new society, individualism and privacy will have disappeared; feelings toward others will be engineered by psychological conditioning and other devices, or drugs, which also serve a new kind of introspective experience. In the technetronic society, the trend seems to be towards the aggregation of the individual support of millions of uncoordinated citizens, easily within the reach of magnetic an attractive personality effectively exploiting the latest communication techniques to manipulate emotions and control reason. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Perhaps its most ominous aspect at present is that we seem to lose control over our own system. We execute the decisions which our computer calculations make for us. We as human beings have no aims except producing and consuming more and more. We will nothing, nor do we not-will anything. We are threatened with extinction by nuclear weapons and drugs and with inner deadness by the passiveness which our exclusion from responsible decision making engenders. How did it happen? How did man, at the very height of this victory over nature, become the prisoner of his own creation and in serious danger of destroying himself? In the search for scientific truth, man came across knowledge that he could use for the domination of nature. He had tremendous success. However, in the one-sided emphasis on technique and material consumption, man lost touch with himself, with life. Having lost religious faith and the humanistic values bound up with it, he concentrated on technical and material values and lost the capacity for deep emotional experiences, for the joy of sadness that accompany them. The machine he built became so powerful that it developed its own program, which now determines man’s own thinking. At the moment, one of the gravest symptoms of our system is the fact that our economy rests upon drugs and on the principle of maximal consumption. We have a well-functioning economic system under the condition that we are producing goods which threaten us with physical destruction, that we transform the individual into a total passive consumer and thus deaden him, and that we have created a bureaucracy which makes the individual feel impotent. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Are we confronted with a tragic, insolvable dilemma? Must we produce sick people in order to have a healthy economy, or can we use our material resources, our inventions, our computers to serve the ends of man? Must individuals be passive and dependent in order to have strong and well-functioning organizations? Among those who recognize the revolutionary and drastic change in human life which the “megamachine” could bring about are the writers who say that the new society is unavoidable, and hence that there is no point in arguing about its merits. At the same time, they are sympathetic to the new society, although they express slight misgivings about what it might do to man as we know him. There is a dreadful lack of humanness. If an increasing number of people become fully aware of the threat the technological World poses to man’s personal and spiritual life, if they determine to asset their freedom by upsetting the course of this evolution, the dehumanized society may not be the victor. The “megamachine” started with its first manifestations in Egyptian and Babylonian societies. If technology is permitted to follow its own logic, it will become a cancerlike growth, eventually threatening the structured system of individual and social life. There is also a greater possibility of the restoring of the social system to man’s control. If one connects the system “Man” with the whole system, the present social system can be understood a great deal better. Human nature is not an abstraction nor an infinitely malleable and hence dynamically negligible system. It has its own specific qualities, laws, and alternatives. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
The study of the system Man permits us to see what certain factors in the socioeconomic system do to man, how disturbances in the system of man produce imbalances in the whole social system. By introducing the human factor into the analysis of the whole system, we are better prepared to understand its dysfunctioning and to define norms which relate the healthy economic functioning of the social system to the optimal well-being of the people who participate in it. All this is valid, of course, only if there is agreement that maximal development of the human system in terms of its own structure—that is to say, human well-being—is the overriding goal. The increasing dissatisfaction with our present way of life, its passiveness and silent boredom, its lack of privacy and its depersonalization, and the longing for a joyful, meaningful existence, which answers those specific needs of man which he has developed in the last few thousand years of his history and which make him different from the animal as well as from the computer. This tendency is all the stronger because the affluent part of the population has already tasted full material satisfaction and has found out that the consumer’s paradise does not deliver the happiness it promised. (The less affluent, of course, have not yet had any chance to find out, except by watching the lack of joy of those who “have everything a man could want.” Ideologies and concepts have lost much of their attraction; traditional clichés like “right” and “left” or “communism” and “capitalism” have lost their meaning. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
People seek a new orientation, a new philosophy, one which is centered on the priorities of life—physically and spiritually—and not on the priorities of death. There is a growing polarization occurring in the United States of America and the whole World: There are those who are attracted to force, “law and order,” bureaucratic methods, and eventually to non-life, and those with a deep longing for life, for new attitudes rather than ready-made schemes and blueprints. This new front movement which combines the wish for profound changes in our economic and social practice with changes in our psychic and spiritual approach to life. In its most general form, its aim is the activation of the individual, the restoration of man’s control over the social system, the humanization of technology. It is a movement in the name of life, and it has such a broad and common base because the threat to life is today a threat not to one class, to one nation, but a threat to all. Today, a widespread hopelessness exists with regard to the possibility of changing the course we have taken. This hopelessness is mainly unconscious, while consciously people are “optimistic” and hope for further “progress.” If Spinoza’s work is a treatise aiming at the “salvation” of the individual (salvation meaning the conquest of freedom by awareness and labour), Marx’s intent is also the salvation of the individual. However, while Spinoza deals with individual irrationality, Marx extends the concept. He sees that the irrationality of the individual is caused by the irrationality of society in which he lives, and that this irrationality itself is the result of the planlessness and the contradiction inherent in the economic and social reality. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Marx’s aim, like Spinoza’s, is the free and independent man, but in order to achieve this freedom man must become aware of those forces which act behind his back and determine him. Emancipation is the result of awareness and effort. More specifically, Marx, believing that the working class was the historical agent for universal human liberation, believed that class-consciousness and struggle were the necessary conditions for man’s emancipation. Like Spinoza, Marx is a determinist in the sense of saying: If you remain blind and do not make the utmost efforts, you will lose your freedom. However, he, like Spinoza, is not only a man who wants to interpret; he is a man who wants to change—hence his whole work is that attempt t teach man how to become free by awareness and effort. Marx never said, as is often assumed, that he predicted historical events which would necessarily occur. He was always an alternativist. If he is aware of the forces operating behind his back, if he makes the tremendous effort to win his freedom, man can break the chains. In this century man has the alternative of choosing between socialism and barbarism. Dr. Freud, the determinist, was also a man who wanted to transform: he wanted to change neurosis into health, to substitute the dominance of the Ego for that of the Id. What else is neurosis—of whatever kind—but man’s loss of freedom to act rationally? What else is mental health but man’s capacity to act according to his true interest. Dr. Freud, like Spinoza, and Marx, saw to what degree man is determined. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
However, Dr. Freud also recognized that the compulsion to act in certain irrational and thus destructive ways can be changed—by self-awareness and by effort. Hence his work is the attempt to devise a method of curing neurosis by self-awareness and the motto of his therapy is: “The truth shall make you free.” Several main concepts are common to all three thinkers: Man’s actions are determined by previous causes, but he can liberate himself from the power of these causes by awareness and effort. Theory and practice cannot be separated. In order to achieve “salvation,” or freedom, one must know, one must have the right “theory.” However, one cannot know unless one acts and struggles. Dr. Freud, for instance, believed it to be necessary that the patient make an economic sacrifice by paying for his treatment, and the sacrifice of frustration by not acting out his irrational fantasies in order to achieve a cure. It was precisely the great discovery of all three thinkers that theory and practice, interpretation and change are inseparable. While they were determinists in the sense that man can lose the battle for independence and freedom, they were essentially alternativists: they taught that man can choose between certain ascertainable possibilities and that it depends on man which of these alternatives will occur; it depends on him as long as he has not yet lost his freedom. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Thus Spinoza did not believe that every man would achieve salvation, Marx did not believe that socialism had to win, nor did Dr. Freud believe that every neurosis could be cured by his method. In fact, all three men were skeptics and simultaneously me of deep faith. For them freedom was more than acting in the awareness of necessity; it was man’s great chance to choose the good as against the evil—it was a chance of choosing between real possibilities on the basis of awareness and effort. Their position was neither determinism nor indeterminism; it was a position of realistic, critical humanism. The position of alternativism described here is essentially that of the Hebrew Bible. God does not interfere in man’s history by changing his heart. He sends his messengers, the prophets, with a threefold mission: to show man certain goals, to show him the consequences of his choices, and to make protest against the wrong decision. It is up to man to make his choice; nobody, not even God, can “save” him. The clearest expression of this principle is expressed in God’s answer to Samuel when the Hebrew wanted a king: “Now therefore hearken unto their voice; howbeit ye protest solemnly unto them, and show them the manner of the king that shall reign over them.” After Samuel has given them a drastic description of Eastern despotism, and the Hebrews still want a king, God says: “Hearken to their voice and make them a king,” reports 1 Samuel 8.9, 22. The same spirit of alternativism is expressed in the sentence: “I put before your today a blessing and curse, life and death. And you choose life.” Man can choose. God cannot save him; al God can do is to confront him with the basic alternatives, life, and death—and encourage him to choose life. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
