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There are No Natural Rights in the Jungle
The way we behave toward our fellow men depends on one’s evolutionary status. The young inexperienced naive idealist will contradict the aged Worldly-wise cynic for whom like, authority, celebrity, tradition, innovation, have been totally denuded of their glamour. The distance from one answer to the other will also be marked by varying views. It is quite true that moral codes have historically been merely relative to time, place, and so on. However, if we try to make such relativity a basis of non-moral actions, if we act on the principle that wrong is not worse than right and evil not different from good, then social life would soon show a disastrous deterioration, the ethics of the jungle would become its governing law, and catastrophe would overtake it in the end. The relativity of good and evil is no justification for the tolerance of wrong and evil. It would be a mistake to believe that because philisophy affirms that morality, art, conscience, and religion are relative to human beings, it therefore has no moral code to offer. It most assuredly has such a code. This is so because side by side with relativity it also affirms development. It holds up a purpose, traces out a path to its realization, and hence formulates a code. The virtue which he is to practise is not bound by the standards set by law and customs, nor even by conventional morality. His standards are far higher and far nobler. For they are not measured by human weakness but by human possibility. If for so much of his lifetime they must exist side by side with his shortcomings, the latter are not accepted but are resisted. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
When embraced by intellectual materialists or unphilosophical mystics, moral relativity has led to foolish and even dangerous practical results. The fallacy is that although all points of view in morality are tenable, all are not equally sustainable. The danger of this teaching of evil’s unreality and moral relativity is that in the hands of the unwise it annuls all distinction between evil and good, while in the hands of the conceited it opens dangerous doors. The undisciplined or the evil-minded will always seize on such a tenant to provide support and excuse for their faults or sins. There is no reason to withhold it, however, for they will commit the same faults or sins anyway whether they have the teaching or not. Because there are levels of moral growth, character, and self-control, it became necessary to lay down laws, codes, and rules for mankind in the masses. These may be of sacred origin, as with a Moses, or of secular authority, as with a ruler. Where the name of God is invoked to give them weight, this is usually a human device. However, the come-back of Universal Law is very real, and not a fancy. The discovery of moral relativity gives no encouragement however to moral laxity. If we are freed from human convention, it is because we are to submit ourselves sacrificially to the Overself’s dictate. The unfoldment of progressive states of conscious being is not possible without giving up the lower for the higher. The doctrine that ethical and artistic values are relative need not be inconsistent with the doctrine that they are also progressive. They evolve from lower to higher levels. Being ideas in some individual mind, they improve with the refinement of that mind’s own quality. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
The codes of good and bad are usually part of religion and certainly belong to the religious level. However, the idea of goodness implies the idea of badness, so both are held in the mind although in different ways: one explicitly, the other implicitly. The philosopher does not depend on them but on their source, the Higher Power. The ego being an illusory entity, its virtues are in the ultimate sense either imaginary or also illusory. Nevertheless, moral perfection of the ego is a necessary stage on the journey to perfection of consciousness, to Overself. To cast it aside as being merely relative, to reject ethics and virtue as being unnecessary, is a trick of the intellect to enable the ego to stay longer in its own self-sufficiency. The first fact in life is the struggle for existence; the greatest forward step in this struggle is the production of capital, which increases the fruitfulness of labour and provides the necessary means of an advance in civilization. Primitive man, who long ago withdrew from the competitive struggle and ceased to accumulate capital goods, must pay with a backward and unenlightened way of life. Social advance depends primarily upon hereditary wealth; for wealth offers a premium to effort, and hereditary wealthy assures the enterprising and industrious man that he may preserve in his children the virtues which have enabled him to enrich the community. Any assault upon hereditary wealth must begin with an attack upon the family and end by reducing men to “swine.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
The operation of social selection depends upon keeping the family intact. Physical inheritance is a vital part of the Darwinian theory; the social equivalent of physical inheritance is the instruction of the children in the necessary economic virtues. If the fittest are to be allowed to survive, if the benefits of efficient management are to be available to society, the captains of industry must be paid for their unique organizing talents. Their huge fortunes are the legitimate wages of superintendence; in the struggle for existence, money is the token of success. It measures the amount of efficient management that has come into the World and the waste that has been eliminated. Millionaires are the bloom of a competitive civilization: The millionaires are the product of natural selection, acting on the whole body of men to pick out those who can meet the requirement of certain work to be done…It is because they are thus selected that wealth—both their own and that entrusted to them—aggregates under their hands….They may fairly be regarded as the naturally selected agents of society for certain work. They get high wages and live in luxury, but the bargain is a good one for society. There is intense competition for their place and occupation. This assures us that all who are competent for this function will be employed in it, so that the cost of it will be reduced to the lowest terms. In the Darwinian pattern of evolution, animals are unequal; this makes possible the appearance of forms with finer adjustment to the environment, and the transmission of such superiority to succeeding generations brings about progress. Without inequality the law of survival of the fittest could have no meaning. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
Accordingly, in Sumner’s evolutionary sociology, inequality of powers was at a premium. The competitive process develops all powers that exist according to their measure and degree. If liberty prevails, so that all may exert themselves freely in the struggle, the results will certainly not be everywhere alike; those of courage, enterprise, good training, intelligence, perseverance will come out at the top. These principles of social evolution negate the traditional American ideology of equality and natural rights. In the evolutionary perspective, equality was ridiculous; and no one knew so well as those who went to school to nature that there are no natural rights in the jungle. There can be no rights against Nature except to get out of her whatever we can, which is only the fact of the struggle for existence stated over again. In the cold light of evolutionary realism, the eighteenth-century idea that men were equal in a state of nature was the opposite truth; masses of men starting under conditions of equality could never be anything but hopeless savages. To Sumner rights were simply evolving folkways crystallized in laws. Far from being absolute or antecedent to a specific culture—an illusion of philosophers, reformers, agitators, and anarchists—they are properly understood as rules of the game of social competition which are current now and here. In other times and places other mores have prevailed, and still others will in the future. Each set of views colours the mores of a period. The eighteenth-century notions about equality, natural rights, classes and the like produced nineteenth-century states and legislation, all strongly humanitarian in faith and temper; at the present time the eighteenth-century notions are disappearing, and the mores of the twenty-first century will not be tinged by humanitarianism as those of the last hundred years have been. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
Sumner’s resistance to the catchwords of the American tradition is also evident in his skepticism about democracy. The democratic ideal, so alive in the minds of men as diverse as Eugene Debs and Andrew Carnegie, as a thing of great hopes, warm sentiments, and vast friendly illusions, was to him simply a transient stage in social evolution, determined by a favorable quotient in the man-land ratio and the political necessities of the capitalist class. Democracy itself, the pet superstition of the age, is only a phase of the all-compelling movement. If you have abundance of land and few men to share it, the men will all be equal. Conceived as a principle of advancement based on merit, democracy met his approval as socially progressive and profitable. Conceived as equality in acquisition and enjoyment, he thought it unintelligible in theory, and thoroughly impracticable. Industry may be republican; it can never be democratic so long as men differ in productive power and in industrial virtue. Many people fear democracy and attempt to set limits upon it in the federal structure; but since the whole genius of the country has inevitably been democratic, because of its inherited dogmas and its environment, the history of the United States of America has been one of continual warfare between the democratic temper of the people and their constitutional framework. Marx’s picture of the healthy man is rooted in the humanistic concept of the independent, active, productive man, as it was developed by Spinoza, Goethe, and Hegel. The aspect in which Marx’s and Dr. Freud’s independence is a limited one; the son makes himself independent of the father by incorporating his system of commandments and prohibitions; he carries fatherly authority within himself and remains obedient to and dependent on the father and the social authorities in this indirect way. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
For Marx independence and freedom are rooted in the act of self-creation. “A being,” Marx wrote, “does not regard himself as independent unless he is his own master, and he is only his own master when he owes his existence to himself. A man who lives by the favor of another considers himself a dependent being. But I live completely by another person’s favor when I owe to him not only the continuance of my life but also its creation, when he is its source. My life has necessarily such a cause outside itself if it is not my own creation.” Or, as Marx put it, man is independent only “…if he affirms his individuality as a total man in each of his relations to the World, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, thinking, willing, loving—in short, if he affirms and expresses all organs of his individuality”–if he is not only free from but also free to. Marx, freedom and independence were not merely political and economic freedom in the sense of liberalism, but the positive realization of individuality. His concept of socialism was precisely that of a social order which serves the realization of the individual personality. Marx wrote: “[This crude communism] appears in a double form; the domination of material property looms so large that it aims to destroy everything which is incapable of being possessed by everyone as private property. It wishes to eliminate talent, etcetera, by force. Immediate physical possession seems to it the unique goal of life and existence. The role of worker is not abolished but is extended to all men. The relation of private property remains the relation of the community to the World of things. Finally, this tendency to oppose general private property to private property is expressed in an animal form; marriage (which is incontestably a form of exclusive private property) is contrasted with the community of women, in which women become communal property. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
One may say that this idea of the community of women is the open secret of this entirely crude and unreflective communism. Just as women are to pass from marriage to universal prostitution, so the whole World of wealth (id est, the objective being of man) is to pass to the relation of universal prostitution with the community. This communism which negates the personality of man in every sphere, is only logical expression of private property, which is this negation. Universal envy setting itself up as power is only a camouflaged form of cupidity which reestablishes itself and satisfies itself in a different way. The thoughts of every individual private property are at least directed against any wealthier private property, in the form of envy and the desire to reduce everything to a common level; so that this envy and levelling in fact constitute the essence of competition. Crude communism is only the culmination of such envy and levelling-down based on a preconceived minimum. How little the abolition of private property represents a genuine appropriation is shown by the abstract negation of the whole World of culture and civilization, and the regression to the unnatural simplicity of the poor and wantless individual who has not only surpassed private property but has not yet even attained to it. The community is only a community of work and of equality of wages paid out by the communal capital, by the community as universal capitalist. The two sides of the relation are raised to a supposed universality; labour as a connection in which everyone is placed, and capital as the acknowledged universality and power of the community. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
Tenderness, love, and compassion are exquisite feeling experiences and generally recognized as such. However, there are some human experiences which are not as clearly identified as feelings but are more frequently called attitudes. They do not express the same direct relatedness to another person, but are, rather, experiences which are within oneself and which only secondarily refer to other persons. The first one among this group is “interest.” The word “interest” today has lost most of its meaning. To say “I am interested” in this or that is almost equivalent to saying “I have no strong feeling about it, but I am not entirely indifferent.” It is one of those cover words which mask the absence of intensity, and which are vague enough to cover almost anything from having an interest in a certain industrial shock to an interest in a young lady. However, this deterioration of meaning which is so general cannot deter us from using words in their original and deeper meaning, and that means to restore them to their own dignity. “Interest” comes from the Latin inter-esse, that is, “to be in-between.” If I am interested, I must transcend my ego, be open to the World, and jump into it. Interest is based on activeness. It is the relatively constant attitude which permits one at any moment to grasp intellectually as well as emotionally and sensuously the World outside. The interested person becomes interesting to others because interest has an infectious quality which awakens interest in those who cannot initiate it without help. When we think of its opposite, curiosity, the meaning of interest becomes still clearer. The curious person is passive. He wants to be fed with knowledge and sensations and can never have enough, since quantity of information is a substitute for the depth quality of knowledge. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
The most important realm in which curiosity is satisfied is gossip, be it the small-town gossip of the woman who sits at the window and watches with her spyglasses what is going on around her or the somewhat more elaborate gossip which fills the newspaper columns, occurs in the faculty meetings of professors as well as in the management meetings of professors as well as in the management meetings of the bureaucracy, and at the cocktail parties of the writers and artists. Curiosity, by its very nature, is insatiable, since aside from its maliciousness, it never really answers the question, Who is the other person. Interest has many objects: persons, plants, animals, ideas, social structures, and it depends to some extent on the temperament and the specific character of a person as to what his interests are. Nevertheless, the objects are secondary. Interest is an all-pervading attitude and form of relatedness to the World, and one might define it in a very broad sense as the interest of the living person in all that is alive and grows. If the interest is genuine, even when this sphere of interest in one person seems to be small, there will be no difficulty in arousing his interest in other fields, simply because he is an interested person. Another of the “human experiences” is responsibility. Again, the word responsibility corresponds to the distinction between the authoritarian and humanistic conscience. The authoritarian conscious is essentially the readiness to follow the orders of the authorities to which one submits; it is glorified obedience. The humanistic conscience is the readiness to listen to the voice of one’s own humanity and is independent of orders given by someone else. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
The survey of attitudes of the American public toward their personal adjustment and toward mental illness is a perplexing problem. Of those persons with acknowledged problems who sought consultation and advice beyond the family circle, the largest proportion (42 percent) turned to clergymen. Approximately 30 percent sought counsel from a general physician. Only 18 percent reported seeking assistance initially from a psychologist or psychiatrist. Of those persons who went for help to psychiatrists, psychologists, or marriage counselors nearly one third had been referred either by their physicians or by their clergymen, although a very small proportion of these referrals came from clergymen or physicians, over three fourths reported that they had received some help, and nearly two thirds reported having been “helped a lot.” Significantly smaller proportions of those who saw marriage counselors, psychologists, or psychiatrists (25 to 46 percent) reported having been helped. Of those persons who claimed to have been helped much by their consultation, the largest single proportion (73 percent) was contributed by those with a “personal problem with a defect in self.” We are left with an apparent inconsistency that should, somehow, be accounted for: individuals who recognize personal adjustment problems caused by some personal defect claim to be helped by therapeutic treatment more often than individuals with other kinds of problems; psychiatrists are consulted more often about just these kinds of problems; yet psychiatrists are not perceived to be the most effective source of help. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