We have examined man’s heart, its inclination for good and evil. Have we reached ground that is more solid than the vision we previously had? In some ways this work might be compared with that of the detective in mystery stories. It is worth emphasizing, however, that whereas the detective wants to discover the criminal the analyst does not want to find out what is bad in the patient, but attempts to understand him as a whole, good and bad. Also, he deals not with several people, all under suspicion, but with a multitude of driving forces in one person, all under suspicion not of being bad but of being disturbing. Through concentrated and intelligent observation of every detail he gathers clues, sees a possible connection here and there, and forms a tentative picture; he is not too easily convinced of his solution, but tests it over and over again to see whether it really embraces all factors. In mystery stories there will be some people working with the detective, some only apparently doing so and secretly obstructing his work, some definitely wanting to hide and becoming aggressive if they feel threatened. Similarly, in analysis part of the patient co-operates—this is an indispensable condition—another part expects the analyst to do all the work and still another use all its energies to hide or mislead and become panicky and hostile when threatened with discovery. It is mainly from the patient’s free associations that the analyst derives his understanding of unconscious motivations and reactions. The patient is not usually aware of the implications of what he presents. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Therefore the analyst, in order to form a coherent picture out of the multitude of discrepant elements presented to him, must not only listen to the manifest content but also try to understand what the patient really wants to express. He tries to grasp the red thread that passes through the apparently amorphous mass of material. If too many unknown quantities are involved, he sometimes fails in this endeavour. Sometimes the context also speaks for itself. To further highlight this illustration, a patient tells me that he had a bad night and that he feels more depressed than ever. His secretary has had an attack of influenza, and this not only disturbs his business arrangements but also upsets him because of his fear of infection. He talks then about the frightful injustice done to small European countries. Then he thinks of a physician who annoyed him by failing to give him clear information about the contents of a drug. Then a tailor comes up in his mind who had not delivered a coat as promised. The main theme is annoyance at untoward events. The egocentric nature of the grievances is shown by his enumerating the secretary’s illness in one line with the unreliability of the tailor, as if both were personal offenses against him. The fact that the secretary’s flu has rearoused his fear of infection does not lead him to think that he should try to overcome this fear. He expects, instead, that the World should be so arranged as not to arouse his fears. The World should attend to his needs. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Here the theme of justice comes in: it is unfair that others do not heed his expectations. Since he is afraid of infection nobody in his environment should all ill. Thus others become responsible for his difficulties. He is as helpless against influences as small European countries are against invasion (actually he is helpless in the clutches of his own expectations). The association concerning the doctor also acquires a special meaning in this contest. It, too, implies expectations not complied with and in addition it refers to his grievance against me for not offering him a clear solution of his problems, instead of groping around and expecting his co-operative activity. Patients who are able to recall the origins of a symptom and to give uninhibited expression to the emotions attendant upon the situation in which it evolved were subsequently relieved symptomatically and generally improved in their overall adjustment. This function of emotional purging or catharsis came gradually to be perceived as but one phase of a more general process in which the patient, under the accepting, encouraging, and supportive friendship of the therapist, was enabled to give expression to his conflicts, his anxiety, his guilts, his resentments, to relieve his previously bottled-up feelings without fear of rejection or misunderstanding. To this basic process whereby the suffering supplicant is helped to achieve release from the tormenting burden of his previously suppressed (or repressed) emotions, from the personal isolation stemming from his previously unshared feelings, is given the name ventilation. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Catharsis and ventilation are the naturally inevitable first steps in any truly intimate personal relationship, requiring nothing more than an accepting (and probably understanding) auditor. It is difficult to imagine any formal psychotherapy which could either in theory or expert practice deliberately prevent the occurrence of such ventilation. (It is possible that full ventilation may be prevented or delayed by the inexperienced, insensitive, or inept therapist who is overly active and insufficiently appreciative of the self-curative forces in nature.) And ventilation and catharsis as general factors may prove to account for a sizable portion of the total therapeutic impact of all psychotherapies. Knowing when we need to trust our instincts and go with our gut is an essential life skill. Many people play on the emotions of others. It is easy to do to some, and harder to impossible to do to others. That is because some people are more in tune than others. It does not make them any smarter, just more wary of individuals and their motives. If a little boy came crying to you, needing your help to get his poor baby calf that was stuck in the swimming pool, you would probably believe him and rush to help. In this situation, relaying on your emotions seems to be the right thing to do. However, if it was not a little boy, it was a grown man who came to you, asking the same thing, you would most likely be cautious and unwilling to help him, assuming that he had other intentions, perhaps even evil ones. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Not all people react the same way. Especially if he was very convincing, there are some who might still feel sympathy and empathy for the man. Society has taught us to help others. It is a natural human reaction to tend to those who are crying or upset. We want to fix it, most o us want to help. However, what happens when someone takes advantage of that part of us? Can we do anything to change the outcome? The spirit acquires the full authority given it by the Creator over the powers of the soul, and through the soul over the body. The conscious personal life is once more completely under the authority of the spirit. The dependency upon God, which man sough to break off in his mania for exalting himself by setting his reason, his emotions, or the flesh upon the throne, is restored again. The Spirit of God can exercise once more His controlling and quickening power. The deeds of the flesh are put to death by the Spirit, the powers and the gifts of the Spirit developed, the man becomes spiritual, full of Holy Spirit. Jesus is the Christ, the bringer of the New Being. When considering the human situation, it is quite convincing that man’s problems are basically ontological. There is something unassailable in his potions, for ontology, by definition, deals with ultimates. Although one may flee ontology, one can never quite escae it, since everyone possess some kind of ontology, albeit in an inchoate and disguised form. However, the fact must be faced that we live in a non-metaphysical age, and it may be unrealistic to describe man’s existential situation in ontological terms. To do so seems even to violate the method of correlation, for the theological answers are then clothed in the ontological forms so unappealing to modern man. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Charity is the pure love of Chrit. It is the love that Jesus as the Christ has for the children of men and that children of men should have for one another. It is the highest, noblest, and strongest kind of love and the most joyous to the soul. Charity is “the pure love of Christ,” or “everlasting love.” The prophet Mormon taught: “Charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in the iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” Jesus as the Christ is the perfect example of charity. In His mortal ministry, He always went about doing good, teaching the gospel and showing tender compassion for the less affluent, afflicted, and distressed. His crowning expression of charity was His infinite Atonement. He said, “Greater love hath no man, than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” This was the greatest act of long-suffering, kindness, and selflessness that we will ever know. The Saviour wants all people to receive His love and to share it with others. He declared to His disciples: “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” 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. When you are at your worst and life has you down, when you have something horrible going on, whether it is a fire, medical problem, or some other type of disaster, the Sacramento Fire Department will be there for you and help you every time! They will do everything they can to make thing better again. Please be sure to donate to the Sacramento Fire Depart. Solving problems can get them into trouble, even to the point at which they may lose a firefighter. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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Gossipy and Notoriously Indifferent to the Ethics of Personal Confidences!