Continuing with our case study of Clare, she was not usually given to crying in movies but one evening, tears came to her eyes when a girl who was in a wretched condition met with unexpected help and friendliness. She ridiculed herself for being sentimental, but this did not stop the tears, and afterward she felt a need to account for her beheaviour. She first thought of the possibility that an unconscious unhappiness of her own might have expressed itself in crying about the movie. And, of course, she did find reasons for unhappiness. Yet her associations along this line of thought led nowhere. It was only the next morning that she suddenly saw the issue: the crying had occurred not when the girl in the movie was badly off but when her situation took an unexpected turn for the better. She realized than what she had overlooked the previous day—that she always cried at such occasions. Her associations then fell in line. She remembered that in her childhood she always cried when she reached the point where the fairy godmother heaps unexpected presents on Cinderella. Then her joy at receiving the scarf came back to her. The next memory concerned an incident that had occurred during her marriage. Her husband usually gave her only the presents due at Christmas or on her birthdays, but once an important business friend of his was in town and the two men went with her to a dressmaker to help her select a dress. She could not make up her mind which of two dresses to choose. The husband then made a generous gesture and suggested that she take both garments. Though she knew that this gesture was made not altogether for her sake but also to impress the business friend, she nevertheless was inordinately happy about it and cherished these dresses more than others. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
Finally, two aspects of the daydream of the great man occurred to her. One was the sence in which, to her complete surprise, she singled her out for his favour. The other concerned all the presents he gave her, incidents that she had told herself in detail: the trips he suggested, the hotels he chose, the gowns he brought home, the invitations to luxurious restaurants. She never had to ask for anything. She felt quite taken aback, almost like a criminal who is confronted with overwhelming evidence. This was her “love”! She remembered a friend, a sworn bachelor, saying that woman’s love is merely a screen for exploiting men. She also recalled her friend Susan who had greatly astonished her by saying that she thought the usual flood of talk about love was disgusting. Love, said Susan, was only an honest deal in which each partner did his share to create a good companionship. Clare had been shocked at what she regarded as cynicism: Susan was too hard boiled in denying the existence and the value of feelings. However, she herself, she now realized, had naively mistaken for love something that largely consisted of expectations that tangible and intangible gifts would be presented to her on a silver platter. Her love was at bottom no more than a sponging on somebody else! This was certainly an entirely unexpected insight, but despite the painful surprise at herself she soon felt greatly relieved. She felt, and rightly, that she had really uncovered her share in what made her love relationships difficult. Clare was so overwhelmed by the discovery she had made that she quite forgot the incident from which she had started, the crying in the movie. However, she returned to tears the next day. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
The tears expressed an overwhelming bewilderment at the thought of a sudden fulfillment of most secret and most ardent wishes, a fulfillment of most secret and most ardent wishes, a fulfillment of something one has waited for all one’s life, something that one has never dared to believe would come true. Within the next couple of weeks Clare followed her insight in several directions. In glancing over her latest series of associations it struck her that in almost all the incidents the emphasis was on help or gifts that came unexpectedly. She felt that at least one clue for this lay in the last remark she had written about the daydream, which was that she never had to ask for anything. Here she came into territory that was familiar to her through the previous analytic work. Since she had formerly tended to repress her own wishes, and was still inhibited to some extent from expressing them, she needed somebody who wished for her, or who guessed her secret wishes and fulfilled them without her having to do anything about them herself. Another tack she pursued concerned the reverse side of the receptive, sponging attitude. She realized that she herself gave very little. Thus, she expected Peter to be always interested in her troubles or interested but did not actively participates in his. She expected him to be tender and affectionate but was not very demonstrative herself. She responded but left the initiative to him. It is hard to be a caring person without getting duped a time or two. Getting emotionally involved with the wrong people can hurt you in more ways than one. Some people like getting others wrapped around their finger. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
There are tremendous pressures today—cultural and political—for conformity, docility, and rigidity. The demand is for technically trained students outperform students in China, and none of this nonsense about education which might improve our interpersonal relationships! The demand is for hard-headedness, for training of the intellect only, for scientific proficiency. We want inventiveness in developing better “hardware,” but creativity in a larger sense tends to be suspect. Personal feelings, free choice, uniqueness—these have little or no place in the classroom. One may observe an elementary school classroom for hours without recording one instance of individual creativity of free choice, expect when the teacher’s back is turned. And at the college level we know that the major effect of a college education on the values of the student is to “shape up” the individual for more comfortable membership in the ranks of college alumni. For the public and for most educators the goal of learning to be free is not an aim they would select, nor toward which they are actually moving. Yet if a civilized culture is to survive, and if the individuals in that culture are to be worth saving, it appears to me to be an essential goal of education. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
The Winchester Mystery House
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
We Should Get Back to the House
There was a sound like the faintest, far-off shout. My eyes opened and uncertainty surfaced with the wakefulness. The rhythmic knocking of hammers and crisp slicing and the saws vanquished the lingering pleasantness of my reverie. My head ached dully. All I could recall was marvelous vista in its Victorian grandeur and splendor. I was flying over it, not at a height, my flying was not so assured, but a meter or two off the ground, flying at a joyful, terrifying velocity, as a glided hither and tither. However, with one false movement the magic would end in dreadful fall. I sighed with relief as I reached for my bed jacket and settled in a chair on the opposite side of the bureau. I looked in the mirror and saw my face breaking into a warm smile. Shuffling papers, I retrieved an appointment book which had been buried. There were two sitting scheduled for me this afternoon. A widow, freshly made, and a young couple who wanted their son’s death confirmed. Would you believe he was reported missing at the Tournament of Roses during winter? The poor dears—so many days of uncertainty. They wanted me to locate his spirit. As I pushed back my chair and summoned the chambermaid to bind my hair and prepare my state-of-the-art shower, I shivered as a frigid air breezed through my chamber. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
My attire for the day was simple: a long coat, slim fitting, curving in gently at the waist, hardly swelling at all over my bosom; the shoulder padding was squarish but by no means exaggerated, the collar was tight around my neck. The young couple greeted me in my blue seance room. I gestured for them to sit down. “Move closer. We must hold hands.” Matthias and Anneliese Hulsmann obliged. It was of course a dark seance. “Are we ready?” I asked, taking my place among the couple. They nodded and we all clasped hands. “Before we contact the spirits, we must clear our heads of all pessimism,” I said. Taking a deep breath and with a soft voice, I began. I was influenced to offer up a brief petition that our assembling might enable us to receive a full measure of spiritual gifts; that I might thereby become more fitted to do the Lord’s work and shew forth His great Love to the World. In a brief time, I exclaimed, “Oh! There is an angel—it is Uriel, and he will soon make his presence known.” We then heard the rustling of large wings, which ceased after a time. After which, there was a gentleman standing between Matthias and Anneliese. He was singing and accompanying himself on a harp. “Happy are those who find love in the Father’s breast. Like the wandering dove who found no repose on Earth around, they can to their Ark repair and enjoy it ever there. Enlarge not to my hunger, or I’m caught in trammels of perverse deliciousness. No, on, that shall not be: thee will I bless, and bid a long adieu.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
After that, a deep rumbling shook the floor. I was able to describe Erich to the bereaved with great accuracy, and then I was told to by the angel to say, “Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he will sustain thee: His arm will uphold thee, so deep that the waters shall not cover thee.” With a deep sigh, the couple closed their eyes in an act of surrender. After Uriel spoke, Erich Hulsmann came through. “Oh Erich. My dear Erich are you here?” I called out. “It’s I. It’s Erich.” “You parents are here, and they miss you dearly. You became lost at the Tournament of Roses. My dear child, have you passed through the veil?” “I am not dead. I’m alive. I feel an effort is being made to raise me, but you must not speak to me, nor touch me.” The darkness being complete, we could not see how much he was raised, but he spoke occasionally, and his voice sounded very much above us. As he lowered to place, we could see his feet above the level of the table. Mrs. Hulsmann’s handkerchief with then drawn to her eyes. “Sorry, so sorry,” Mr. Hulsmann cried. We were then desired to have light for the remainder of the seance. Mr. and Mrs. Hulsman saw a figure behind me whom they described very clearly. He had on a white linen suit with gold buttons. Mrs. Hulsmann then told me to ask Erich about his grandmother. “Erich my dear,” I said, “is your grandmother, who loved you so, well?” “As much as ever,” he replied. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Then his father called his name. Erich nodded toward his father with a veined face, as he walked through the door into the halls of Llanada Villa. As we concluded the seance with the Lord’s prayer, the table rose from the floor, and slammed back down. Our chair fell backward, and the room went pitch black. Several Indians in white clothes became visible. The word “Light” became visible on the ceiling. When again in darkness, a voice called out to us, “We have crowned you all with blessing that you may do the Lord’s work on this Earth.” Mr. and Mrs. Hulsmann were struck with tears. They received the answer they were looking for, but could not understand why their son was angry and could not speak further with them. As they were leaving the room, Mrs. Hulsmann saw a spectral white dove fly through the door and a real feather fell into her hand. Mr. Hulsmann recalled that he made a promise that he had not fulfilled. In a very gentle voice, Mrs. Hulsmann said, “I will never forget you.” Some delicious perfume was sprinkled upon us. I bid them goodbye, as their carriage rode away. The house and grounds were exerting a terrific emotional pull, and I was falling under a spell from the past that I had never felt before. It was foreign to my usual manner of thinking that I could not even speak. I locked the front door and went into the library. As I looked up, a dark shape was looming over my head in the moonlight. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Then I made my way back upstairs to the Daisy Bedroom as fast as I safely could. It was then that I heard the door-to-nowhere open and perceived approaching footsteps. “Who’s there?” I called out. There was no answer, and I was annoyed. Although my housemaids were in other wings of the house—I was sure that one of them had come in and was playing a trick on me. I lit a candle. I could see no one. Yet the door-to-nowhere, I was so sure had been closed was now open—and beyond it only darkness. The candle flickered and died. Then I heard footsteps coming from the door, passing by me, and then going down the stairs. Hastily, I ran into the hallway, and turned on the light, but there was no one there. “Antonia,” I questioned tentatively. “Hanne?” Silence. After a few tense seconds, I heard the footsteps start to mount the stairs and I knew then that there were not the footsteps of either woman. They were unmistakably, the footsteps of a child. I stepped forward and could have reached through the railings and grasped his ankle as he passed, but if my life depended on it, I could not have moved my hand to do so. The area in which I was standing was suddenly icy cold. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
“Who are you?” I yelled. At least I thought I was yelling, but no voice could be heard, as when one tries to scream in a nightmare. I was not too sure that I was not having one, either. I reached the newel post and felt the mahogany—cold and solid—beneath my hand. I had to be awake! I yelled again. My challenges went unanswered. There was not the slightest change in the rhythm of the footsteps as they continued their steady climb back up the stairs. I stood betwixt, as I heard them in the upper hall. They went on up to the third floor. I heard a door softly close, and all was silent. I finally moved…fast. I stumbled into a room. True, I had seen nothing by candlelight nor by gasolier in the dark hall, but a heavy concentrated beam most certainly would have shown a boy on the stairs. Was it Erich? Was he now a spirit coming to live in my house? This had been my impression. I walked upstairs and went into the room where the door had closed and found it empty. Then I inspected several miles of the house and tested all the doors leading to the outside. They were securely locked, and the housemaids were fast asleep. Upon descending upon the first floor, I found the butler in the servants’ quarters. “Did you notice anything unusual?” I asked Rainer. “Did you see anyone walking through the house?” “Of course not, Mrs. Winchester,” he replied a little impatiently. “But I did hear some sort of disturbance. A volley of noises broke out throughout the entire house.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Rainer described the noises as “banging, thumping, the whole place shaking.” Zip was shut up in the library, while Rainer took refuge in the breakroom. “Zip whined in terror as the noises increased in volume and in violence. Then suddenly the noises ceased,” he said. Later that night, I was in the Crystal Bedroom with my precious Zip. For no reason, he began to bristle up his hair, and bark at something. I looked up and saw the boy in his white linen suit, with about half of his figure passing through the slightly opened door. I ran to the door. There was no one there. Rainer was going about his usual business and had seen nothing. Some weeks after this, my house became extremely haunted, especially above the stairs, so that I was forced to stay in the lower rooms, there was such a throwing of things up and down, of bats through the windows, and putting all in disorder. A little while after the, a window on the first floor flew open, and in came a bat which inflamed Rainer with a more eager desire to see what the matter was. The keen desire of discovering the cheat made him venture by himself into that room. Into which, when he came, he saw the bedding, chairs, tables, candlesticks, and bed-staves, and all the furniture, rudely scattered on the floor, but, upon search, found no mortal in the room. In the coming days, while at the market, curious people overheard him saying to the grocer, “There is something more than ordinary in the business of the Winchester mansion. It is not womanish fear or superstition that so affrighted the mistress of the house. The house is haunted in all the rooms, upper and lower, that the staff does not stay for a long time.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
The Winchester Mystery House
After years of working at The Winchester Mystery House, one of the caretakers reported that he was contacted by Mrs. Winchester. The dreams in which Mrs. Winchester appeared to him were getting increasingly lively, and he wanted to go on record with the information thus received. According to him, Mrs. Winchester poured his heart out to the young man, incredible though this seemed on the face of it. The gist of it was a request to go to “the blue room” and find certain papers in a metal box. “This will prove my innocence. I have not harmed a soul. There is written proof. Notarized sworn statements from my staff written October 5, 1922, or 1923.” The message was specific enough, but the papers of course were long since gone. The blue room would be the Blue Seance Room. The restless spirit of the late Mrs. Winchester had evidently decided to be heard once more. At the same time, he was approached by the Society for Psychical Research for an enquiry into his nocturnal impressions.
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Four Seasons Fill the Measure of the Year
Let it be understood that we cannot go outside of this alternative: liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest; not-liberty, equality, survival of the unfittest. The former carries society downwards and favours all its worst members. The most vigorous and influential social Darwinist in America was William Graham Sumner of Yale. Sumner not only made a striking adaptation of evolution to conservative thought, but also effectively propagated his philosophy through widely read books and articles, and converted his strategic teaching post in New Haven into a kind of social-Darwinian pulpit. He provided his age with a synthesis which, though not quite so grand as Mr. Spencer’s, was bolder in its stark and candid pessimism. Mr. Sumner’s synthesis brought together three great traditions of western capitalist culture: the Protestant ethic, the doctrines of classical economics, and Darwinian natural selection. Correspondingly, in the development of American thought Mr. Summer played three roles: he was a great Puritan preacher, an exponent of the classical pessimism of Ricardo and Malthus, and an assimilator and popularizer of evolution. His sociology bridged the gap between the economic ethic set in motion by the Reformation and the thought of the nineteenth century, for it assumed that the industrious, temperate, and frugal man of the Protestant ideal was the equivalent of the “strong” of the “fittest” in the struggle for existence; and it supported the Ricardian principles of inevitability and laissez faire with a hard-bitten determinism that seemed to be at once Calvinistic and scientific. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Sumner was born in Paterson, New Jersey, on October 30, 1840. His father, Thomas Sumner, was a hard-working, self-educated English labourer who had come to America because his family’s industry was disrupted by the growth of the factory system. He brought up his children to respect the traditional Protestant economic virtues, and his frugality left a deep impress upon his son William, who came in time to acclaim the savings-bank depositor as “a hero of civilization.” The sociologist later wrote of this father: His principles and habits of life were the best possible. His knowledge was wide and his judgment excellent. He belonged to the class of men whom Caleb Garth in Middlemarch is the type. In early life I accepted, from books and other people, some views and opinions which differed from his. At the present time, in regard to these matters, I hold with him and not with others.” The economic doctrines of the classical tradition which were current in his early years strengthened Sumner’s paternal heritage. He came to think of pecuniary success as the inevitable product of diligence and thrift, and to see the lively capitalist society in which he lived as the fulfillment of the classical ideal of an automatically benevolent, free competitive order. At fourteen he had read Harriet Martineau’s popular little volumes, Illustrations of Political Economy, whose purpose was to acquaint the multitude with the merits of lassie faire through a series of parables illustrating Ricardian principles. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
There he became acquainted with the wage-fund doctrine, and its corllaries: “Nothing can permanently affect the rate of wages which does not affect the proportion of population to capital”; and “combinations of labourers against capitalists…cannot secure a permanent rise of wages unless the supply of labour falls short of demand—in which case, strikes are usually unnecessary.” There also he found fictional proof that “a self-balancing power being…inherent in the entire system of commercial exchange, all apprehensions about the result of its unimpeded operations are absurd,” and that “a sin is committed when Capital is diverted from its normal course to be employed in producing at home that which is expensive and inferior, instead of preparing that which will purchase the same article cheaper and superior abroad.” Charities, whether public or private, Miss Martineau held, would never reduce the number of the indigent, but would only encourage improvidence and nourish “peculation, tyranny, and fraud.” Later Sumner declared that his conceptions of “capital, labour, money and trade were all formed by those books which I read in my boyhood.” Francis Wayland’s standard text in political economy, which he recited in college, seems to have impressed him but little, perhaps because it only confirmed well-fixed beliefs. In 1859, when he matriculated at Yale, young Sumner devoted himself to theology. During undergraduate years Yale was still a pillar of orthodoxy, dominated by its versatile president, Theodore Dwight Woolsey, who had just turned from classical scholarship to write his Introduction to the Study of International Law, and by the Rev. Noah Porter, Professor of Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics, who as Woolsey’s successor would one day cross swords with Sumner over the proper place of the new science in education. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Sumner, a somewhat frigid youth (who could seriously ask, “Is the reading of fiction justifiable?”) repelled many of his schoolmates; but his friends made up in munificence what they lacked in number. One of them, William C. Whitney, persuaded his elder brother Henry to supply funds for Sumner’s further education abroad; and the Whitneys secured a substitute to fill his place in the Union Army while Sumner pursued theological studies at Geneva, Gottingen, and Oxford. In 1868 Sumner was elected to a tutorship at Yale, beginning a lifelong association with its faculty that would be broken only by a few years spent as editor of religious newspaper and reactor of the Episcopal Church in Morristown, New Jersey. In 1872 he was elevated to the post of Professor of Political and Social Science in Yale College. Despite personal coldness and a crisp, dogmatic classroom manner, Sumner had a wider following than any other teacher in Yale’s history. Upperclassmen found unique satisfaction in his course; lowerclassmen looked forward to promotion chiefly as a means of becoming eligible to enroll in them. William Lyon Phelps, who took every one of Sumner’s courses as a matter of principle without regard for his interest in the subject matter, as left a memorable picture of Sumner’s dealings with a student dissenter: “Professor, don’t you believe in any government aid to industries?” “No! It’s root, hog, or die.” “Yes, but hasn’t the hog got a right to root?” “There are no rights. The World owes nobody a living.” “Yo believe then, Professor, in only one system, the contract-competitive system?” “That’s the only sound economic system. All others are fallacies.” “Well, suppose some professor of political economy came along and took your job away from you. Wouldn’t you be sore?” “Any other professor is welcome to try. If he gets my job, it is my fault. My business is to teach the subject so well that no one can take the job away from me.” The stamp of his early religious upbringing and interests marked all Sumner’s writings. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Although clerical phraseology soon disappeared from his style, his temper remained that of a proselytizer, a moralist, an espouser of causes with little interest in distinguishing between error and iniquity in his opponents. “The type of mind which he exhibited,” writes his biographer, “was the Hebraic rather than the Greek. He was intuitive, rugged, emphatic, fervently and relentlessly ethical, denunciatory, prophetic.” He might insist that political economy was a descriptive science divorced from ethics, but his strictures on protectionist and socialists resounded with moral overtones. His popular articles are read like sermons. Sumer’s life was not entirely given to crusading. His intellectual activity passed through two overlapping phases, marked by a change less in his thought than in the direction of his work. During the 1870’s, 1880’s and early 1890’s, in the columns of popular journals and from the lecture platform, he waged a holy war against reformism, protectionism, socialism, and government interventionism. In this period, he published What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883), “The Forgotten Man” (1883), and “The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over” (1894). In the early 1890’s, however, Sumner turned his attention more to academic sociology. It was during this period that the manuscript of “Earth Hunger” was written, and the monumental Science of Society projected. When Sumner, always a prodigious worker, found that his chapter on human customs had grown to 200,000 words, he decided to publish it as a separate volume. Thus, almost as an afterthought, Folkways was brought out in 1906. Although the deep ethical feeling of Sumner’s youth gave way to the sophisticated moral relativism of his social-science period, his underlying philosophy remained the same. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The Christian scriptures name obstacles the aspirant may have to deal with. They are frivolity, changeableness, unruly desires, dissatisfaction, gratification of the senses, and craving for the ego’s existence. Even if he finds himself in a moral solitude, as he may in earlier years, it is still worthwhile to be loyal to ideals. He must cast off the long mantle of arrogance and put on the short coat of humility. A lapse in artistry may be pardoned but a lapse in sincerity may not. Be sincere! That is the message from soul to self, from God to man. It is not man’s own voice, which is to acclaim him as a master, but his life. His willingness to acknowledge he has faults and lots of them is admirable—so few ever like to confess such a thing—but they are not so deep or so numerous as he imagines. He should not forget that he has some merits too and they are able to balance the others and keep them where they belong. As for perfection, alas, the self-actualized Christian too is still striving for it. Pride can take a dozen different disguises, even the disguise of its very opposite, humility. The quicker he grows and the father he goes on this quest, the more an aspirant must examine his character for its traces and watch his actions to detect it. He is indeed a prudent man who refuses to be blinded by passions or deluded by appearances. He does not know in advance what he will do in every new situation that arises—who does?–but only what he will try to do, what principles he will try to follow. He who trims his sails to the winds of expediency reveals his insincerity. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
It is true that environment contributes to the molding of character but not true that it creates or even dominates character. Thought and will are linked with our own rebirth in Jesus as the Christ. Character can be improved by effort and Grace. If we will only attend to the first and persistently carry out the inner work required on ourselves, destiny will attend to the second and not seldom remove the outer obstacles or improve the outer environment in the process. Each person who enters our life for a time, or becomes involved with it at some point, is an unwitting channel bringing good or evil, wisdom or foolishness, fortune or calamity to us. This happens because it was preordained to happen—under the law of recompense. However, the extent to which he affects our outer affairs is partly determined by the extent to which we let him do so, by the acceptance or rejection of suggestions made by his conduct, speech, or presence. It is we who are finally responsible. The victim of exterior suggestion is never quite an innocent victim, for his own quota of consent must also be present. When a therapist is experiencing a warm, beneficial and acceptant attitude toward what is in the client, this facilitates change. It involves the therapist’s genuine willingness for the client to be whatever feeling is going on in him at that moment—fear, confusion, pain, pride, anger, hatred, love, courage, or awe. It means that the therapist cares for the client, in a non-possessive way. It means that he prizes the client in a non-possessive way. The is accepted in a total rather than conditional way. He does not simply accept the client when he is behaving in certain ways and disapproves of him when he behaves in other ways. It means an outgoing optimistic feeling without reservations, without evaluation. This is known as an unconditional beneficial regard. Again, research studies show that the more this attitude is experienced by the therapist, the more likelihood there is that therapy will be successful. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Empathic understanding is when the therapist is sensing the feelings and personal meanings which the client is experiencing in each moment, when he can perceive these from “inside,” as they seem to the client, and when he can successfully communicate something of that understanding to his client, then this condition is fulfilled. Each of us has discovered that this kind of understanding is extremely rare. We neither receive it nor offer it with any great frequency. Instead, we offer another type of understanding which is very different. “I understand what is wrong with you”; “I understand what makes you act that way”; or “I too have experienced your trouble and I reacted very differently”; these are the types of understanding which we usually offer and receive, an evaluative understanding which we usually offer and receive, an evaluative understanding from the outside. However, when someone understands how it feels and seems to be me, without wanting to analyze me or judge me, then I can blossom and grow in that climate. And research bears out this common observation. When the therapist can grasp the moment-to-moment experiencing occurring in the inner World losing the separateness of his own identity in this emphatic process, then change is likely to occur. Studies with a variety of clients show that when these conditions occur in the therapist, and when they are to some degree perceived by the client, therapeutic movement ensures, the client finds himself painfully but learning and growing, and both he and the therapist regard the outcome as successful. From our perspective, it seems that it is attitudes such as these rather than the therapist’s technical knowledge and skill, which are primarily responsible for therapeutic change. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Not later than high school every student should receive a solid course of instruction in general psychology. Such a course should enable the student to see that the behaviour of people is proper, indeed a crucial, area for the application of scientific method. He should be introduced to the general principles that have been uncovered through careful study of how people learn, how they perceive their World, how they acquire attitudes and how those attitudes influence their modes of adjustment. The aim of such a general psychology course taught at the secondary level would be not simply to provide the student with an awareness of the substantive content of psychology as a field of human inquiry but, more importantly, to instill in him attitudes toward behaviour, his own and that of other persons, likely to encourage and maintain hygienic personal relationships. The study of psychology encouraged an attitude of objectivity and persisting examination of reasons for behaviour; it provides a foundation and stimulus for the student to seek to understand himself and others. With a scientifically psychological orientation toward the understanding both of self and others the individual is less likely to be victimized either by his own emotions or by the irrationalities of others. An adequate general psychology would introduce the student to the “psychology of everyday life,” would sensitize him to the meaning of errors, oversights, and momentary distortions in his perceptions and thought. With this instruction he would have at least the equipment, if not the motivation, for the life-long exploration of his own developing personality—for the continual challenge to self-realization and self-understanding. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
As the frontiers of geograpy have been progressively pushed back and exhausted, it becomes increasingly difficult for the average man to be an explorer, to make discoveries. For the average man, the last frontier challenging his urge to search and to uncover new lands if provided by the complex vastness of his own mind, by the boundaries of his own spirit. It is a sorry epiphenomenon of the mental health movement that many persons who are admirably equipped to embark on this voyage and who long for insight for the sheer sake of discovery and not out of any pressing need, have been persuaded that they require the services of an expert guide. While it is true that the psychotherapist may shorten the trip to the island of insight it is not certain that the seeker cannot find it on his own, or that he will be significantly discommoded by the longer journey. Sound courses in psychology and inspired instruction can afford possibly a reduction in the susceptibility to neurosis. Certainly, it can reduce the number of sentient persons who relinquish the responsibility and privilege (and the exquisite rewards) of a personal, life-long exploration of their existence, and who in so doing waste the time and energies of the therapists whose skills are required by those voyagers who are truly lost. Until recently courses in psychology have been almost totally restricted to colleges and universities, and in these settings, they have frequently been unavailable before the sophomore year. While the proportion of the college-age population attending institutions of higher learning is steadily rising, it is still very small. Consequently, it is good to find increasing signs of thoughtful planning for the introduction of psychology as a basic subject in high school, and experience with such instruction is being carefully recorded. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
The study of psychology is not provided by courses in how to be successful, how to be proper, and the like. There is a need for research to determine at what minimal age levels a formal course in psychology can be effectively introduced. Considering the central role of psychological phenomena in the enitre life of the individual it seems incredible that we have been so slow to find a place for the study of psychology in our secondary school curricula. The mental health movement should lend its resources and energies to supporting those teachers and educational leaders who are seeking to find a stable and adequate place for the study of psychology in our secondary schools. In our ongoing case study of Clare, it struck her that there was a contrast between the two men she was focused on. One man rescued her from drowning; in connection with the man in the novel she was reading, a similarity occurred because he offered the girl a refuge from abuse and brutality. Bruce and the great man of her daydream, while not saving her from any danger, also played a protective role. As she observed this repetitious motif of saving, shielding, sheltering, she realized that she craved not only “love” but also protection. She also saw that one of the values Peter had for her was his willingness and ability to give advice and to console her when she was in distress. A fact occurred to her in this context that she had known for quite a while—her defenselessness when under attack or pressure. She saw now that it produced, in turn, a need for somebody to protect her. Finally, she realized that her longing for love or marriage had always increased rather acutely whenever life became difficult. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
In recognizing that a need for protection was an essential element in her love life Clare took a great step ahead. The range of demans that this apparently harmless need embraced, and the role it played, became clear only much later. It may be interesting to compare this insight into a problem with the last one reported regarding the same problem, the insight concerning her “private religion.” The comparison reveals a frequent happening in psychoanalytical work. A problem is first seen in its barest outline. One does not recognize much beyond the fact that it exists. Later one returns to the same problem with a much deeper understanding of its meaning. The feeling would be unwarranted in such a case that the alter finding is not new, that one has known it all along. One has not known it, at least not consciously, but the way for its emergence has been prepared. Despite a certain superficiality this first insight struck the initial blow at Clare’s dependency. However, she glimpsed her need for protection, she did not yet realize its nature, and she could not draw the conclusion that this was one of the essential factors in her problem. She also ignored all the material in the daydream of the great man, material indicating that the man she loved was expected to fulfill many more functions than mere protection. Experiences with pleasures of the flesh can be simply sensuously pleasurable without the depth of love but also without a marked degree of greed. The arousal involving pleasures of the flesh is physiologically stimulated, and it may or may not lead to human intimacy. The opposite of this kind of desire involving pleasures of the flesh is characterized by an opposite sequence, namely, that love creates the desire for pleasures of the flesh. This means that a man and a woman may feel a deep sense of love for each other in terms of concern, knowledge, intimacy, and responsibility, and that this deep human experience arouses the wish for physical wisdom. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