A man must stay in his own orbit and take his directives from within. If through fear of loneliness, intimidation, or suggestion, he joins the marching groups of his time, he will not reach his best. Returning from the “real possibilities” in the field of constitutional factors to our past example of the cigarette smoker, he is confronted with two real possibilities: either remaining a chains smoker or no longer smoking a single cigarette. His belief that he has the possibility of continuing to smoke, but only a few cigarettes, turns out to be an illusion. In our past example of the love affair, the man has two real possibilities: either not to take the young lady out or to have a love affair with her. The possibility which he thought of, that he could have a drink with her and not have a love affair, was unreal, considering the constellation of forces in his and hear personalities. The American democratic party had a real possibility of a long-term dictatorship—or at least, of not turning the country into a disaster—if they had not treated the conquered populations with such brutality and cruelty, if these politicians had not been so narcissistic as to strip the public of so many rights and playing favourtism to other populations. However, there were no real possibilities outside of these alternatives. To hope, as the Democrats did, that they could give vent to their destructiveness toward the conquered citizens, and satisfy their vanity and grandiosity by never accommodating the American population, and threatening all other capitalist powers by the scope of their own ambitions, and honestly win elections—all of this is not within the gamut of real possibilities. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
The same holds true for the growing threat of World War III: there is a strong inclination toward war, caused by the presence of nuclear weapons on all sides and by the mutual fear and suspicion thus engendered; there is a destruction of national sovereignty caused by foreign interests; a lack of objectivity and reason in foreign policy. On the other hand, there is the wish, among the majority of the populations in both blocs to avoid the catastrophe of nuclear destruction; there is the voice of the rest of mankind, which insists that the big powers should not involve all others in their madness; there are social and technological factors which permit the use of peaceful solutions, and which open the way to a happy future for the human race. While we have these two sets of inclining factors, there are still two real possibilities between which man can choose: that of peace by ending the nuclear arms race and the brewing cold war; of that of World War II by continuing the present policy. Even if one has greater weight than the other, both possibilities are real. However, there is another factor to consider, the revolt of citizens who are tired of being overtaxed and not having representation and hyperinflation. Even the freedom of choice seems to be restricted due to voter fraud, federal, state, and local corruption. Furthermore, as President Trump is explaining, there is no possibility that we can go on with the arms race, and World War III, and a paranoid hate mentality, and at the same time avoid nuclear destruction. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
In 2020, it seemed as if the freedom of decision had already been lost due to voter fraud, and that the catastrophe would occur against everybody’s will, except perhaps that of some mad death-lovers. On that mankind was stripped of their freedoms to work, made to take vaccines, forced to wear masks that covered their nose and mouth, and locked in their homes. An increasing of tension against the government followed because no negotiations nor compromises were possible. The present time—2024—is probably the last time at which mankind will have the freedom to choose between life or destruction. If we do not go beyond superficial arrangements which symbolize good will but do not signify an insight into the given alternatives and their respective consequences, then our freedom of choice will have vanished. If mankind destroys itself, it will not be because of the intrinsic wickedness of man’s heart; it will be because of his inability to wake up to the realistic alternatives and their consequences. The possibility of freedom lies precisely in recognizing which are the real possibilities between which we can choose, and which are the “unreal possibilities” that constitute our wishful thoughts whereby we seek to spare ourselves the unpleasant takes of making a decision between alternatives that are real but unpopular (individually or socially). #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
The unreal possibilities are, of course, no possibilities at all; they are ideas or plans that are impossible or very unlikely to happen. However, the unfortunate fact is that most of us, when confronted with the real alternatives and with the necessity of making a choice that requires insight and sacrifices, prefer to think that there are other possibilities that can be pursued; we thus blind ourselves to the fact that these unreal possibilities do not exist, and that their pursuit is a smoke-screen behind which fate makes its own decision. Living under the illusion that the non-possibilities will materialize, man is then surprised, indignant, hurt, when the choice is made for him and the unwanted catastrophe occurs. At that point he falls into the mistaken posture of accusing others, defending himself, and/or praying to God, when the only thing he should blame is his own lack of courage to face the issue, and his lack of reason in understanding it. Man’s actions are always caused by inclinations rooted in (usually unconscious) forces operating in his personality. If these forces have reached a certain intensity, they may be so strong that they not only incline man but determine him—hence he has no freedom of choice. In those cases where contradictory inclinations effectively operate within the personality there is freedom of choice. This freedom is limited by the existing real possibilities. These real possibilities are determined by the total situation. Man’s freedom lies in his possibility to choose between the existing real possibilities (alternatives). Freedom in this sense can be defined not as “acting in the awareness of necessity” but as acting on the basis of the awareness of alternatives and their consequences. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
There is never indeterminism; there is sometimes determinism, and sometimes alternativism based on the uniquely human phenomenon: awareness. To put it differently, every event is caused However, in the constellation previous to the event there may be several motivations which can become the cause of the next event. Which of these possible causes becomes an effective cause may depend on man’s awareness of the very moment of decision. In other words, nothing is uncased, but not everything is determined (in the “hard” meaning of the word). The view of determinism, indeterminism, and alternativism developed here essentially follow the thought of three thinkers: Spinoza, Marx, and Freud. All three are often called “determinists.” There are good reasons for doing so, the best being that they have said so themselves. Spinoza wrote: “In the mind there is no absolute or free will—which for Kant s for many other philosophers was the very proof of the freedom of our will—as the result of self-deception: we are aware of our desires but we re not aware of the motives of our desires. Hence we believe in the “freedom” of our desires. Dr. Freud also expressed a deterministic position; belief in psychic freedom and choice; he said indeterminism “is quite unscientific…It must give way before the claims of a determinism which governs even mental life.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
Marx also seems to be a determinist. He discovered laws of history which explain political events as results of class stratification and class struggles, and the latter as the result of the existing productive forces and their development. It seems that all three thinkers deny human freedom and see in man the instrument of forces which operate behind his back, and not only incline him but determine him to act as he does. In this sense Marx would be a strict Hegelian for whom the awareness of the necessity is the maximum of freedom. Not only have Spinoza, Marx, and Dr. Freud expressed themselves in terms which seem to qualify them as determinists; many of their pupils have also understood them in this way. This holds particularly true for Marx and Freud. Many “Marxists” have talked as if there were an unalterable course of history, that the future was determined by the past, that certain events had necessarily to happen. Many of Dr. Freud’s pupils have claimed the same point of view for Dr. Freud; they argue that Dr. Freud’s psychology is a scientific one, precisely because it can predict effects from foregoing causes. However, this interpretation of Spinoza, Marx, and Dr. Freud as determinists entirely leaves out the other aspect in the philosophy of the three thinkers. Why was it that the main work of the “determinist” Spinoza is a book on ethics? That Marx’s main intention was the socialist revolution, and that Dr. Freud’s main aim was a therapy which would cure the mentally sick person of his neurosis? #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
Well, all three thinkers saw the degree to which man and society are inclined to act in a certain way, often to such a degree that the inclination becomes determination. However, at the same time they were not only philosophers who wanted to explain and interpret; they were men who wanted to change and transform. For Spinoza the task of man, his ethical aim, is precisely that of reducing determination and achieving the optimum of freedom. Man can do this by self-awareness, by transforming passions, which blind and chain him, into actions (“active affects”), which permit him to act according to his real interest as a human being. “An emotion which is a passion ceases to be a passion as soon as we form a distinct and clear picture thereof.” Freedom is not anything which is given to us, according to Spinoza; it is something which within certain limitations we can acquire by insight and by effort. If we have fortitude and awareness, we have the alternatives to choose. The conquest of freedom is difficult and that is why most of us fail. As Spinoza wrote at the end of the Ethic: “I have thus completed all I wished to set forth touching the mind’s power over the emotions and the mind’s freedom. Whence it appears how potent is the wise man and how much he surpasses the ignorant man who is driven only by his lusts. For the ignorant man is not only distracted in various ways by the external causes without ever gaining the true acquiescence of his spirit, but moreover lives, as it were, unwitting of himself, and of God, and of things, and as soon as he ceases to suffer [in Spinoza’s sense, to be passive], ceases also to be. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
“Whereas the wise man, in as far as he is regarded as such, is scarcely at all disturbed in spirit, but, being conscious of himself, and of God, and of things, by a certain eternal necessity, never ceases to be, but always possesses true acquiescence of his spirit. If the way which I have pointed out as leading to this result, seems exceedingly hard, it may nevertheless be discovered. Needs must it be hard, since it is so seldom found. How would it be possible, if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labour be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.” Spinoza, the founder of modern psychology, who sees the factors which determine man, nevertheless writes an Ethic. He wanted to show how man can change from bondage to freedom. And his concept of “ethic” is precisely that of the conquest of freedom. This conquest is possible by reason, by adequate ideas, by awareness, but it is possible only if man makes the effort with more labour than most men are willing to make. Surely the human race has by this time, by this quarter of the century in history found the truth? Why, the does the man who wants it have to make his own personal search all over again? It is because one must know it for himself within himself. He should verify the truth not by reference to a book or Christian Bible but by reference to his own private experience. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
The analyst’s general task is to help the patient to recognize himself and to reorient his life as far as the patient himself deems it necessary. In order to convey a more specific impression of what the analyst does in pursuing this goal, it is necessary to divide his work into categories and discuss these individually. Roughly, his work can be broken down into five main divisions: observation; understanding; interpretation; help in resistance; and general human help. To some extent the analyst’s observations are not different they have a specific character. Like everyone else, behaviour, such as aloofness, warmth, rigidity, spontaneity, defiance, compliance, suspicion, confidence, assertiveness, timidity, ruthlessness, sensitivity. In the mere process of listening to the patient he will, without direct effort, gain many general impressions: whether the patient is able to let himself go or is tense and constrained; whether he talks in a systematic, controlled fashion or is jumpy and scattered; whether he presents abstract generalities or concrete details; whether he is circumstantial or to the point; where he talks spontaneously or leaves the initiative to the analyst; whether he is conventional or expresses what he really thinks and feels. In his more specific observations the analyst learns first, from what the patient tells him about his experiences, past and present, his relationships with himself and others, his plans, his wishes, his fears, his thoughts. Second, he learns from observing the patient’s behaviour in his office, for each patient reacts differently to arrangements concerning fees, time, lying down, and other objective aspects of analysis. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
And each patient reacts differently to the fact that he is being analyzed. One patient regards analysis as an interesting intellectual process but refutes the idea that he really needs it; another treats it as a humiliating secret; while a third is proud of it as a special privilege. Moreover, patients exhibit an endless variety of attitudes toward the analyst himself, with as many individual shades as exist otherwise in human relationships. Finally, patients show innumerable subtle and gross vacillations in their reactions, and these vacillations themselves are revealing. These two sources of information—the patient’s communications about himself and the observation of his actual behaviour—complement each other just as they do in any relationship. Even if we know a great deal about a person’s history and all his present ways of dealing with friends, women, business, politics, our picture of him becomes far more complete if we meet him personally and see him in action. Both sources are indispensable; one is no less important than the other. Like any other observation, that of the analyst is tinged by the nature of his interest. A saleswoman will heed other qualities in a customer than a social worker will in a client applying for help. An employer interviewing a prospective employee will focus on questions of initiative, adaptability, reliability, while a minister talking to a parishioner will be more interested in questions of moral behavior and religious belief. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
The analyst’s interest does not focus upon one part of the patient, not even upon the disturbed part, but necessarily embraces the whole personality. Since he wants to understand its entire structure, and since he does not know offhand what may be more relevant and what less, his attention must absorb as many factors as possible. The specific analytical observations derive from the analyst’s purpose of recognizing and understanding the patient’s unconscious motivations. This is their essential difference from general observations. In the latter, too, we may sense certain undercurrents, but such impressions remain more or less tentative and even unformulated; also, we do not bother as a rule to distinguish whether they are determined by psychic factors of our own or by those of the observed person. The analyst’s specific observations, however, are an indispensable part of the analytic process. They constitute a systematic study of unconscious forces as revealed in the patient’s free associations. To these the analyst listens attentively, trying not to select any one element prematurely but to pay an even interest to every detail. Some of the analyst’s observations will fall in line immediately. Just as one discerns in a foggy landscape that dim outline of a house or a tree, the analyst will have no difficulty in quickly recognizing one or another general character trait. However, for the most part his observations are only a maze of seemingly unconnected items. How, then, does he arrive at an understanding? #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
The relationship between the therapist and his patient is not a spontaneous one. The frequency of visits, generally regular (and most commonly weekly), their timing and duration are explicitly determined. What is permissible and desirable for the patient to do during the treatment hour is controlled and what demands he may make of his therapist are very definitely limited. In light of the prolonged nature of the relationship, the intimacy of the material shared, and the qualities of rapport and mutual respect that are engendered, this fact of definite controls on what the patient may do or fail to do, and what he can require of the therapist, constitutes what may be the most distinctive feature of the therapeutic relationship. This feature of controlled relationship is espoused in nearly all methods of psychotherapy. The quality of the relationship is given specific attention in all formulations of psychotherapy and certain aspects of the relationship are given universal emphasis. There is general agreement that it is the responsibility of the therapist to be accepting of the patient and to communicate his acceptance to the patient. This acceptance of the patient is a complex of therapist attitudes that include respect for the patient as an individual, positive regard for his personality and his potential, warmth, kindness, and continuing willingness to help no matter what the symptoms or defects of the patient. Most crucially, this attitude of acceptance requires that the therapist relate to his patent in a nonjudgmental, noncritical, nonpunitive way. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