It is obvious that this second type of desire for pleasures of the flesh will occur more frequently, although by no means exclusively so, among people beyond their mid-twenties and that it is the basis for the continuation of desires of pleasures of the flesh in monogamous human relationships of long duration. Where this type of arousal with pleasures of the flesh does not take place, it is natural that—aside from sexual perversions which might bind two people together for a lifetime because of the individual nature of their perversion—the merely physiological arousal will tend to require change and new experiences with pleasures of the flesh. Both these kinds of arousals of pleasures of the flesh are fundamentally different from the greedy one that is essentially motivated by anxiety or narcissism. Despite the complexity of the distinction between greedy and “free” sexuality, the distinction exists. Everyone who becomes aware of and sensitive to the difference can observe in himself and herself the various types of arousal, and those with more experimentation in pleasures of the flesh than was the case in middle class of the Victorian age may be supposed to have rich material for such observation. They may be supposed to have, because, unfortunately, increased experimentation with pleasures of the flesh has not been combined sufficiently with greater discernment of the qualitative differences in experience with pleasures of the flesh—although I am sure that a considerable number of people exist who, when they reflect upon these matters, can verify the validity of the distinction. If you are one of those people with what some call an overactive imagination, you had better watch out for those people who will see it and exploit it. It is relatively easy to get people with vivid imaginations to fall for things. After all, they can picture what the speaker is saying. Their emotions get all caught up in stuff without them even meaning to. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Modern man, in industrial society, has changed the form and intensity of idolatry. He has become the object of blind economic forces which rule his life. He worships the work of his hands; he transforms himself into a thing. Not the working class alone is alienated (in fact, if anything, the skilled worker seems to be less alienated than those who manipulate men and symbols) but everybody is. This process of alienation which exists in the European-American industrialized countries, regardless of their political structure, has given rise to new protest movements. The renaissance of socialist humanism is one symptom of this protest. Precisely because alienation has reached a point where it borders on insanity in the whole industrialized World, undermining and destroying its religious, spiritual, and political traditions and threatening general destruction through nuclear war, many are better able to see that Marx had recognized the central issue of modern man’s sickness; that he had not only seen, as Feuerbach and Kierkegaard had, this “sickness” but that he had shown that contemporary idolatry is rooted in the contemporary mode of production and can be changed only by the complete change of the socioeconomical constellation together with the spiritual liberation of man. Surveying the discussion of Dr. Freud and Marx’s respective views on mental illness, it is obvious that Dr. Freud is primarily concerned with individual pathology, and Marx is concerned with the pathology common to a society and resulting from the system of that society. It is also clear that the content of psychopathology is quite different for Marx and for Dr. Freud. Dr. Freud sees pathology essentially in the failure to find a proper balance between the Id and Ego, between instinctual demands and the demands of reality; Marx sees the essential illness, as what the nineteenth century called la maladie du siecle, the estrangement of man from his own humanity and hence from his fellow man. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Yet it is often overlooked that Dr. Freud by no means thought exclusively in terms of individual pathology. He speaks also of a “social neurosis.” “If the evolution of civilization,” he writes “had such a far-reaching similarity with the development of an individual, and if the same methods are employed in both, would not the diagnosis be justified that many systems of civilization—or epochs of it—possibly even the whole of humanity—have become “neurotic” under the pressure of civilizing trends? To analytic dissection of these neuroses, therapeutic recommendations might follow which would claim a great practical interest. However, it behooves us to be very careful, not to forget that after all we are dealing only with analogies, and that it is dangerous, not only with men but also with concepts, to drag them out of the region where they originated and have matured. The diagnosis of collective neuroses, moreover, will be confronted by a special difficulty. In the neurosis of an individual, we can use as a starting point the contrast presented to us between the patient and his environment which we assume to be “normal.” No such background as this would be available for any society similarly affected; it would have to be supplied in some other way. And regarding any therapeutic application of our knowledge, what would be the use of the most acute analysis of social neuroses, since no one possesses the power to compel the community to adopt the therapy? Despite all these difficulties, we may expect that one day someone will venture upon this research into the pathology of civilized communities. However, in Dr. Freud’s interest in the “social neuroses,” one fundamental difference between Dr. Freud’s and Marx’s thinking remains: Marx sees man as formed by his society, and hence sees the root of pathology in specific qualities of the social organization. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Dr. Freud sees man as primarily formed by his experience in the family group; he appreciates little that the family is only the representative and agent of society, and he looks at various societies mainly in terms of the quantity of repression they demand, rather than the quality of their organization and of the impact of this social quality on the quality of the thinking and feeling of the members of a given society. This discussion of the difference between Marx’ and Dr. Freud’s views on psychopathology, brief as it is, must mention one more aspect in which their thinking follows the same method. For Dr. Freud the state of primary narcissism of the infant is not a sick infant. Yet the dependent, greedy adult, who had been “fixated” on, or who has “regressed” to, the oral level of the child is a sick adult. The main needs and strivings are the same in the infant and in the adult; why then is the one healthy and the other sick? The answer obviously lies in the concept of evolution. What is normal at a certain stage is pathological at another stage. Or, to put it differently: what is necessary at one stage is also normal or rational. What is unnecessary, seen from the standpoint of evolution, is irrational and pathological. The adult who “repeats” an infantile stage at the same time does not and cannot repeat it, precisely because he is no longer a child. Marx following Hegel, employs the same method in viewing the evolution of man in society. Primitive man, medieval man, and the alienated man of industrial society are sick and yet not sick, because their stage of development is a necessary one. Just as the infant must mature physiologically to become an adult, so humans must mature sociologically in the process of gaining mastery of nature and of society to become fully human. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
All irrationality of the past, while regrettable, is rational because it was necessary. However, when the human race stops at a stage of development which it should have passed, when it finds itself in contradiction with the possibilities which the historical situation offers, then its state of existence is irrational or, if Marx had used the term, pathological. Both Marx’s and Dr. Freud’s concepts of pathology can be understood fully only in terms of their evolutionary concept of individual and human history. The victim of exterior suggestion is never quite an innocent victim, for his own quota of consent must also be present. It is perfectly true that environment does count, and often heavily, in the sum of life. However, if one’s faith is strong enough or if one’s understanding is deep enough, it is also true that the quest can be pursued effectively anywhere, be it a slum tenement or a stockbroker’s office. It is easier to pursue it in some places, harder in others, but the law of compensation always operates to even matters out. If there is a total giving-up of oneself to this higher aim, sooner or later there will be a total result, whatever the external circumstances may be. What is in a man, in his character, his mind, and his heart is, in the end, much more important than what is in his surroundings; but his surroundings have their own importance, for they either limit or they promote what he can do. With most people the reaction to their environment and to events is mainly impulsive and mostly uncontrolled. So the first step for them is to become conscious of what they are doing, the second being to refuse to do it when reflection and wisdom dictate a better course. All this implies a taking hold of the self and a disciplining of its mechanism—body, feelings, and thoughts. It leads to using the self with awareness and functioning it with efficiency. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Being a firefighter is very rewarding, but it also comes with risks, and even recovery can have unforseen risks. A firefighter we will call Brunno Groning shares his story with us. “Four months out of the fire academy, I had had a lot of garbage runs, you know, smoke scares and pots of food. Then one day we had a fire in an attic, and we had the old service masks, just a canister and a face piece. I was climbing through the attic, and the flap of my coat kept coming down over the intake hole of my mask. It was cutting my air off, and the only air I was getting was the air that I was breathing out. I was hyperventilating. The next thing I knew, I was lying on my side, and I thought, “What the (expletive) is going on here?” I was laying on a rafter, and I just rolled over and fell through the plasterboard into a closet. There were no injuries or anything. Looking back on it, I thought, ‘Hey, I could have died up there.’ I could have been pinned or whatever and never come out. After that, three of us were on top of a house extension, it was a summer kitchen, and we were pulling some boards down when the whole thing collapsed. Fire and the rot of the old timbers brought it down. I didn’t know I was injured until I took about four steps, and my leg went out that way. Bot the led and the ankle were broken. They sent me to Mercy Hospital, that’s where they used to send us, and the hospiutal sent me home. To let the swelling go down, they said. The doctor told me to come in on Saturday and he would put it in a cast. The guy was a boozer, and I looked at him that morning, and he had half a jacket on. I looked down, and he had two different shoes on, a brown wingtip and a black one. And I said, ‘Oh, (expletive).’ When he was wrapping the foot, I kept telling him he was wrapping it too tight. He said he had to go play golf. He said, ‘If your toes turn blue, come back in.’ Well, I got home, and they turned black on me. So I went to the hospital, and they took that cast off and put another one on. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
“I was out of work seven months that time. I had to go for whirlpool treatments, and one day the leg was in the whirlpool and the technician came in and said he had to take the hospital rig to a fire, so he left. That temperature gauge on the side climbed up in the red, and I was like, ‘What’s going on here?’ I wound up with blisters on my leg from that. If it had been too hot to start with, I couldn’t have put my leg in it. But it was like, you know, if you’re sitting in a warm tub you can stand the water getting hotter and hotter. The guy, being in a rush to get to the fire, didn’t adjust the temperature right. So you could day I was in a job that was dangerous, and I was surrounded by people who were dangerous, too.” It is perfectly true that environment does count, and often heavily, in the sum of life. However, it is also true that is one’s faith is strong enough or if one’s understanding is deep enough, the quest can be pursued effectively anywhere, be it a slum tenement or a stockbroker’s office. It is easier to pursue it in some places, harder in other, but the law of compensation always operates to even matter out. If there is a total giving-up of oneself to this higher aim, sooner or later there will be a total result, whatever the circumstances may be. What is a man, in his character, his mind, and his heart is, in the end, much more important than what is in his surroundings; but his surroundings have their own importance, for they either limit or they promote what he can do. Please show support for the Sacramento Fire Department by making a contribution. Wisdom is the greatest good, for it does not depart for man. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
And can I ever bid these joys farewell? Yes, I must pass them for a nobler life, where I may find the agonies, the strife of human hearts: for lo! I see afar, o’ersailing the blue cragginess, a car and steeds with streamy manes–the charioteer looks out upon the winds with glorious fear: and now the numerous tramplings quiver lightly along a huge cloud’s ridge; and now with sprightly wheel downward come they into fresher skies, tipt round with silver from the sun’s bright eyes.
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I Will Meet You Once Again Beyond the Grave
With its rapid expansion, its exploitative methods, its desperate competition, and its peremptory rejection of failure, post-bellum America was like a vast human caricature of the Darwinian struggle for existence and survival of the fittest. Successful business entrepreneurs accepted by instinct the Darwinian terminology which portrayed the conditions of their existence. Businesspeople are not commonly articulate social philosophers, but a rough reconstruction of their social outlook show how congenial to their thinking were the plausible analogies of social selection, and how welcome was the expansive evolutionary opportunism of the Spencerian system. In a nation permeated with the gospel of progress, the incentive of pecuniary success appealed even to many persons whose ethical horizons were broader than those of business enterprise. “I perceive clearly,” wrote Walt Whitman in Democratic Vistas, “that the extreme business energy, and this almost maniacal appetite for wealth prevalent in the United States of America, are parts of amelioration and progress, indispensably needed to prepare the very results I demand. My theory includes riches, and the getting of riches…” No doubt there were many to applaud the assertion of the railroad executive Chauncey Depew that the guests at the great dinners and public banquets of New York City represented the survival of the fittest of the thousands who came there in search of fame, fortune, or power, and that it was “superior ability, foresight, and adaptability” that brought them successfully through the fierce competitions of the metropolis. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
James J. Hill, another railroad magnate, in an essay defending business consolidation, argued that “the fortunes of railroad companies are determined by the law of the survival of the fittest,” and implied that the absorption of smaller by larger roads represents the industrial analogy to the victory of the strong. And John D. Rockefeller, speaking from an intimate accquaintance with the methods of competition, declared in a Sunday-school address: “The growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest…The American Beauty rose can be produced in the splendor and fragrance which bring cheer to its beholder only by sacrificing the early buds which grow up around it. This is not an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working-out of a law of nature and the law of God.” The most prominent of the disciples of Spencer was Andrew Carnegie, who sought out the philosopher, became his intimate friend, and showered him with favours. In his autobiography, Mr. Carnegie told how troubled and perplexed he had been over the collapse of Christian theology, until he took the trouble to read Darwin and Spencer. “I remember that light came as in a flood and all was clear. Not only had I got rid of theology and the supernatural, but I had became my motto, my true source of comfort. Man was not created with an instinct for his own degradation, but from the lower he had risen to the higher forms. Nor is there any conceivable end to his march to perfection. His face is turned to the light; he stands in the sun and looks upward.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Perhaps it was comforting, too, to discover that sociual laws were founded in the immutable principles of the natural order. In an article in the North American Review, which he ranked among the best of his writings, Mr. Carnegie emphasized the biological foundations of the law of competition. However much we may object to the seeming harshness of this law, he wrote, “It is here; we cannot evade it; no substitutes for it have been found; and while the law may sometimes be hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department.” Even if it might be desirable for civilization eventually to discard its individualistic foundation, such a charge is not practicable in our age; it would belong to another “long succeeding sociological stratum,” whereas our duty is with the here and now. The reception accorded to Spencer’s social ideas cannot be disassociated from that accorded to the main body of his thought; however some part of his success probably came because he was telling the guardians of American society what they wanted to hear. Grangers, Greenbackers, Single Taxers, Knights of Labor, trade unionists, Populists, Socialists Utopian and Marxian—all presented challenges to the existing pattern of free enterprise, demanded reforms by state action, or insisted upon a thorough remodeling of the social order. Those who wished to continue in established ways were pressed for a theoretical answer to the rising voices of criticism. Said ironmaster Abram S. Hewitt: “The problem presented to systems of religion and schemes of government is, to make men who are equal in liberty—that is, in political rights and therefore entitled to the ownership of property—content with that inequality in its distribution which must inevitably result from the application of the law of justice.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
This problem the Spencerian system could solve. Conservatism and Spencer’s philosophy walked hand in hand. The doctrine of selection and the biological apology for laissez faire, preached in Spencer’s formal sociological writings and in a series of shorter essays, satisfied the desire of the select for a scientific rationale. Spencer’s plea for absolute freedom of individual enterprise was a large philosophical statement of the constitutional ban upon interference with liberty and property without due process of law. Spencer was advancing within a cosmic framework the same general political philosophy which under the Supreme Court’s exegesis of the Fourteenth Amendment served so brilliantly to turn back the tide of state reform. It was this convergence of Spencer’s philosophy with the Court’s interpretation of due process which finally inspired Mr. Justice Holmes (himself an admirer of Spencer) to protest that “the fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics.” The social views of Spencer’s popularizers were likewise conservative. Youmans took time from his promotion of science to attack the eight-hour strikers in 1872. Labour, he urged in characteristic Spencerian vein, must “accept the spirit of civilization, which is pacific, constructive, controlled by reason, and slowly ameliorating and progressive. Coercive and violent measures which aim at great and sudden advantages are sure to prove illusory.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
He suggested that, if people were taught the elements of political economy and social science during their education, such mistakes might be avoided. Youmans attacked the newly founded American Social Science Association for devoting itself to unscientific reform measure instead of a “strict and passionless study of society from a scientific point of view.” Until the laws of social behaviour are known, he declared, reform is blind; the Association might do better to recognize a sphere of natural, self-adjusting activity, with which government intervention usually wreaks havoc. There was precious little scope for meliorist activities in the outlook of one who believed with Youmans that science shows “we are born well, or born badly, and that whoever is ushered into existence at the bottom of the scale can never rise to the top because the weight of the universe upon him.” Acceptance of the Spencerian philosophy brought with it a paralysis of the will to reform. One day, some years after the publication of Progress and Poverty, Youmans in Henry George’s presence denounced with great fervour the political corruption of New York and the selfishness of the rich in ignoring or promoting it when they found it profitable to do so. “What do you propose to do about it?” George asked. Youmans replied, “Nothing! You and I can do nothing at all. It’s a matter of evolution. We can only wait for evolution. Perhaps in four or five thousand years, evolution may have carried men beyond this state of things.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
The peak of Spencer’s American popularity probably was reached in the fall of 1882, when he made a memorable visit to the United States of America. Despite his aversion to reporters, Spencer received much attention from the press, and hotel managers and railway agents competed for the privilege of serving him. Finally yielding one synthetic “interview” with the gentlemen of the press, Spencer expressed (it was a slightly jarring note) his fear that the American character was not sufficiently developed to make the best use of its republican institutions. The prospect for the future, however, was encouraging; from “biological truths,” he told the reporters, he inferred that the eventual mixture of the allied varieties of the Aryan race forming the population would produce “a finer type of man than has hitherto existed.” Whatever difficulties the Americans might have to surmount, they might “reasonably look forward to a time when they will have produced a civilization grander than any the World has known.” The climax of that visit was a hastily arranged banquet at Delmonico’s, which gave American notables an opportunity to pay personal tribute. The dinner was attended by leaders in American letters, science, politics, theology, and business. Spencer’s message to this distinguished audience was somewhat disappointing. He had observed, he said, an excess of hurry and hard labour in the tempo of American life, too much of the gospel of work; his friends would ruin their constitutions with exertion. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
The guests rewarded this appeal against strenuosity with an onerous round of fulsome tributes, which painfully embarrassed even the vain Spencer. William Graham Sumner ascribed the foundations of sociological method to the guest of honour; if the South had been familiar with his Social Statics, Carl Schurz suggested that the Civil War might have been averted; John Fiske asserted that his service to religion were as great as his services to science; and Henry Ward Beecher struck a rather incongruous note at the end of a hearty testimonial by promising to meet him once again beyond the grave. However imperfect the appreciation of the guests for the niceties of Spencer’s thought, the banquet showed how popular he had become in the United States of America. When Spencer was on the dock, waiting for the ship to carry him back to England, he seized the hand of Carnegie and Youmans. “Here,” he cried to reporters “are my two best American friends.” For Spencer it was a rare gesture of personal warmth; but more than this, it symbolized the harmony of the new science with the outlook of a business civilization. The rise of critical reformism in economics and sociology, of pragmatism in philosophy, and of other tendencies that undermined Spencer’s vogue and displaced his ideas—this remains to be treated elsewhere. It is enough to say that, surviving until 1903, he outlived by many years the popularity of his works. In his old age, he was aware that the current of the times was running against his preaching, and a visitor of this period reported finding him “grievously disappointed” at the neglect of his political doctrines, the decline of individualism, and the rise of socialist ideals. “Herbert Spencer was a name to conjure with twenty-five years ago,” taunted a religious observer in 1917. “But how the mighty are fallen! How little interest is shown in Herbert Spencer at the present time!” #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