Of course, failure of conformity, socially inimical attitudes, or even antisocial behaviour may not be at the heart of the problem for which the patient seeks help and the therapist may learn of them only incidentally, but he must avoid value assessments which cause him inadvertently to communicate a rejection of the patient. This is a difficult quality of relationship both to describe and to establish effectively. The therapist may share many of his society’s values and mores and will not think that it is good for them to be violated or neglected, but it is not his function to condemn or to try to re-create an individual in his own image. This quality of “acceptance” in our culture at this time is peculiarly restricted to the psychotherapeutic contract, but it is common to all such contracts. In this sense, psychotherapy provides a very special, perhaps ideal, form of friendship. It is reasonable to presume that a further reflection of the communality of quality of acceptance is found in the expectation of the average patient who seeks a therapeutic relationship. When it is available, the hopeful expectation of “unconditional positive regard” from somebody may well be one of the common factors leading to an increasing demand for psychotherapy and contributing to a positive response. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
Whether or not the impact of the mental health movement and its attendant educational programs has created a general expectation of the therapeutically prescribed acceptance, it seems that a majority of patients have an expectation that their revelation of self and others will be treated with complete confidentiality. Again, in principle that the patient’s communications are “privileged” and protected in principle and by law from release in any form or medium which would cause him or others embarrassment or hurt, we have a structural factor shared by all schools of psychotherapy. As a common factor of the therapy contract, it may significantly contribute to the total therapeutic impact of the relationship. It is, by contrast, a notable characteristic of our general culture that we are gossipy and notoriously indifferent to the ethic of personal confidences! All of us have been brainwashed, manipulated, and lied to a bit by our parents and society. As humans, we are hardwired to take in information and use it as a basis to live by. If we want to live with other people, it is what is expected out of us. Some of the things we have been told are lies meant to keep us safe, so we will not wander off and get ourselves into danger. Bloody Mary was made up to keep us in our beds at night, instead of wandering all over the house while our parents slept. Knowing yourself is always a good idea. First of all, most people need to reflect on themselves from time to time. We all change as life goes on and seeing what those changes are is good for us to know and understand. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
Having a child changes people dramatically. Suddenly, all the irresponsible things we have done are not things we want to take a chance on anymore. We want to be around for our child. Going to jail, or worse, getting ourselves killed by doing foolish things, it is not worth it anymore. When looking at yourself, ask questions about who is in your life and why they are there. Ask yourself if they are really fulfilling a need in your life. Are they making your life better? Or is their presence making your life worse? And why? You might have someone who is hurting you mentally or even physically. How long will you keep dealing with that? Standing up to someone with one or more of the traits of the Dark Triad can be done. Once they know that they cannot manipulate you, they change the way they act with you. It does not change them completely, but they understand that what they want to do will not work on you. Some people lie so much that it is hard to believe anything they say, it is hard to even trust them. Even if you ask them to stop lying, they will continue to do so. When this is the case, people often want concrete proof of anything the habitual liar has to say. To hold his individual accountable, sometimes loved one’s will tell other people in the liar’s life of their shortcomings to make people know what they are getting involved with and to stop the individual from lying to everyone. Do not the your soul get shut up in torment and despair. Keep in mind that in life, there is an evil quest too, whose disciples seek to serve their lower nature rather than to conquer it, and whose masters show themselves by action or teaching to be monsters. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
The Lord Jesus is supposed to have said: “The manifestations of the Spirit, in some things, are very strange. Sometimes He will twist the body this way, and that, and the meaning is dark to you. I want you to know somethings about this part of the Spirit’s work. I want you to see that they are not useless. If you had spoken in your own tongue, when the Spirit came in, it would have graciously blessed you; but perhaps you might have thought it was yourself, as many have. So the Spirit comes in and speak in an unknown tongue to you, that you might know that it was NOT YOURSELF SPEAKING. Your hands He has often lifted up, and again He has raised your fingers in various ways. Your eyes open and shut by the Spirit now, as they did not before. Your very head has been shaken by the Spirit and you have not known why He did this. You have thought, sometimes, it was just to show He was living there, and that is true, but there is more in it than that, and He will show you as well as He can, in a few words, what some of these things are. Some things in the manifestations are very peculiar to you. You have gone on wondering about them. DO not think it is strange that the Spirit works in you in many ways. His work is more than two-fold work. It is manifold. This is puzzling many minds. They see the Spirit shaking. They hear Him singing. They feel Him laughing, and they are sometimes tried with His various twistings and jerkings, as though He would tear them to pieces. Sometimes it seems He is imitating the animals in various sounds and doings. This has been all a mystery to the saint. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
“This has been all a mystery to the saints. His work, I say, is manifold. He seeks, in some, to show them that they are all one with each other, in the whole creation…If He shows you, by making a noise as of some wild animal, that you are like that, you must not despise His way of working, for the Holy Spirit knows why He does it. He makes these noises in the animals, can’t He make them in you?” Christ as the depth of culture signifies a close union between the two humanity and theonomy, the union of substance with form. However, religious substance lies at the depth of cultural form, a depth not always visible or attainable due to the currents of estrangement. The depths can be fathomed only in the depth-experience which is faith. It is the impact of the divine Spirit which drives man beyond the shallow surface life of autonomous secularism to the depth-dimension where he encounters the New Being. In the New Being he finds the teleological meaning of his life and the spiritual power to fulfill it. Our vision comprises three elements: Christ, depth, and culture. They represent the three major themes of theology: the New Being, ultimate concern, and man. Enter not the path of the wicked, and walk not in the way of evil men. He that walks uprightly, and works righteousness, and speaks the truth in his heart with have the honour of sojourning in the Lord’s Tabernacle, and shall dwell upon the Lord’s holy mountain. 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. For more than 200 years, the Sacramento Fire Department has responded to just about every type of call for help and emergency imaginable without hesitation, attitude, or complaint. And over the years, those calls have grown in number and complexity. The needs of the communities have pushed and prodded the fire department into performing tasks and handling situations that no one ever imagined the fire department handling. Please kindly make a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department to ensure they receive all of the resources and latest technology to protect the community. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
In December of 1924 an investigator, Mr. Pierre Bernard, was called to The Winchester Mystery House to witness supernatural events. He reported at the time that “it may be stated generally that there was no possibility, in most cases, of the objects having been thrown by hand…Moreover it is hard to conceive by what mechanical appliance, under the circumstances described, the movements could have been effected. To suppose that these various objects were all moved by mechanical contrivances argues incredible stupidity, amounting almost to imbecility on the part of all persons present who were not in the plot.” William Lyon Mackenzie King testified that “doors do not just open and suddenly close by themselves; but they certainly do in the Winchester Mansion.” There has been no convincing explanation for the events here related.