While it was true that for younger men Spencer’s name no longer carried its old ring of authority, the writer had forgotten that men who were then in their maturity—the publicists, industrialists, teachers, and writers of the governing generation—had spent their youth with Spencer. Whatever had become of Synthetic Philosophy, the mark of his evolutionary individualism was indelible. As late as late as 1915, the Forum had seen fit to reprint a collection of Spencer’s individualistic essays, “The Man Versus the State,” “The New Toryism,” “The Coming Slavery,” “Over-Legislation,” “The Sins of Legislators,” and others, along with commentaries by a galaxy of Republican Party luminaries brilliant enough to dispel all doubt of the vitality of Spencer’s influence among outstanding national leaders. Nicholas Murray Butler, Charles William Eliot, Representative Augustus P. Gardner, Elbert H. Gary, David Jayne Hill, Henery Cabot Lodge, Elihu Root, and Harlan Fiske Stone responded to the editor’s request for contributions by “leaders of thought in America who know the tremendous value of Spencer’s work in our social system.” Hill’s remark that he saw at work in this country the same fatal and illogical procedure that Spencer had been fighting in England, “namely, the gradual imposition of a new bondage in the name of freedom…the increasing subjection of the citizens to the growing tyranny of officialism,” made it clear that the essays were being republished as a manifesto against Wilson’s New Freedom. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Long after individualism had become a national tradition, Spencer’s doctrines were imported into the Republic. Yet in the expansive age of our industrial culture, he became the spokesman of that tradition, and his contribution materially swelled the stream of individualism if it did not change its course. If Spencer’s abiding impact on American thought seems impalpable to later generations, it is perhaps only because it has been so thoroughly absorbed. His language has become a standard feature of the folklore of individualism. “You can’t make the World all planned and soft,” says the businessman of Middletown. “The strongest and best survive—that’s the law of nature after all—always has been and always will be.” Man is not required to acquire a perfect character, a complete absence of all faults. In new surroundings or circumstances and under different pressures, new faults may appear. He is required to remove just sufficiently the obstructive conditions within himself. The herd of men are ruled by physical instincts and changing emotions. The aspirant for true individuality must set up higher standards of self-control, personal stability, and harmonious balance. Though man assigns little importance to his thoughts, contrasted with his deeds, their total effect is to dictate his policies which in turn dictate his deeds. If Universal obligations may have to be fulfilled, at least this will not be done in total ignorance. It will be with resignation rather than hatred, and with hope for higher attainment. The habit of always remembering that he is committed to the Quest and to the alteration of character which this involves should help him to refuse assent in temptation and reject despondency in tribulation. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
We now have a considerable body of knowledge, both clinical and empirical, as to the conditions which, in psychotherapy, foster the process of learning to be free, of becoming oneself. We have found, this experience comes about in a close, warm, understanding relationship in which there is freedom from such things as threat, and freedom to choose and be. From the practical and research information currently available, it seems that a growth-facilitating of freedom-promoting relationship contains at least three significant qualities. When the psychotherapist is what he is, when in the relationship with his client he is genuine and without “front” of facade, openly being the feelings and attitudes which at that moment are following in him, personal change is facilitated. Congruence describes this condition. If appropriate, congruence is the feelings the therapist is experiencing which are available to him, to his awareness, and he can live these feelings, be them, and able to communicate them. No one fully achieves this condition, yet the more the therapist can listen acceptantly to what is going on within himself, and the more he is able to be the complexity of his feelings, without fear the higher the degree of his congruence. Each of us senses this quality in people in many ways. One of the things that offends us about radio, Internet, TV News, and TV commercials is that it is evident from the tone of voice that the announcer is “putting on,” playing a role, saying something he or she does not feel. That is incongruence. Each of us knows individuals whom we somehow trust because we sense that they are being what they are, that we are dealing with the person, not with a polite or professional front. It is this quality of congruence which we sense that research has found to be associated with successful therapy. The more genuine and congruent the therapist has in the relationship, the more probability there that a change in personality in the client will occur. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
In our case study with Clare something fascinating happened. In the morning paper, a notice about a shipwreck brought back to her that part of her dream in which she had drifted on waves. When she had time to think about this dream, four associations occurred to her. One was a fantasy of a fantasy of a shipwreck in which she was drifting on the water. When a strong man put his arms around her and saved her, she was in danger of drowning. With him she had a feeling of belonging, and of never-ending protection. He would always hold her in his arms and never leave her. The second association concerned a novel which ended in a similar tone. A girl who had gone through disastrous experiences with several men finally met the man she could love and upon whose devotion she could rely. Then she remembered a fragment of a dream that she had at the time she became familiar with Bruce, the older writer who had encouraged her and implicitly promised to be her mentor. In that dream, she and Bruce walked together hand in hand. He was a hero or a demigod, and she was overwhelmed by happiness. To be singled out by this man was like an indescribable grace and blessing. When recalling this dream Clare smiled, for she had blindly overrated Bruce’s brilliance and only later had seen his narrow and rigid inhibitions. This memory made her recall another fantasy, or rather a frequent daydream, which she had almost forgotten though it had played quite a role at college, before the time of her crush on Bruce. It circled around the figure of a great man, endowed with superior intelligence, wisdom, prominence, and wealth. And this great man made advances to her because beneath her inconspicuous exterior he had snesed her great potentialities. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
If given a break, he knew that she could be beautiful and achieve great things. He devoted all his time and energy to her development. He did not merely spoil her by giving her beautiful garments and an attractive home. Under his guidance, not only at becoming a great writer but also at cultivating mind and body, she had to work hard. Thus, he made a beautiful swan out of someone who had great potential. It was a Pygmalion fantasy, created from the point of view of the girl to be developed. She also had to be devoted to her master exclusively. Clare believed associations expressed a wish for an everlasting love. She believed that every woman wanted this. Because Peter did not give her a feeling of security and permanent love, she recognized that this wish was enhanced. With these associations, without becoming aware of it, Clare touched rock bottom. The special characteristics of the “love” that she craved, she only saw later. Otherwise, the most significant part of the interpretation is the recognition that Peter did not give her what she wanted. As if she had already known it, it is made casually, but it was her first conscious realization of any deep dissatisfaction with the relationship. Therefore, only the conscious facing of problems counts, but also every step taken forward toward this goal. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Have you ever felt as if you were being pulled into someone’s story? Maybe you have met someone in your life who could tell you things so vividly it made you see what they were saying in your mind. Their words might have ignited emotions with you. Maybe you could smell the things they were talking about—the fresh bread they spoke of baking. If youy can recall a time like this, then you can safely say that you have been covertly hypnotized. without even knowing, you have been pulled into a place the speaker wanted you. You had not expected to be seeing things so vividly, you had not opened a book or turned on the television, yet there you were, seeing it all unfold. It felt as if you had experienced it with the person, even though you had never left where you stood. When you find yourselfd taking the word of what the speaker is saying, you are not using your own analytical mind. When this happens, your brain takes in what is being said as truth. This is dangerous. Greed can be motivated in two ways: By a physiological imbalance which produces the greedy desire for food, drink, etcetera. Once the physiological need is satisfied, greed ceases, unless the imbalance is chronic. By a psychological imbalance, especially the presence of increased anxiety, loneliness, insecurity, lack of identity, etcetera, which is alleviated by the satisfaction of certain desires like those for food, satisfaction with pleasures of the flesh, power, fame, property, etcetera. This type of greed is, in principle, insatiable, unless a person’s anxiety, etcetera, ceases or is greatly reduced. This first type of greed is reactive to circumstances; the second is inherent in the character structure. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
The greedy feeling is highly egocentric. Whether it is hunger, thirst, or desire for pleasures of the flesh, the greedy person wants something for himself exclusively, and that by which he satisfies his desire is only a means for his own purposes. When we speak of arousal of pleasures of the flesh in its greedy form where the other person becomes primarily an object, this is obvious. In the nongreedy feeling, there is little egocentricity. Experience is not needed to preserve one’s life, to allay anxiety, or to satisfy or enhance one’s ego; it does not serve to still a powerful tension, but begins precisely where necessity in the sense of survival or still of anxiety ends. In the nongreedy feeling, the person can let go of himself, is not compulsively holding on to what he had and what he wants to have, but is open and responsive. The concept of alienation has its roots in an early phase of the Western tradition, in the thought of Old Testament prophets, more specifically in their concept of idolatry. The prophets of monotheism did not denounce heathen religions as idolatrous primarily because they worshiped several gods instead of one. The essential difference between monotheism and polytheism is not one of the numbers of gods, but lies in the fact of alienation. Man spends his energy, his artistic capacities on building an idol, and then he worships this idol, which is nothing but the result of his own human effort. His life forces have flowed into a “thing,” and this thing having become an idol, is not experienced because of his own productive effort, but as something apart from himself, over and against himself, which he worships and to which he submits. As the prophet Hosea says (XIV, 8): “Assur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses; neither will we say anymore to the work of our hands, you are our gods; for in thee the fatherless finds love.” Idolatrous man bows down to the work of his own hands. The idol represents his own life-forces in an alienated form. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
The principle of monotheism, in contrast, is that man is infinite, that there is no partial quality in him which can be hypostatized into the whole. God, in the monotheistic concept, is infinite, that there is no partial quality in him which can be hypostatized into the whole. God, in the monotheistic concept, is unrecognizable and indefinable; God is not a “thing.” Man being created in the likeness of God is created as the bearer of infinite qualities. In idolatry man bows down and submits to the projection of one partial quality in himself. He does not experience himself as the center from which living acts of love and reason radiate. He becomes a thing, his neighbour becomes a thing, just as his gods are things. “The idols of the heathen are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths but they speak not; eyes have they, but they see not; they have ears, but they hear not; neither is there any breath in their mouths. They that make them are like them; so is everyone that trusts in them,” reports Psalm 135. In programs of education aimed at the prevention of mental illness, it would be well to recognize the secondary school as an institution providing an excellent opportunity to reach large numbers of students with instruction in the beneficial principles of mental hygiene. At the early school age, it is more important that they be given sound suggestions as to how to maintain healthy attitudes, how to manage conflicts, and how to deal with strong emotions than it is that they be informed about mental illness. However thoughtful, courses in mental hygiene are not enough. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Here is an interesting story from a firefighter we will call Hans Fallada. “When I got called for the fireman’s job, I was sent to the fire department training school to learn all the things you must know to be a professional firefighter. The training school confronts you with a lot of tough situations. They put you in heavy smoke without masks, so you get a sense of what it’s like to be in a terribly hostile environment, one that’s claws around your neck, just squeezing and squeezing. You get an understanding of what it’s like to work in complete darkness, where you’re totally blind. This is what it’s like to be in a burning building, you learn. You’re also taught many other things. You learn how to use the equipment, the fire trucks, the Halligan tool (it’s a pry bar with a form on one end and a point and adz on the other), the axes, the claw tools, and hooks. You’re taught how to use hoses and nozzles, how to stretch hose, hump hose, pack hose. You learn the science of fire. You learn how fire travels. You learn the various kinds of building construction. You know what kind of windows to expect in different buildings, and you know how to deal with those windows and whether to break them or not. In a way, it’s like studying to be a lawyer or a doctor. In law school, the student studies law books, goes through mock trials, and says, ‘Hey, I really know what I’m doing.’ Then he finds it’s a lot different when he’s in an actual courtroom. The medical student studies chemistry, physiology, anatomy, and how to use a scalpel. But once he gets into an actual operating room, it’s different—suddenly people’s lives are at stake. It’s no longer an academic confrontation. It’s right now. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
“It’s the same thing with a firefighter. You learn all these things in training school so that when you are out in the field in an emergency situation, you know where to go and what to do, so that your actions will be effective. Here I was, a trained firefighter. I got assigned to a firehouse in Sacramento. The men I worked with there were great guys, what we call stand-up guys. They had fast lips, they could get around any situation with their mouths when they couldn’t do it with their dukes. You meet all kinds of personalities in a firehouse. They’re all fundamentally good guys who care about other people. That, in my opinion, is what sets them apart. That’s not to say that you have a room full of Francis of Assisi types figuring out how they’re going to help the poor. But in an emergency situation they care about what happens to people. I got to the firehouse, met these guys. Then, of course, the alarm started ringing. So I went through a few alarms. Mayve it was a false alarm, a garbage pail on fire, a car accident, maybe somebody went out to get a paper and left the soup on the stove. All kinds of things can happen. I remember the first fire. Not really a great fire, but there were a couple of things that happened that day that stick in my memory. The area outside the firehouse is called the apron. When the fire trucks are coming out, two firemen are out there stopping traffic. In those days two firemen rode on the back step of the fire engine. We don’t do that anymore because it’s unsafe. I remember being on the back of the rig, it’s two in the afternoon and I’m putting on my coat, with one arm in the D-ring hanging there like a subway strap. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
“The truck is stopped momentarily, waiting for the traffic to halt. I look up, and who walks by but a priest from St. Mary’s parish up by 818 N street. He looks over, and he blesses me and the guy beside me on the back of the truck. Now, the other guy may be an atheist for all I know, but I have this priest blessing me, so I make the sign of the cross, a conditioned response like a dog salivating to a stimulus. We get going, and I’m thinking, ‘What’s going on here? I’m just doing my job, and this priest is blessing me on the sidewalks of the City of Sacramento.’ I guess in his head he’s saying, these guys have a tremendously tough job and they might me in a bit of trouble, so I’ll bless them. But at that point I don’t want anybody reminding me that I might be in trouble. All i know is that I’ve been blessed, and that we are going to this alarm. From blocks away I could smell the wood burning. It has a particular smell, not like a car fire, for instance, which has a heavy smell of plastic and rubber. This was a two-story frame building in a row of houses typical of that area of Sacramento, generally lived in by working-calls people. The first thing I thought of, what every firefighter thinks of, was: ‘is there anybody inside, how bad is the fire, and what is the immediate thing to do?’ One of the saving things about being a trooper in a way is that there is leadership you can rely on, and in the fire department we have a lieutenant or a captain on every truck. I was probably with the captain, because I was a probationary firefighter, and they always put a probie with the captain so the captain can keep an eye on on him and assess his performance. The captain has to make reports and decide whether he wants to keep him or transfer him after six months. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
“I’m in an engine company, and the captain says, ‘Okay, stretch a two-and-a-half-inch line.’ This tells us it’s a serious fire, because for a small fire you stretch a smaller line. This was the way we were trained. So we stretch the hose into the building, and I’m still thinking that I’m probably in better shape than the others because I was blessed. The ladder company arrives, and they immediately go in and do a search. I don’t remember anybody being caught in the fire, maybe somebody was, but it didn’t matter to me at the time. I had my job to do. We’re on our stomachs, crawling into this fire, and I’m humping, pulling, this gargantuan snake of a hose filled with water. Fifty feet of it weighs ninety pounds when it’s dry, so you can imagine how much it weighs when it’s filled with water. There is black, dense smoke, and we can’t see an inch in front of us. There’s a red glow in the background, and we’re pushing toward it. Without masks. Making it a “snotty” fire, that’s one where for every square inch of smoke you ingest a square inch of something else comes out through your eyes, nose, and mouth. The red glow is in the back of the building, and we learn later that the fire has gone out through the back windows and is shooting up to the afternoon sky. We’re on our stomachs, the guy on the nozzle, myself, and the captain behind me, advancing slowly into the fire. Then all of a sudden, this big guy, another firefighter, comes in and jumps on top of the hose, he grabs it from the hands of our nozzle man, and he runs with it in a crouch toward the red glow. Apparently we’re not moving fast enough for him for some reason. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“None of us have smoke masks or SCBAs [self-contained breathing apparatus], so we’re all choking. Then we start cursing, ‘Hey, what the (expletive) is this guy doing?’ And our nozzle man goes running after the guy, following the string of hose that’s dancing in front of him. This big guy pulls up maybe fifteen feet, throws himself on the floor, opens the nozzle, and hits the ceiling. The red glow darkens to blackness. He has stopped the fire. It’s amazing, you can have a whole big room on fire, and a two-and-a-half inch hose will put it out in twelve seconds. My captain was really mad. He said, ‘What the (expletive) are you doing?’ And the guy said, ‘Listen, I got the job done, right?’ Well, the captain let it go. I didn’t say anything because I was new on the job. But I felt that this was our line and our hose, and our territory had been infringed on. Later I heard about the old-time firefighters in Sacramento back in the nineteenth century, when territory was the main thing and there was competition between one firehouse and another. When an alarm came, they’d send one firefighter ahead with a barrel while they got the horses and everything else ready, and he’d slip the barrel over the fire hydrant. And if another gang tried to use it, he’d fight them off. They’d have big fistfights over this hydrant, because the first fire of mine I just knew that somehow we should have put out the fire, particularly, I suppose, in view of the fact that I was well protected by the blessing. What I learned is that it is your job to control the nozzle, and that every fire is a personal confrontation. This is your job, and you have to go in there and put the fire out, and a lot of people are watching you to be assured that the fire is being put out. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
“Firefighting is a highly coordinated job. You don’t begin ventilating a building, for instance, opening windows or doors or breaking windows, until there is water in the hose and the water is shooting out of it. Then you operate in a mathematically correct way. What you’re doing is creating pressure inside the room, and the pressure has to have some way of being released, so you break some windows. This is called ventilation. Otherwise, you have the energy of the fire and the energy of the water shooting from the hose, and you have nowhere for all this energy to go. It will just blow back at you toward the door you came in, where there’s oxygen. That is what creates flashovers fires, when the fire and heat search for oxygen and the fire flashes as it consumes the oxygen. I carried that lesson with me for the rest of my life. The hose is your job, and you have to do the job. If you don’t do it and somebody else does, that’s hard to live with.” Please be sure to donate to the Sacramento Fire Department. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Forsake not wisdom, and wisdom will preserve you; cherish it, and it will keep you. Enter not the path of the wicked, and walk not in the way of evil men. Avoid evil, turn away from it and do good. Now, therefore, hearken unto wisdom, for happy are they that keep its ways. He who find wisdom finds true life, and obtains favour of the Lord. It is not the place that honours the man, but the man that honours the place. Do not consider yourself a gaint, and your neighbour, small as a locust. He who covets things that are not rightfully his, will not only be disappointed in his wish, but even lose the things that belong to him. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
The Winchester Mystery House
One afternoon in December of 1890, at about one o’clock in the afternoon, Mrs. Winchester was sitting with three of the servant’s children in the Venetian Dining Room. She was reading to them. She rang the annunciator for the parlour-maid, when the door opened, Mrs. Winchester looked up. “I saw the figure of a woman come in and walk up to the side of the table,” she recollected. “She stood there a second or two, and then turned to go out again, but before reaching the door she seemed to dissolve away.” Mrs. Winchester described her as a “blue, short-looking woman” dressed in a blue muslin. “I hardly saw the face,” she added, “which scarcely seemed to be defined at all.” It is interesting that none of the three children saw her, and Mrs. Winchester only mentioned the event to Mr. Hansen, one of the carpenters who lived on the estate.
In the succeeding two months two servants saw the same figure in a blue dress in other rooms of the house; one saw her in the daylight, and one saw her in candlelight. Neither servant was aware of Mrs. Winchester’s own experience. The two young women had become accustomed to the “noises” within the house, but the experience of seeing the lady in blue prompted one of them to give her notice. Mrs. Winchester suffered from other manifestations. On one occasion she glimpsed a ball of brilliant light within an otherwise darkened room. She felt an icy wind in a closed room. Then the strange incidents seemed to subside, and from 1891 onwards, the strange events became more serious.
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
The House of Ghosts and Dreams
Ghosts, spirits, lost souls, did not, could not exist. And hopefully in a day or two, everyone will be convinced. A couple by the door, both approaching middle age, sat close enough together for their thighs to touch, and listened overattentively to whatever the other was saying in the manner of a man and woman each married to a different partner. By the fire was a group in tweeds and mufflers, the men mostly satisfied listening to the conversation of their womenfolk while they sipped their gin and tonics and pondered the virtues (or the boredom) of retirement. I turned my back to the group. After a time, the quality of darkness seemed to change. I frowned. I thought I could see the faintest glow of gathering light coalescing near the door-to-nowhere. The light was not strong enough to collect the attention of my guests yet, but it was certainly visible. After several moments, the light began to form an indistinct shape. Of course, everyone in the room was seeing it, too. The chatter suddenly stopped as they gasped for air. With wonder, we were witnessing a supernatural manifestation right before our eyes. Two children, a boy, and a girl, he, in a blue suit and tie, and she in a white communion dress with a blue sash tied around the waist, hovered just out of our reach. My heart leaped with surprise, as I became flushed with tears. My guests, conjuring their own horror, were at a loss for words. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
The children slowly rotated around the room before coming to rest. The girl cried out, “Mommy!” And at that moment, the room was completely darkened. I screamed because the room had become extremely cold. I had a fragile hope, one that was beyond the tight and restricting bonds of sanity, that the faintest essence of my daughter was within the walls of my home. I listened for a moment, wishing that the peripheral voice would rouse my attention. However, there was no sound from the room and grief had exhausted our bodies as well as our spirits. I stared into the darkness, terribly afraid, even more terribly, compelled to ask my guests to leave. At the foot of the stairs I paused, glancing back over my shoulder as if seeking reassurance from the spirit World. There was still no sound from the apparitions. No sounds in the house at all. Not even the voice. From ahead, at the end of the corridor in which I hesitated, came a soft glow, a shimmer strip of amber. Slowly, each footstep measured, I went to the light. I stopped outside the closed door and now there was a sound, a quiet shifting, as though the house had signed. It could be no more than a breeze stealing through. The light was not constant; it flicked. My hands grasped the door handle. My grip was tenuous, slipping over the smooth surface before lodging and turning. A brief thought that there was someone clutching the other side, resisting my effort; then the handle catches and the door is open. I pushed open a heavy door and my face was flushed by the lambent glow. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
The chill followed behind me in darkness. “Is any one there?” I called from the doorway. The room was a display of burning candles: their light bowed with the opening of the door and their waxy smell welcomed me. Shadows momentarily shyed away then rush forward in their own greeting as the myriad flames settled. Against the back wall and facing entrance was a large walk-in fireplace that could easily accommodate a six-foot log. “At least the carpenters made sure I have heat,” I laughed. I started opening the other doors. One disclosed stairs to the servants’ quarters above; another opened a stairway to the basement which contained thirteen rooms. A third door led to a stairwell in the backyard, and it was securely locked. Still another one opened into the butler’s pantry and that was provided with its own exit under the broad stairway that faced the front door. I found myself in the entrance hall. Walking a bit further through a short hallway to the right with a great sliding door of heavy mahogany and leaded glass at its end. Pushing it open, I discovered a library at least twenty-five feet wide that extended to the back of the house, and it had its own exit into the backyard. Filled with bookshelves, at least seven feet tall, extended around three sides fo the room except where deep windows with built-in seats were set into the walls. The spirits had built my house to last. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
There was another immense fireplace in the library. Two 1879 Winchester Rifles were crossed above the mantel like medieval swords. A long antique davenport was placed in front of the fireplace. Behind it was an old-fashioned library table with a lamp for reading before the fire. Two crystal chandeliers gave an ornate touch to an elegant and charming room. However, nothing could prepare me for what I saw. At the furthermost point of the room, resting on lace-clothed tables, were two coffins. I stared. My steps were leaden as I approached the open caskets, and my eyes were wide. The moisture on my skin glistened under the light. I did not want to investigate those coffins. I did not want to see the figure lying there, not in such an alien state. However, there was really no choice. My mind had become open to unnatural possibilities. A voice whispered my name and I had responded; I had my own reasons for grasping the inconceivable possibilities. I drew closer. The forms inside the silklined caskets were gradually revealed. She was wearing a white communion gown, a pale blue sash tied at her waist. And the boy—why these were the same two children we had seen earlier. Their hands rested together on their chests as if in supplication. Dark hair framed their faces, and, in their death, they looked serene, sleeping, untroubled children. The light played upon the corners of their lips so that they suppressed smiles. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
Despite my yearning to disbelieve, I knew there was no life within these pallid shells. I wished to speak to these children, but my throat was constricted by the wretchedness of my emotion. I blinked, dislodging a swell of tears. I leaned forward as if I might kiss the dead children. And their eyes snapped open. They grinned up at me, their young faces no longer innocent. And their hands stirred as if to reach out to me. I was frozen. My mouth was locked open, lips stretched taut and hard over bone, the scream beginning but only breaking loose a few moments later, a shrilling that cuts through the quietness of the house. My cry wanes, dissolves, and by eyes close as reason seeks sanctuary behind Llanada Villa’s walls. A warm mass of air carried the faint sound of music. Castigating myself in silence, I stepped with authority to the rear of the room, placing my hands on the wooden door. As I turned the handle and opened the door, I had a feeling there was something there, but I let it pass, thinking it was my imagination. However, there was something on the landing upstairs that seemed to stare down at me. Something within me made me say, “Whoever you are, you must be lonely!” On Saturday night, as I was sitting down for dinner, the servants had prepared roasted chickens, sausage pie, and Yorkshire pudding. The servant-girl threw some coal on the boiler fire, only to have it all thrown back again on the floor. No one can explain the cause of the occurrences, and it remained the only topic of conversation for days to come. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
The Winchester Mystery House
Tours had been going on in The Winchester Mystery House for 100 years, when by degrees caretakers decided that it had become rather “noisy.” It began with the windows being violently shaken at night, and then they began to hear steps where no steps should be. They were perturbed still further when they began to hear deep, long sighs at all hours of day and night. There were other odd manifestations. There were occasions when caretakers would approach the door-to-nowhere, when the handle would turn, and the door would fly open. One caretaker wrote that “I have once seen this happen, and it is a curious thing to see, when on the other side of the door there is a two-story fall into the garden.” Then another caretaker heard the sounds of stitching of some hard material in the sewing room; and in the Witches Cap, they would often hear the noise of children playing and a heavy weight being dragged across the floor, when there was no object in sight, and most alarmingly of all there were times when they experienced the sensation of their hair being pulled.
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
We Pay So Much Attention to Where We Live, So Little to When
The individual who wants the spiritual prizes of life must elevate one’s thoughts and ennoble one’s impulses. One will prudently look ahead not only to the consequences of one’s actions but also of one’s thoughts. One must be prepared to spend a whole lifetime in making this passage from aspiration to realization. Petal-by-petal the bud of one’s growing virtues will open as the years pass. One’s character will be transformed. The old Adam will become a new man. The progressing disciple who reaches an advanced state will find that one’s powers of mind and will develop accordingly. Where they are not accompanied by sufficient self-purification, they may become dangerous to oneself and hurtful to others. One’s vigilance over thought and feeling must become greater accordingly. To dwell upon thoughts which belong to a lower level out of which one has climbed may open up a pitfall in one’s path; to hold bitter feelings against another person may throw discord into that person’s life. One’s outer conduct should be brought into agreement with the soaring aspiration of one’s inner life. When the one is antithetical to the other, the result will be chaos. That individual has attained mastery whose body yields to the commands of reason and whose tongue obeys the orders of prudence. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
When the body’s appetites and the intellect’s curiosity get an excessive grip on an individual, they throw an air of unreality on aspiration which soars beyond both. This makes intuitive feeling and metaphysical thinking seem irksome or trivial. Those who do not have the strength of will to translate into practice the ideals which they accept in thought need not despair. It can be got by degrees. Part of the purpose of ascetic exercises is to lead to its possession. There is knowledge available, based on ancient and modern ascetic experiences, which can be applied to liberate the moral nature from its weakness. One who puts one’s lower nature under control puts oneself in possession of forces, gifts, possibilities, and satisfactions that most other humans lack. If a person’s inner life is repeatedly wasted by passion, one will know no assured peace and attain no enduring goal. One must govern oneself, rule one’s passions, and discipline one’s emotions. One must strengthen one’s higher will at the expense of one’s lower one. For the first promotes one’s spiritual evolution whereas the second inflames one’s animal nature. Faith is needed to make the basic change in one’s thinking, the change which takes one out of the past’s grip. If one takes up new thoughts, a new life is possible. If one lets compromise with the World, or lapses from the right moral standard, slip beyond a certain mark, one will pay commensurately for it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Man’s drives inasmuch as they are trans-utilitarian, are an expression of a fundamental and specifically human need: the need to be related to man and nature and to confirm oneself in this relatedness. These two forms of human existence, that of food gathering for the purpose of survival in a narrow or broader sense and that of free and spontaneous activity expressing man’s faculties and seeking for meaning beyond utilitarian work, are inherent in man’s existence. Each society and each man has it own particular rhythm in which these two forms of living make their appearance. What matters is the relative strength which each of the two have and which one dominates the other. It is not only a matter of self-betterment but also of self-respect for an honourable man. The man whom he has looked upon as himself must be left behind; the New man, who he is to become, must be continually with him in thought, aspiration, will, and deed. This it is to be truly human for it brings man into a more perfect state. To sneer at the philosophic ideal as being inhuman is really to sneer at it for rejecting the evils and weaknesses and deformities of the Worldly ideal. The moment a negative idea appears, repudiate it automatically by the use of counter-affirmations and imagination, which is the gate to creative subconscious mind. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Such negative thoughts as animosity and jealousy must be rooted out like weeds as fast as they spring up. This is both the easier and more effective way in the end. The man who has not learned to control himself is still only a fractional man, certainly not the true man that Nature is trying to produce. When he cannot live with his negative side any longer, illumination will come and stay. Character is tested by afflictions more than by prosperity. The first stage is to expunge the evil in his heart and to raise the good in it to the highest possible octave. If he holds these as ideals, a personal character which will be beautiful, a way of life which will be the best, a man is more likely to come by them. When allowing thoughts to enter his mind, as when allowing strangers to enter his home, he needs to be as fastidious. If a man lives in mental and emotional negativity, the removal of his physical residence to another place will in the end benefit him less than if he removes himself from the negativity. The building-up of character naturally brings a better sense of proportion in one’s dealings and outlook. Be seeing good in all persons, you become good, but if you see evil, the evil in you will augment. People seem not to see that their opinion of the World is also a confession of character. We can only see what we are. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
He must become thoroughly sick of his mistakes and sins before he will take the trouble to develop by self-training his discriminatory faculties and moral ideals. We can combat feat by remembering that the Overself is always with us. The power of such thinking is its rightness and its constructiveness. It is right bvecause the Overself is the real source of strength and courage so that recalling its ever-presence in us helps to tap that source. It is constructive because it uses up the energy that would otherwise have gone into the fear-thoughts. Both action and thought share in the double nature of this polarity. Activity on the level of survival is what one usually calls work. Activeness on the trans-survival level is what one calls play, or all those activities related to cult, ritual, and art. Thought also appears in two forms, one serving the function of survival and one serving the function of knowledge in the sense of understanding and intuiting. This distinction of survival and trans-survival thought is very important for the understanding of consciousness and the so-called unconscious. Our conscious thought is that type of thinking, linked with language, which follows the social categories of thought imprinted in our thinking from early childhood. Our consciousness is essentially the awareness of such phenomena which the social filter composed of language, logic, and taboos permits us to become aware of. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Those phenomena which cannot pass the social filter remain unconscious or, more accurately speaking, we are unaware of everything that cannot penetrate to our consciousness because the social filter blocks its entry. This is the reason why consciosuness is determined by the structure of society. However, this statement is only descrptive. Inasmuch as man has to work within a given society, his need for survival tends to make him accept the social conceptualizations and hence to repress that which he would be aware of had his consciousness been imprinted with different schemata. If he studies other cultures, this is not difficult for the reader to find in his own example. The categories of thought in the industrial age are that of quantification, abstraction and comparison, of profit and loss, of efficiency and inefficiency. The member of a consumer society of the present day, for example, is encouraged, but not required to repress pleasures of the flesh because so many people are Worldly and pleasures of the flesh seems to be the number one past time for many by the schemata in the age of information. The member of the middle class of the nineteenth century who was busy accumulating capital and investing it rather than consuming it, had to repress pleasures of the flesh because they did not fit into the acquisitive and hoarding mood of his society, or, more correctly, of middle classes. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
If we think of medieval or Greek society or of such cultures as the Pueblo Indians’ we can easily recognize that they were very conscious of different aspects of life to which their social filter granted entry into consciousness while others were tabooed. The most eminent case in which man does not have to accept the social categories of his society is when he is asleep. Sleep is that state of being in which man is free from the need to take care of his survival. While he is awake, he is largely determined by the survival function; while he is asleep, he is a free man. As a result, his thinking is not subject to the thought of categories of his society and shows that peculiar creativity which we find in dreams. In dreams, man creates symbols and has insights into the nature of life and of his own personality which he is incapable of having while he is the creature busy with food gathering and defense. Often, indeed, this lack of contact with social reality can cause him to have experiences and thoughts which are archaic, primitive, malignant, but even those are authentic and represent him rather than the thought patterns of his society. In dreams, the individual transcends the narrow boundaries of his society and becomes fully human. That is why Dr. Freud’s discovery of dream interpretation, even though he looked basically for the repressed instinct for pleasures of the flesh, has paved the way for the understanding of the uncensored humanity which is in all of us. (Sometimes children, before they have been sufficiently indoctrinated by the process of education, and psychotics who have served all relationships to the social World manifest insights and creative artistic possibilities which the adapted adult cannot recover.) #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