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 Process of the Hardening of the Heart
Happiness depends on our understanding of life, understanding depends upon the penetration of insight, insight depends upon right instructions received from a competent teacher. Closely related to the problem of seeing when the real decision is made is another one. Our capacity to choose changes constantly with our practice of life. The longer we continue to make the wrong decisions, the more our heart hardens; the more often we make the right decision, the more our heart softens—or better perhaps, becomes alive. A good illustration of the principle involved here is the game of chess. Assuming that two equally skilled players begin a game, both have the same chance of winning (with a slightly better chance for the white side, which we can ignore for our purposes here); in other words, each has the same freedom to win. After, say, five moves the picture is already different. Both still can win, but A, who has made a better move, already has a greater chance of winning. He has, as it were, more freedom to win than his opponent, B. Yet B is still free to win. After some more moves, A, having continued to make correct moves that were not effectively countered by B, is almost sure to win, but only almost. B can still win. After some further moves the game is decided. B, provided he is a skilled player, recognizes that he has no longer the freedom to win; he sees that he has already lost before he is actually checkmated. Only the poor player who cannot properly analyze the determining factors lives under the illusion that he can still win after he has lost the freedom to do so; because of this illusion he has to go on to the bitter end, and have his king checkmated. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
If it is the lost of a chess game, the outcome may not be so bitter. However, when it is the death of millions of human beings, because the generals have not the skill and objectivity to see when they have lost, the end is bitter indeed. Yet we have twice witnessed such a bitter end in the 20th century; first in 1917, then in 1943. Both times German general did not understand that they had lost the freedom to win, but continued the war senselessly, sacrificing millions of lives. The implication of the analogy of the chess game is obvious. Freedom is not a constant attribute which we either “have” or “have not.” In fact, there is no such thing as “freedom” except as a word and an abstract concept. There is only one reality: the act of freeing ourselves in the process of making choices. In this process the degree of our capacity to make choices varies with each act, with our practice of life. Each step in life which increases my self-confidence, my integrity, my courage, my conviction also increases my capacity to choose the desirable alternative, until eventually it becomes more difficult for me to choose the undesirable rather than the desirable action. On the other hand, each act of surrender and cowardice weakens me, opens the path for more acts of surrender, and eventually freedom is lost. Between the extreme when I can no longer do a wrong act and the other extreme when I have lost my freedom to right action, there are innumerable degrees of freedom of choice. In the practice of life, the degree of freedom to choose is different at any given moment. If the degree of freedom to choose the good is great, it needs less effort to choose the good. If it is small, it takes a great effort, help from others, and favourable circumstances. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
A classic example of this phenomenon is the biblical story of Pharaoh’s reaction to the demand to let the Hebrews go. He is afraid of the increasingly severe suffering brought upon him and his people; he promises to let the Hebrews go; but as soon as the imminent danger disappears, “his heart hardens” and he again decides not to set the Hebrews free. This process of the hardening of the heart is the central issues in Pharaoh’s conduct. The longer he refuses to choose the right, the harder his heart becomes. No amount of suffering changes this fatal development, and finally it ends in his and his people’s destruction. He never underwent a change of heart, because he decided only on the basis of fear; and because of this lack of change, his heart became ever harder until there was no longer any freedom of choice left in him. If we look at our own development and that of others, the story of the Pharaoh’s hardening of heart is only the poetic expression of what we can observe every day. Let us look at an example: A white boy of eight has a little friend, the son of a migrant maid. Mother does not like him to play with the migrant, and tells her son to stop seeing him. The child refuses; if he will only, mother promises to take him to the circus; he gives in. This step of self-betrayal and acceptance of a bribe has done something to the little boy. He feels ashamed, his sense of integrity has been injured, he had lost self-confidence. Yet nothing irreparable has happened. Ten years later he falls in love with a girl; it is more than infatuation; both feel a deep human bond which unites them; but the girl is from a lower class than the boy’s family. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
His parents resent the engagement and try to dissuade him; when he remains adamant. If he will only wait to formalize the engagement until his return, they promise him a six months’ trip to Europe; he accepts the offer. Consciously he believes that the trip will do him a lot of good—and, of course, that he will not love his girl less when he returns. However, it does not turn out this way. He sees many other girls, he is very popular, his vanity is satisfied, and eventually his love and his decision to marry become weaker and weaker. Before his return, he writes her a letter in which he breaks off the engagement. When was his decision made? Not, as he thinks, on the day he writes the final letter, but on the day when he accepts his parents’ offer to go to Europe. He sensed, although not consciously, that by accepting the bribe he had sold himself—and he has to deliver what he promised: the break. His behaviour in Europe is not the reason for the break, but the mechanism through which he succeeds in fulfilling the promise. At this point, he has betrayed himself again, and the effects are increased self-contempt and (hidden behind the satisfaction of new conquests, etcetera) and inner weakness and lack of self-confidence. Need we follow his life any longer in detail? He ends up in his father’s business, instead of studying physics, for which he has gifts; he marries the daughter of a rich friend of his parents, he becomes a successful business and political leader who makes fatal decisions against the voice of his own conscience because he is afraid of bucking public opinion. His history is one of a hardening of the heart. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
One moral defeat makes him more prone to suffer another defeat, until the point of no return is reached. At eight he could have taken a stand and refused to take the bribe; he was still free. And maybe a friend, a grandfather, a teacher, hearing of his dilemma, might have helped him. At eighteen he was already less free; his further life is a process of decreasing freedom, until the point where he has lost the game of life. Most people who have ended as unscrupulous, hardened men began their lives with a chance of becoming good men. A very detailed analysis of their lives might tell us what was the degree of hardening of the heart at any given moment, and when the last chance to remain human was lost. The opposite picture exists also; the first victory makes the next one easier, until choosing the right no longer requires effort. Our example illustrates the point that most people fail in the art of living not because they are inherently bad or so without will that they cannot live a better life; they fail because they do not wake up and see when they stand at a fork in the road and have to decide. They are not aware when life asks them a question, and when they still have alternative answers. Then with each step along the wrong road it becomes increasingly difficult for them to admit that they are on the wrong road, often only because they have to admit that they must go back to the first wrong turn, and must accept the fact that they have wasted energy and time. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
We all have the capacity to choose: awareness of those alternative choices which are real as against those alternatives which are impossible because they are not based on real possibilities. The position of determinism claims that there is in every situation of choice only one real possibility; the free man, according to Mr. Hegal, acts in awareness of this one possibility, that is, of necessity; the man who is not free is blind to it, and hence is forced to act in a certain way without knowing that he is the executor of necessity, that is, of reason. On the other hand, from the indeterministic standpoint there are at the moment of choice many possibilities and man is free to choose among them. However there is often not simply one “real possibility,” but two or even more. There is never any arbitrariness which leaves man with the choice among an unlimited number of possibilities. What is meant by “real possibility”? The real possibility is one which can materialize, considering the total structure of forces interacting in an individual or in a society. The real possibility is the opposite of the fictitious one which corresponds to the wishes and desires of man but which, given the existing circumstances, can never be realized. Man is a constellation of forces structured in a certain and ascertainable way. This particular structure pattern, “man,” is influenced by numerous factors: by environmental conditions (class, society, family) and by hereditary and constitutional conditions; studying these constitutionally given trends we can already see that they are not necessarily “causes” which determine certain “effects.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
A person with a constitutionally given shyness may become either overshy, retiring, passive, discouraged, or a very intuitive person, for example, a gifted poet, a psychologist, a physician. However, he who has no “real possibility” of becoming an insensitive, happy-go-lucky “go-getter.” Whether he follows the one or the other direction depends on other factors which incline him. The same principle holds true of a person with constitutionally given or early acquired sadistic component; in this case a person either may become a sadist or, through having fought against and overcome his sadism, may form a particularly strong mental “antibody” which makes him incapable of acting cruelly, and also makes him highly sensitive of any cruelty on the parts of others or himself; he can never become a person indifferent to sadism. Reactions to finding about ourselves cannot be fully understood, however, by thus cataloguing them as producing relief or fear or hopelessness. No matter what immediate reaction is provoked, am insight always means a challenge to the existing equilibrium. A person driven by compulsive needs had functioned badly. He has pursued certain goals at great expense to his genuine wishes. He is inhibited in many ways. He is vulnerable in large and diffuse areas. The necessity to combat repressed fears and hostilities saps his energy. He is alienated from himself and others. However, notwithstanding all these defects in his psychic machinery the forces operating within him still constitute an organic structure within which each factor is interrelated with others. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