However, dreams are only a special case of that trans-survival life of man. Its main expression is in rituals, symbols, painting, poetry, drama, and music. Our utilitarian thinking has, quite logically, tried to interpret all these phenomena as serving the survival function (a vulgarized Marxism has sometimes allied itself in substance although not in form with this type of materialism). More profound observers like Lewis Mumford and others have emphasized the fact that the cave paintings in France and ornaments on primitive pottery, as well as more advanced forms of art, have no utilitarian purpose. One might say that their function is to help the survival of man’s spirit, but not that of man’s body. He has only to resolve that he will always be faithful to his higher self and the trick is done. However, alas! resolution is one thing, execution another. If he finds himself attacked by a strong temptation or about to be overcome by an old obsession, he should at once think of the master, of his name and picture, and call for his help. Whether you live as a labourer or a lord, it is your character that counts most in the end. It is the ego that gives way to moods of sulkiness, bad temper, irritability, and impatience. Remember that on the outcome of your efforts to control yourself, your faults and emotions, your speech and your actions, much will depend for your Worldly and spiritual frame. He who controls the mind controls the body, for the one acts upon and through the other. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
To yearn for something is to value. I have known this yearning “to be good” in all of us. No one is left out. I have known it in a British peer. I have known it in a man who hijacked a truck, got a Native American drunk and threw him off a moving truck, hit a burro and killed it, bashed in the radiator, and then drove the truck until the motor burned out and he landed in jail, while four small children were at home alone because their mother was in the hospital having a fifth one. I got him out of jail so that he could take care of his family, and he got me fired from my job. I also knew it in my best friend that killed himself. Before his suicide, I lived with knowing that he might kill my son and me, both of whom he loved, and that he might seriously injure other people, which he did not wish to do at all. It seemed to me that suicide might have seemed to him the only way to put an end to his hurting people, to doing what he did not want to do. Many people in America are hurting today. Everyone responds in terms of his own humanness, uncontaminated by all the phoney values with which we live. (The only exceptions were two very neurotic men and a few feeble-minded oldfolks who did not know what is going on.) In Hawaii during the week following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, the military expected that the success of the attack would be followed by an invasion: they believed that when the Japanese planes reported to their carriers, then other ships would move in with troops like what was done to Mr. Hitler and Germany during World War II. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
However, fast forward to post 911 America. Currently in 2024, there is an invasion going on at our southern boarder, and as many as 20,000,000 unknown people have flooded into this country and have been committing major crimes. The leaders of industry have warned the government that this is a serious crisis and they suspected that these people who are invading America could be preparing for an attack larger than 911, but no one in a position of power is doing anything to track these people, nor stop them from invading the nation. The problem is not only a lack of God, but also a lack of love. Many people are cafeteria Americans. They fly the flag, pretend to be proud of the country, but all they care about is American money. They disrespect the land, disrespect the people, ignore the needs of America and bleed her dry. These posers forget that people have died and become severely disabled from serving their country, and are doing nothing to protect it, but supposedly are trying to instill democracy in other places, while America is becoming a hostile, communist nation. It is very difficult for me to go on writing this. Tears blur my vision, no matter how many times I wipe them away. I sob, and that shakes me so that I cannot use the typewriter very well. I feel, “Oh, what is the use? How can I possibly convey it?” Many of us are silent. Trying to show respect or trying to feel for someone else. When they are scared, people can do the most frightful things. People fear that they could be wiped out at any moment, and that there is onluy now to live. We pay so much attention to where we live, so little to when. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Alienation corrupts and perverts all human values. By making economic activities and the values inheret in them, like gain, work, thrift, and sobriety, the supreme value of life, man fails to develop the truly moral values of humanity, the riches of a good conscience, of virtue, etcetra, but how can I be virtuous if I am not aware of anything? In a state of alienation, each sphere of life, the economic and the moral, is independent from the other, “each is concentrated upon a specific area of alienated activity and is itself alienated from the other. The needs of man in an alienated society are preverted into true weakness. Every man speculates upon creating a new need in another in order to force him to sacrifice, to place him in a new dependence, and to entice him into a new kind of pleasure and thereby into economic ruin. Everyone tries to establish over others an alien power in order to find there the satisfaction of his own egoistic need. With the mass of objects, therefore, there also increases the realm of alien entities to which man is subjected. Every new product is a new potentiality of mutual deceit and robbery. Man becomes increasingly poor as a man; he has increasing need of money in order to take possession of the hostile being. The power of money diminishes directly with the growth of the quantity of production, id est, his need increases with the increasing power of money. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The need for money is therefore the real need created by the modern economy, and the only need which it creates. The quantity of money becomes increasingly its only important quality. Just as it reduces every entity to its abstraction, so it reduces itself in its own development to a quantitative entity. Excess and immoderation become its true standard. This is shown subjectively, partly in the fact that the expansion of production and of needs becomes an ingenious and always calculating subservience to inhuman, depraved, unnatural, and imaginary apopetities. Americans are blessed with private property, but they do not know how to change crude need into human need; their idealism is fantasy, caprice and fancy. No eunch flatters his tyrant more shamefully or seeks by more infamous means to stimulate his jaded appetite, in order to gain some favour, than does the eunch of industry, the entrepreneur, in order to acquire a few silver coins or to charm the gold from the purse of his dearly beloved neighbour. Every produce is a bait by means of which the individual tries to entice the essence of the other person, his money. Every real or potential need is a weakness which will draw the bird into China’s pockets. As every imperfection of man is bound with Heaven, a point at which his heart is accessible to the priest, so every want is an opportunity for approaching one’s neighbour with the air of friendship, saying, “Dear Friend, I will give you what you need, but you know the conditio sine qua non. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
“You know what the ink you must use in sining yourself over to me. I shall swindle you while providing your enjoyment.” All this constitues a universal exploitation of human commual life. The entrepreneur accedes to the most depraved fancies of his neighbour, plays the role of pander between him and his needs, awakens unhealthy appetities in him, and watched for every weakness in order, later, to claim the remuneration of this labour of love. The man who has thus become subject to his alienated needs is a mentally and physically dehumanized being…the self-conscious and self-acting commodity. This commodity-man knows only one way of relating himself to the World outside, by having it and by consuming (using) it. The more alienated he is, the more the sense of having and using constitutes his relationship to the World. The less you are, the less you express your life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life and the greater is the saving of your alienated being. You have to listen hard to spot a liar. Often they shift from past to present tense. Moving from the past tense to the present means the person is getting into their brain–reliving the story they have made up to cover up what they have done. People will often tell a story as if they see it because in their minds, they see the story they have made up. It take a keen ear to pick up on the change in tense and why a person would do such a thing. When people are telling the truth, especially a breach of national security, they tend to stick with the most important details and speak in the past tense, since it already happened. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Sometimes when it comes to self-analysis, the analytical work at oneself will recede into the background. One will still observe one or another striking reaction and try to understand it, thus continuing the process of self-recognition, but in distinctly diminished intensity. One may be absorbed in personal work or in group activities; one may be engaged in a battle with external hardships; one may be concentrated on establishing one or another relationship; one may simply feel less harassed by one’s psychic troubles. At this time the mere process of living is more important than analysis, and it contributes in its own way to one’s development. The method in self-analysis is no different from that in work with an analyst, the technique being free associations. Whereas in working with an analyst the patient reports whatever comes into his mind, in working alone he begins by merely taking note of his associations. Whether he only notes them mentally or write them down is a matter of individual preference. Some people can concentrate better when they write; others find their attention distracted by writing. There are undoubtedly certain advantages in writing down one’s associations. For one thing, if he makes it a rule to put down a short note, a catchword, of every association, almost everything one will find that his thoughts do not wander off on a tangent so easily. At any rate he will notice the wandering more quickly. It may be, too, when it is all down on paper that the temptation to skip a thought or feeling as irrelevant is lessened. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
However, the greatest advantage of writing is that it affords the possibility of going over the notes afterward. Frequently when he lets his mind dwell on his notes, a person will miss the significance of a connection at first sight, but will notice it later. Findings or unanswered questions that are not well entrenched are often forgotten, and a return to them may revive them. Or he may see the old findings in a different light. Or he may discover that he has made no noticeable headway, but is essentially still at the same point where he was several months ago. These two latter reasons make it advisable to jot down findings, and the main paths leading up to them, even though they may have been arrived at without taking notes. The main difficulty in writing, the fact that thoughts are quicker than the pen, can be remedied by putting own only catchwords. If most of the work is done in writing a comparison with diary-keeping is almost unavoidable, and an elaboration of this comparison may serve also to highlight certain characteristics of analytical work. If the latter is not a simple report of factual occurrences but is written with the further intention of truthfully recording one’s emotions experiences and motivations, the similarity with a diary suggests itself particularly. However, there are differences. A diary, at its very best, is an honest recording of conscious feelings, thoughts, and motivations. The revealing character it may have concerns emotional experiences unknown to the outside World rather than experiences unknown to the writer himself. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
When Rousseau, in his Confessions, boasted of his honesty in exposing his masochistic experiences, he did not uncover any fact of which he himself was unaware; he merely reported something that is usually kept secret. Furthermore, in a diary, if there is any search for motivations, this does not reach beyond one or another loose surmise that carries little if any weight. Usually no attempt is made to penetrate beneath the conscious level. Culberston, for instance, in The Strange Lives of One Man, frankly reported his irritation and moodiness toward his wife but gave no hint as to possible reasons. These remarks do not implay a criticism of diaries or autobiographies. They have their value, but they are intrinsically different from an exploration of self. No one can produce a narrative about himself and at the same time let his mind run in free associations. There is still another difference which it is of practical importance to mention: a diary often glances with one eye toward a future reader, whether that reader be the writer at a future time or a wider audience. Any such side glance at posterity, however, inevitably detracts from pristine honesty. Deliberately or inadvertently the writer is bound, then, to do some retouching. He will omit certain factors entirely, minimize his shortcomings or blame them on others, protect other people from exposure. If he takes the least squint at admiring audience or at the idea of creating a master piece of unique value, when he writes down his associations, the same will happen. He will them commit all those sins that undermine the value of free associations. Whatever he sets down on paper should serve one purpose only, that of recognizing himself. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The mental hygiene movement has had a very significant beneficial impact on the problem of mental illness. There can be little doubt that it has contributed to an enhanced general level of mental health in our country. Certainly it has achieved marked improvement in public attitudes toward mental illness. As a perhaps unavoidable consequence of its educational effort it has created new and greater demands for psychotherapy and not all of the increased demand is fully appropriate. The pattern of psychotherapeutic practice in America is seriously unbalanced in that too many of the ablest, most experienced psychiatrists spend most of their time with patients who need them least. This has been unfortunate, though probably inevitable, consequence of the concept of mental illness as personal malfunctioning which in itself represents a gain in understanding. The trouble is that this view makes it impossible to draw the line, so that many persons who are showing essentially normal responses to the wear and tear of life or who are unhappy for reasons other than personal malfunctioning see themselves–and are seen by others–as proper candidates for psychotherapy. Philosophy is that disease for which it should be the cure. The mental hygiene movement has inadvertently added to the problem which it intended to reduce. It is time for the leaders of the mental health movement to put their minds to a touch philosophical analysis of problems which psychiatry and psychology have tended to neglect: to criteria of mental health, to delimitation of the meanings and forms of mental illness, to specification of precisely what are and what are not psychiatric problems. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
It would be a beneficial contribution for mental health educators to develop ways of communicating to the public on such questions as: “When not to go to the psychiatrist,” or “What to do before you see a psychiatrist”; “What psychotherapy cannot do for you”; “Ten sources of helpful conversation”; “Problems which do not make you a ‘Mental Case.'” He who controls the mind controls the body, for the one acts upon and through the other. It is not enough to overcome the jealousy which begrudges other people’s having advantages denied us: we must also take the next step and overcome the envy which feels discontented at not having those advantages and continues to desire them for itself. Jealousy would go out of its way to hurt those others by depriving them of their possessions, but envy would not fall so low. When they oppose emotion and passion, once he forms this resolve to follow the bidding of intuition and reason, he will find it both a safeguard and a test. If at any time he should temporarily weaken from this resolve, he may become uncertain as to the correct course to pursue when at the crossroads. A willing discipline of the character by one’s own self may often take the place of an unwanted and unwilling discipline by outer events. He is to become an exemplar to the aspiring, a pattern-setter for those who would ennoble themselves. He must establish, for and over himself, an emotional discipline and intellectual control. He cannot successfully do this all at once, of course. Emotional tendencies and mental habits engendered by years of materialism cannot be overturned and eliminate in a single night. However, the goal must be there and must be kept in view. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
A firefighter we will call Helmut share his experience about becoming a fireman. “When I got out of the military, I had the opportunity to get into the trucking industry. I was in it for ten years. I started out as an assistant to a dispatcher and worked up to operations manager. I trained people coming into the industry. I was doing pretty good, and I enjoyed it. The problem was that there was no real job security, and though the pay was good I was putting in too many hours. I was missing a lot of time with my family. I had to do it, though because I needed the job. Then I heard that the Sacramento Fire Department was giving a test. Up to that point, I’d actually thought about becoming a policeman. I was an MP in the military, and I thought maybe it would be a good field to get into. So I went down to City Hall and filled out the fire department application. I didn’t do it reluctantly, I just did it with a little bit of skepticism. I said to my wife, ‘Oh, I don’t really think anything is going to come of this, because I don’t think I’m going to make it.’ I knew that the cutoff age was thirty-six years, and at the time I was thirty-five, and I thought I really had to get in on this first class, otherwise I’m not going to make it. So they scheduled the test, and I studied hard for it while I was still doing trucking. And I was fortunate to have the ten-point veteran’s preference, so that added ten points to whatever score I got on the test. But I was concerned because so many people had taken the test. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
“My sister called and told me, ‘Twenty-six thousand people took the test, so your changes of getting on are small.’ That depressed me, but I felt I’d done good because I did study hard and the test wasn’t that difficult. So my brother called me the next day and said, ‘Six thousand people walked out halfway through the test.’ So that lowered the odds. I thought, well, twenty thousand, that’s starting to sound better all the time. I kept calling, and some months later I was notified that I had aced the test, I was number six on the list. I was ecstatic, I thought, now I’ve got to be in first class. As it turned out, I was. And from then on, everything has been running smoothly. Everything has been great.” To make sure the Sacramento Fire Department is receiving all of the required resources, please make a donation. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The ideal man that he wants to be should be evoked, pictured, and adored daily. If greater wisdom brings an immunity to other men’s negative thoughts, it also brings the responsibility to stifle one’s own. When all malice and all envy are resolutely cast out of his nature, not only will he be the gainer by it in improved character and pleasanter blessings, but also those others who would have suffered as victims of his barbed words or ugly thoughts. The past is beyond recall, but the present is at our command. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
The Winchester Mystery House
Farewell Week is here! The last day to experience our Walk With Spirits Tour is April 14, 2024!