In consequence, no factor can be changed without influencing the whole organism. Strictly speaking there is no such thing as an isolated insight. Naturally it often happens that a person will stop at one or another point. He may be satisfied with the result attained, he may be discouraged, he may actively resist going farther. However, in principle every insight gained, no matter how small in itself, opens up new problems because of its interrelation with other psychic factors, and thereby carries dynamite with which the whole equilibrium can be shaken. The more rigid the neurotic system, the less can any modification be tolerated. And the more closely an insight touches upon the foundations, the more anxiety will it arouse. “Resistance,” as I shall elaborate later on, ultimately springs from the need to maintain the status quo. Another task awaiting the patient is to change those factors within himself which interfere with his best development. This does not mean only a gross modification in action or behaviour, such as gaining or regaining the capacity for public performances, for creative work, for co-operation, for sexual potency, or losing phobias or tendencies toward depression. These changes will automatically take place in a successful analysis. They are not primary changes, however, but result from less visible changes within the personality, such as gaining a more realistic attitude toward oneself instead of wavering between self-aggrandizement and self-degradation, gaining a spirit of activity, assertion, and courage instead of inertia and fears, becoming able to plan instead of drifting, finding the center of gravity within oneself instead of hanging on to others with excessive expectations and excessive accusations, gaining greater friendliness and understanding for people instead of harbouring a defensive diffuse hostility. If changes like these take place, external changes in overt activities or symptoms are bound to follow, and to a correspond degree. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Many changes that go on within the personality do not constitute a special problem. Thus, if it is a real emotional experience, an insight may in itself constitute a change. If an insight is gained, for example, into a hostility hitherto repressed: the hostility is still there, and only the awareness of it is different, one might say that nothing has changed. This is true only in a mechanistic sense. Actually, if the person who had known only that he was stilted, fatigued, or diffusedly irritated recognizes the concrete hostility which, through its very repression, had generated these disturbances, it makes an enormous difference. One may feel like another human being in such a moment of discovery. And unless one manages to discard the recognition immediately it is bound to influence his relations with other people; it will arouse a feeling of surprise at himself, stimulate an incentive to investigate the meaning of the hostility, remove his feeling of helplessness in the face of something unknown, and make him feel more alive. There are also changes that occur automatically as an indirect result of an insight. The patient’s compulsive needs will be diminished as soon as any source of anxiety is diminished. As soon as a repressed feeling of humiliation is seen and understood, a greater friendliness will result automatically, even though the desirability of friendliness had not bene touched upon. If a fear of failure is recognized and lessened, the person will spontaneously become more active and take risks that he hitherto unconsciously avoided. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
Thus far, insight and change appear to coincide, and it might seem unnecessary to present these two processes as separate tasks. However, there are situations during analysis—as there are in life itself—when despite an insight one may fight tooth and nail against change. Some of these situations have already been discussed. They may be generalized by saying that when a patient recognizes that he must renounce or modify his compulsive claims on life, if he wants to have his energies free for his proper development, a hard fight may begin in which he uses his last resources to disprove the necessity of the possibility of change. Another situation in which insight and change may be quite distinct arises when the analysis has led the person face to face with a conflict in which a decision must be made. Not all conflicts uncovered in psychoanalysis are of this nature. If contradictory drives are recognized between, for instance, having to control others and having to comply with their expectations, there is no question of deciding between the two tendencies. Both must be analyzed, and when the person has found a better relation to himself and others, both will disappear or be considerably modified. If a hitherto unconscious conflict emerges between material self-interest and ideals, it is a different matter, however. The issues may have been befogged in various ways: the cynical attitude may have been conscious while the ideals were repressed, or consciously refuted if they sometimes penetrated to the surface; or the wish for material advantages (money, prestige) may have been repressed while consciously the ideals were rigidly adhered to; other there my have been a continual crisscrossing between taking ideals in a cynical or in a serious way. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
However, when such a conflict comes out in the open, it is not enough to see it and to understand its ramifications. After a thorough clarification of all the problems involved the patient must eventually take a stand. He must make up his mind whether and to what extent he wants to take his ideals seriously, and what space he will allot to material interests. Here, then, is one of the occasions when a patient may hesitate to take the step from insight to a revision of his attitudes. It is certainly true, however, that the three tasks with which a patient is confronted are closely interrelated. His complete self-expression prepares the way for the insights, and the insights bring about or prepare for the change. Each step influences the others. The more he shrinks back from gaining a certain insight, the more his free associations will be impeded. The more he resists a certain chance, the more he will fight an insight. The goal, however, is change. The high value attributed to self-recognition is not for the sake of insight alone, but for the sake of insight as a means of revising, modifying, controlling the feelings, strivings, and attitudes. The patient’s attitude toward changing often goes through various steps. Frequently he starts treatment with unadmitted expectations of a magical cure, which usually means a hope that all his disturbances will vanish without his having to change anything or even without having to work actively at himself. Consequently he endows the analysts with magical powers and tends to admire him blindly. Then, when he realizes that this hope cannot be fulfilled, he tends to withdraw the previous “confidence” altogether. If the analyst is a simple human being like himself, he argues what good can he do him? #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
More important, his own feeling of hopelessness about doing anything actively within himself comes to the surface. If and only when his energies can be liberated for active and spontaneous work, can he finally regard his development at his own job, and the analyst as someone who merely lends him a helping hand. The task with which the patient in analysis is confronted are replete with difficulties and with benefits. To express oneself with utter frankness is hard, but it is also a blessing. And the same can be said about gaining insight and about change. To resort to analysis as one of the possible helps toward one’s own development is therefore far from taking the easy road. It requires on the part of the patient a good deal of determination, self-discipline, and active struggle. In this respect it is no different from other situations in life that help one’s growth. We become stronger through overcoming the hardships we meet on our way. The essential elements and processes of communication are shared alike by all schools, but the selection and emphasis of topics for conversation may well differ systematically. In accordance with one theory, the therapist may emphasize certain topics for exploration (and explanation) to the exclusion of others, and in a variety of ways restrict the therapeutic conversation to these topics. Another school will emphasize that the topics for discussion should be arrived at spontaneously and determined primarily by the patient. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Part of the ascendant status of the therapist is reflective of the fact that his client is supplicant. The patient, suffering and wanting to be helped, seeks out the therapist and comes to him. Almost all psychotherapy is to some degree disturbing to the patient because it is deflating to the ego to be so maladjusted that it becomes necessary to place oneself in the embarrassing position of having to admit failure and seek help from others. This subjectively experienced lowered status of the client has potential for effecting the therapeutic process beneficially at the beginning of treatment and negatively in later stages. In the beginning he may be more ready to accept the suggestions of the ascendant therapist while later on, when les acutely distressed, is persisting sensitivity to the status differential can motivate obstinacies that are too luxuriously interpreted as “transference” phenomena. Both the therapist and the patient from their respective positions have certain expectancies. The therapist honestly expects to be able to help his client; he knows the dimension of his status and from these dimensions (training, experience, membership) he expects to be helpful. From this underlying expectation his basic attitude is one of confidence and in a variety of ways his beneficial expectation and confidence are communicated to the patient. The patient expects to he helped because in seeking out the therapist, he is following the general recommendation of his society as to where he is to expect to be helped. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Some patients go reluctantly, even resentfully, to the therapist and without any preformed faith in the process. However, even these, since they are never literally forced, cannot be thoroughly convinced that nothing will happen. Increasingly in our society because of the improved education of the public the patient brings to his therapist a readiness to be helped and some faith in the process. Together these initial expectancies of the therapist and the patient provide a beneficial psychological atmosphere for the powerful healing effects of implicit suggestion. These implicit forces of suggestion are augmented by the social structuring of the on-going therapy as a series of controlled conversations in which, according to some theory that yields “formal consistency, the therapist seeks to persuade the patient (and the patient to be persuaded?) toward new views of himself, and of his problems. These status-derived forces of general suggestion and persuasion are common to all forms of psychotherapy. Some people are more likely to misuse dark psychology. Personality traits, such as narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy are huge red flags in general. People with these traits tend to use darker manipulation techniques than those without the traits. The dark triad is a term that psychologist, law enforcers, and even business managers are sure to know. The dark triad refers to those three traits mentioned above. Knowing what type of person you are dealing with is essential in how you deal with them. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Beforehand, professionals need to know the types of tactics people with these traits will use to undermine them. They have to know what to look for, what to avoid, and how to combat the things these people will do. If any–a narcissist does not have much empathy for others—this includes animals. They think they are smarter than everyone else. Inflamed egos, stern opinions, and a general lack of compassion go along with narcissism. They want people to think they are more than what they really are. The outward appearance is important to them. People need to think everything is above par with them and their family. They want their World to be considered perfect by outsiders. They love to be envied and strive for it. Narcissists are harsh judges, judging people harder than they judge themselves. As a matter of fact, they do not judge themselves. When one refused to self-reflect, it is hard to judge one’s self. Looking outward at everyone else gives no time to look inward to see anything about themselves that might need working on. You can spot a narcissist from a mile away—they make sure of it. They want to be the center of attention at any gathering; they refuse to sit back and be quiet. In their opinion, what they have to say is so much more important than what anyone else has to say, feel, or think. Machiavellianism is quite the opposite of narcissism. This term is named after the man who embodied this trait—Niccolo Machiavelli. Born in 1469, this Renaissance period Italian became a diplomat and writer. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Mr. Machiavelli wrote a book about being a prince. In this book, he put his beliefs down for all the World to read. Immortality and brutality were not wrong in his eyes. As a matter of fact, a person in power should use anything they have to, in order to win. And subjects should be treated harshly by their rulers, in his opinion. In the 1970s, a couple of psychologists made up a scale using the man’s name to assess a person’s personality. The Mach-IV test is used to gauge how many of traits of this personality disorder a person has, and it can be used to determine if they should be labeled with a disorder or not. People with this dark trait come off most of the time as charming and have an inner confidence that makes people feel confident in them. The person with this disorder needs to pull people in so that they can use them to get what they want. They cannot achieve it by themselves. As charming as this individual can be, one is hard to really know. And if you did get to know this type of individual, a sane person would not stay around him or her long. These individuals use people, stooping to the lowest levels to do it. Nothing is out of bounds with these people. They can be some of the most dangerous people you will ever meet. They too lack empathy. What huts you, mentally or physical, does not matter to them. People who have these traits have been known to use torture to get people to do what they want. People with Psychopathy show no remorse for their actions. Selfish, antisocial, and overall real jerks, these people do not think of others much at all. Making impulsive decisions, it does not matter what the outcome is. With no remorse, things are much easier for them to do, even terrible things that inflict harm, both mentally and physically on others. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
These types of individuals cannot change. No matter how much one thinks they can help a psychopath, one cannot. If one tries to fix people with these traits, one will only hurt oneself in the process. Psychopaths have no desire to change themselves. They only desire to change you, to make you do what will benefit them. If all they do is break you, or make you do something terrible, they are happy to have accomplished that. For some time now it has been on my mind to try to put into language some of the things which it has been my painful experience to witness, and pass through, in connection with the workings of the ultimate negative as an “angel of light,” but everything seems so complicated and confused. First: His attacks seem to be made upon the most spiritual souls—those who have made the fullest surrender to God, and who recognize a spiritual affinity which, they believe, if broke, mars the whole purpose of God. The lying spirit insists on one mind, and judgment, and one expression. These souls thus “joined” form the “Assembly,” so called, and claim. Everything is brought into the “Assembly” for decision, the assertion being that no individual soul can get the mind of the Lord. Hours were spent in bringing the tiniest details of daily life before the Lord. The leader spread each matter, asking that all might be brought to one mind. The response was then given by each one in some word of Scripture. The attitude taken to receive the supposed “word of the Lord,” was the RESISTENCE OF ANY THOUGHT OR REASON, and LETTING THE MIND BECOME A PERFECT BLANK. If anyone ventured to give an opinion—or any judgment—they were ruled out of fellowship; the fact of reasoning being the proof of the “flesh-life.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
The discipline ministered to such was severe indeed. They were not allowed to speak to anyone, or to do any kind of work. In some cases, this lasted for weeks, and even months. The effect upon the mind was very terrible. The only way back was by making a statement in the “Assembly” which satisfied them that there was true repentance. Prayer and reading the Word—all adds to sin; consequently the soul is shut up in torment and despair, being excluded from all meetings. The “manifestation of the Spirit” in prophecy, prayer, and travel. One person would often pray for an hour, and sometimes two hours, without a break. Messages, too, would often last for two hours, and the whole meeting for eight or nine hours. Anyone yielding to sleep, or exhaustion was at once pronounced “in the flesh,” and a hindrance to the meeting. “Travail” was manifested by tears, groans, and twisting of the body; and with some it was exactly like hysterics, and would last for hours. This was greatly encouraged as the means whereby God would work for the deliverance of souls—and those who did not come under this manifestation were judged as preserving their own life, not willing to “let go”—lovers of themselves; and it was believed that when the whole company were unitedly under the so-called “manifestation of the Spirit” then God would break through in revival. I might say here, that all this began with a nightly prayer meeting for revival, with no limit as to time. The paralyzing fear of resisting God by any lack of submission, and evading the cross by an unwillingness to suffer, just sways the soul; and it dare not yield to one thought contrary to the “mind of Christ” in the “Assembly.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
The final type considers Christ as the transformer of culture. It maintains the dualist’s notion of the radical corruption of man’s works, but is more optimistic in its hope that culture can be converted to Christ. The conversionist does view creation as merely a necessary prologue to the atonement, but as a positive proof that culture has never been destitute of the directive power of Christ, even though it is shot through with sin. Culture must be converted to Christ, and this take place within the here-and-now of history where eschatology is a present demand instead of a promise of the future. The essential goodness of creation, its existential sinfulness, and its transformation within the historical dimension by the eschatological immediacy of grace is all of the Christ-and-culture components. In the separation of creation from the fall and in the view of history, this has constantly been upward movement. The notion of Kairos proves not all moments of history are equally important, but there are certain privileged intervals of grace. Furthermore, the here-and-now realization of the Kingdom of God is always subject to the ambiguities of its inner-historical character. The transformation of culture opens the door to its demonization, and thus there is greater need for the Protestant principle. 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 fire service is a very special organization and one that is second to none. At a time when the America family is struggling with divorce, abuse, and a lot of other problems, the fire service continues to serve as a role model for honesty. So many of our firefighters and officers have worked hard to get the fire service to where it is at today; for that very reason, we need to protect it. Please make a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department. They are all about taking care of people. They are all about supporting and promoting family values. We need to protect what they are all about. #RandolphHaris 19 of 19
On 1 April 1973, a few caretakers saw a number of objects, previously seen in one of the kitchens, come tumbling down the stairs. They were subsequently followed by apriocts. On the following night, when the mansion was being closed, a caretaker was in the kitchen with another employee, a host of objects came flying down the stairs. The caretaker and employee, of course, rushed upstairs, but found nothing out of order. When they came back into the kitchen, a vase left on the mantelpiece flew into a corner of the room. When the caretaker put it back in its accustomed place, it repeated its flight into the corner. Moments later, they witnessed a basin and cream-jug rising from the floor on their own accord before they fell back and broke. Other objects flew about the room. On the following day, a clock in one of Mrs. Winchester’s bedrooms that had been silent for decades was heard to strike; then there was a crash, and, on investigation, it was discovered that the clock had somehow leapt over the bed and fallen on the floor. Throughout that day, in fact, common household objects were hurled about the room without any visible agency, and this seemed to happen in every room he would enter. The caretaker took this as a sign from the spirits that they wanted him to depart. Once he resigned, all the phenomena ceased.
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 