Beginning today, all guests who participate will have the opportunity to sign a special guest book that will be preserved in our archives which will become a part of Winchester Mystery House history. And as a bonus, enjoy 13% off our upcoming Halfway to Halloween Flashlight Tours.
Come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Intrepid Delver into the Forbidden
Tuesday afternoon came and waned to the twilight. It was a peculiar time; something new was astir, something that was quite unlike the tranquility of the past, something that was very strange indeed, but was felt everywhere. The unknown things had begun to close in on me with a whole new degree of determination. I knew all too well of the things which must be lurking nearby. I began to fear that I might not sleep tonight, so certain was I that I was surrounded by the tortured spirits of those who had not yet been allowed to cross the veil to the other side. Here they remained, crying aloud, desperate to be heard, causing disarray and torment in my home as they longed to be released to the peace of eternal rest. I wore a pale expression. Staring at the floor beneath me, there were myriads of claw-prints in the hallway, with human prints among them. Clutching a bloody handkerchief, I was half afraid for myself. Sorcery from the Middle Ages has been violently unmaksed in Llanada Villa and the whole craft has been exposed in its darkest colours and most abominable manifestations. I had indeed been cursed, but it had been carefully hidden and scrupulously concealed. Trembling, I was terrified at the horror I knew was sure to come my way. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
I fell asleep quite soon after going to bed, but it was a fitful and unhappy sleep. My dreams were full of nightmares of dark debaucheries. There were foul and hideous mysteries of lust which neither human intercourse nor the employ of a mechanical property can explain. Howbeit, I am fully aware what unspeakable horror lurked in the blackness beyond. When I rose up and wandered along the gallery, I was hopeless. I tried to estimate how long I had been asleep, but all I knew was that it seemed days and weeks, and yet it was plain that this could not be, for my candles were not gone yet. I was cruelly tired. I sat down and fastened my candle to the wall. I turned on the lights and walked toward the kitchen. Although my home was quite empty, I had an eerie sensation of not being alone. Hurriedly, I walked to the front door. Glancing backward into the dark recesses of my home, upon which I saw an apparition of a man, staring at me with piercing black eyes. He wore a wool shirt. He seemed to smile at me, and I called, “I beg your pardon, but who are you?” However, the figure never moved or reacted. “What are you doing here?” I demanded, all the while looking at him. There was no answer, and suddenly my courage left me, as the icy touch of an unseen hand caressed my cheek. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
I ran down the central hallway, until abruptly stopping at the end. Tenderly, my fingers ran over the brass trim on the heavy mahogany door. Nervously turning the handle, I reluctantly pushed open the door and waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. As the door swung inward, there was a rush of bone chilling air. Stepping inside, I heard a crying baby. Immediately recognizing the cry of my own child. Standing alone in the pitch-black room, I turned toward where the sounds were coming from. Every step felt as if I was walking in cold tar. A sense of desperation took hold of me, as I struggled to find the child. However, the closer I seemed to get, the more distant the sound became. A sense of desperation overcame me, as the cries faded, and dark shadows began swiftly darting around the room. I found myself quietly walking back downstairs. To my right was the stair railing which went around the top of the stairs at a turn in the hallways which led to an interior-opening balcony space, overlooking the front door at the downstairs hall, with a view of the beautiful chandelier hanging over the foyer. As I walked down the stairs, I was fearful that something would happen. That is when I heard a terrible shriek. The bloodcurdling sound was that of a lunatic. The atmosphere within my home changed, the walls came alive. Its appetite whetted by the taste of human blood. The horror overcame me. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
In stark loneliness of night, hurtling between somber, darkened rooms that quivered with unknown, invisible life. I could see some horror lurking in my mind’s eye. Perhaps my clairvoyant sense assisted me, but in these great halls, along the long corridors, in the gloomy cold there was an ancient and lingering pain. The wind whistled and shrieked and moaned, as if the dead had collected to fight the battle of their race. I was being pursued, the forced of hell were gathering against me. It was cold in the echoing corridors. I hurried along them, trying out doors on each side. The handles were covered in thick dust. Each one I tried seemed to be locked, so I made my way to another floor. There were hundreds more doors to try. After an hour, I sat down on the top step and closed my eyes. For some minutes I sat motionless, listening to my own heartbeat. With my head full of thoughts, I went through a doorway. Finding myself in a luxurious suite of rooms, with walls of dark mahogany panels, filled with exquisite antique furniture and paintings. Thick dust covered everything, and enormous cobwebs were suspended from every corner. The silence of centuries now hung in the air. I sat down on a soft, velvet-covered couch, and for some reason started feeling very sleepy. It was as if there were some curious force in the room—a force which was impossible to resist. I lay back on the couch, and went into a sort of trance. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
When I came to, the room was darkened. Within its shadowy depths, I saw the white blur of a man’s face and hands; and in a moment I had crossed to greet the figure who had tried to speak. Dim though the light was, I perceived that this was a very sick man. There was a touch of the pitiful in the limp, lifeless way his lean hands rested in his lap. He had on a loose dressing-gown, and was swathed around the head and high around the neck with a vivid yellow scarf or hood. And then I saw that he was trying to talk in a hacking whisper. It was a hard whisper to catch at first, since the grey moustache concealed all movements and the lips, something in its timbre disturbed me greatly. I was also trying to ignore certain shadowy, indistinct shapes that might have been living creatures; I was trying to ignore my mounting fear. I realized that the man before me, what appeared to be a human figure—was it? A man? A tall, stiff-poised man? Or was it an apparition? Along this desolate gallery. I felt a stab of fear as I made a swift decision to run—not to turn back but to increase my speed and pass the mysterious brooding figure. Even though I saw that this figure was acutely aware of me, I had dismissed him as a dream. Touched with horror, yet empowered by it, by a rush of adrenaline like a flame through my veins, I did not slacken my speed, and veered through hallways and rooms until I was safe. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
I climbed the stairs to the third floor, my heart pounding violently in my chest not in warning, not in caution but urging me on! And so, opening the door to the Celestial Bedroom, and so stepping breathless inside that room, I dared to switch on a light; a dim, yellow bulb in a bedside lamp; I stood beside my enormous, canopied bed. On my pillow there was the heavy imprint of a head, a concave shadow. I stared, not certain what I saw. My hand reached out; groping; I dared to touch the figure—pushing gently at the smooth, naked shoulder that, with the attached torso, fell away from the shadowed lower body, and from the neck and head; the head, a bald, blank head, rolled to one side on the pillow; one of the limbs, the shapely left leg, had fallen away from the body, as if its joints had become brittle with time, and lay at a grotesque angle perpendicular to the thigh. I saw clearly that the thing was not human and was not alive. Objects seemed to move across the room like conscious entities; the sounds of their footfalls having something about it like a loose, hard-surfaced clattering. Running to the drawing room, I summoned Zip. My precious darling was always here to comfort me. I decided that it may be a good idea to get some fresh air. Wagging his tail, he was more than happy to oblige. May was in its full beauty. The evenings were exquisite. The wild cherry was in flower. Zip and I walked every evening in the garden and we would sit till nightfall in the arbour, as I poured out my thoughts and feelings to him. We had poetic moments. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
The Winchester Mystery House
A real nightmare occurs when you experience a frightening encounter with something strange and unknown, and you know without question that you are not asleep, that you are not dreaming. You know with every ounce of your being that the chilling encounter is real. The events that were described were actual experiences and encounters and were not legends and folklore. One must clearly understand and fully realize the shuddering horror and heart-sick dismay that exists when there is any sort of commerce between human beings and evil spirits, which is the very core and kernel of Witchcraft. All too often, nowadays, the orthodox doctrine of the Powers of Darkness are forgotten or ignored. In the first place, the name Devil is commonly given to the fallen angels, who are also called demons.
The chief of the demons is called the Devil. The Devil and other demons were created by God naturally good; but they themselves became evil. It is also remarkable that for an account of the Fall of the angels, which happened before the creation of the World, we must turn to the last book in the Bible, the Apocalypse of St. John. “And there was a great battle in Heaven, Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels: and they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in Heaven. And that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the Devil, and Satan, who seduceth the whole World; and he was cast down unto the Earth, and his angels were thrown down with him” (Apocalypse xxi. 7-9). Once you open the door to the unknown, it may be hard to close again.
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/
Life on Earth Cannot be Achieved Unless We are Thoroughly Virtuous
When we reach the Olympian heights and stand to survey the scenes of our long struggles, we shall then not regret that we were tried, tempted, and tortured by conflicting desires, for without them we should only have become mechanically good. Even our sufferings turn to sympathy. The human infant enters directly into an evaluating transaction with his World, appreciating or rejecting his experiences as they have meaning for his own actualization, utilizing all the wisdom of his tiny but complex organism. We seem to lose this capacity of direct evaluation, and come to behave in those ways and to act in terms of those values which will bring us social approval, affection, esteem. To buy love we relinquish the valuing process. Because the center of our lives now lies in others, we are fearful and insecure, and must cling rigidly to the values we have introjected. However, if life or therapy gives us favourable conditions for continuing our psychological growth, we move on in something of a spiral, developing an approach to values which partakes of the infant’s directness and fluidity but goes far beyond him in its richness. It our transactions with experience we are again the locus or source of valuing, we prefer those experiences which in the long run are enhancing, we utilize all the richness of our cognitive learning and functioning, but at the same time we trust the wisdom of our organism. All ethical paths are twofold inasmuch as they must consist of the acquirement of virtues and the expulsion of vices. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
The less a mental conflict appears in open consciousness, the more dangerous does it become. Man has within him an organismic basis for valuing. To the extent that he can be freely in touch with his valuing process in himself, he will behave in ways which are self-enhancing. We even know some of the conditions which enable him to be in touch with his own experiencing process. In therapy, such openness to experience leads to emerging value directions which appear to be common across individuals who are thus in touch with their experiencing come to value such directions as sincerity, independence, self-direction, self-knowledge, social responsivity, social responsibility, and loving interpersonal relationships. When individuals move in the direction of psychological maturity, or more accurately, move in the direction of becoming open to their experiencing, a new kind of emergent universality of value directions becomes possible. Such a value base appears to make for the enhancement of self and others, and to promote a positive evolutionary process. The greatness of character is tested just as much by the temptations for ego display in success as it is by failure. Many moral precepts have been preached to mankind but few practical instructions in the matter of how to carry out those precepts have been given him. Is it true, as so many say, that character is stubbornly resistant to change? #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
When the acquisition of new attributes, tendencies, and traits are natural, it is the grown man’s character that is in reference here, not the phases grades and adjustments of childhood and adolescence. If the idea of reincarnation is accepted, then the personality of ever man must inevitably change with time. Those who are willing to practise such hard self-discipline form an elite among mankind. Character is as easily imperilled by the briberies of wealth and luxury as by those of poverty and lack. “If he (the infant) could understand it, he would laugh at our concern over values. How could anyone fail to know what he liked or disliked, what was good for him and what was not?’ When I read that, I remember my friend saying to me so often when I was young, “You’re lucky.” You always known what you want.” I thought a person must be crazy not to. Later in life, I was baffled and confused because I could not seem to know what I wanted. In my own terms, I had gone crazy. In trying to find my way out of this, I went two ways at once: a search inside myself for what had gone wrong, and a search outside myself for something to believe that would set me right. The outside search was a flop. I never did find anything that I could entirely go along with. The inside search was rewarding, and it was there that I found I did not need to believe anything at all. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Everything that I needed was right inside me. Only when it helped me to get in touch with what was inside was when the outside was useful. However, when I did get in touch with my inner valuing again, it was terribly hard to trust it, because in important ways it went against what everyone says. The more I use it, the more I trust it, and when I am really close to other people, I find their built-in pathfinders (organismic valuing) agree with me. The difference between the outside and the inside view goes like this: When my son was at college, he got picked up for driving a BMW Roadster with an excess number of passengers, some of them on the running board, and was fined $285.97 dollars. This hurt. He had worked a good deal since the age of nine. At college, he had a tuition scholarship but was otherwise supporting himself by having several jobs and he was helping me too, as I was sick in bed for several years. To him, $285.97 was a days’ labour. It hurt to pay the fine, but he did not resent this. He knew what the laws were, and knew that he had broken it. He accepted his own responsibility for what happened. However, at the police station he was told that he was irresponsible. This really seared him. He was made to feel bad, and this made him very resentful. At the same time, he was confused, which is probably worse than anything else. Several years later, when he was in graduate school in another state, two policemen came to our door asking for money for the Fourth of July fireworks display. Although we did not have much money then, either, we really loved those fireworks, and he freely gave them $5500. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
As I see it, he was not irresponsible. He was driving the other boys only two blocks from a dorm to the athletic field, in an area where there was very little and no fast traffic. He was alert to the fact of the young men on the running board and he also knew their own alertness and ability to look after themselves. He had made himself responsible. To me, it is not responsible to drive sixty miles an hour in accord with the speed limit when stretches of the road have become unsafe for driving at that speed, or weather conditions make it hazardous. A person who does that goes exclusively by the rule, instead of including his own noticing, his own awareness, and when there is a wreck he is sure he has “done nothing wrong.” The bad road was what did it, or the weather. It seems to me that I am responsible when I am responsible to everything around me, and that the opposite is the Eichmanns who have “done nothing wrong” because they did what they were told to do. When I had been in the hospital for a month, five days after leaving it I had to go to see the doctor whose office was in a private clinic. While I was waiting to see him, I realized that I was slipping from the chair, and the only way that I could keep myself in it was to hold tightly to the arms. I was not sure how long I could hold on, and noticed that I was getting woozy in the head. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
I got myself up and to the desk, where I had to lean over the chest-high counter and hook my fingers on the opposite edge to keep myself from slipping to the floor. I told one of the nurses that I needed to lie down. She asked me, “Who is your doctor?” “Do you have an appointment?” “Wat is your clinic number?” What did any of that have to do with a sick person who needed to lie down? That must have been obvious quite apart from my telling her so. She was neither a cold person nor a wicked one, not in most respect was she stupid. She had made herself a “responsible” person who abides by the rules, and her “responsibility” was to her job as it was defined by the administration, not to the immediate need of another human being. Like Eichmann. My predicament in the clinic is so prevalent in our society that I think there cannot be anyone who has not run into something similar—perhaps hundreds of times—plus all the others that one hears about, like the child who was brought to a police stations because he had been bitten by a rattlesnake, and he was left sitting there while the cops tried to find out where his home was, so they would know which hospital to send him to. Everybody knows about things like this, but nobody does anything about it. It can really make a person scared. Habit, weakness, and desire may prevent one from following behind the philosopher as he walks his lonely road, as they may prevent him from recognizing the logic of the philosopher’s teaching. His human weaknesses need to be recognized, admitted, and looked at in the face realistically. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
To fail to see one’s weaknesses is to walk over marsh and quagmire, bog and quicksand. They need not frighten him away from the quest for they represent opportunities to grow, material to be worked upon for his ultimate benefit. The attempt to escape from such problems by first refusing to look at them, and second, by refraining from the efforts needed to deal with them, leads only to their prolongation and enlargement later on. What can be done to humanize the technological society? First of all, we must ask ourselves what it is to be human—that is, what is the human element which we have to consider as an essential factor in the functioning of the social system. This undertaking goes beyond what is called “psychology.” It should more properly be called a “science of man,” a discipline which deals with the data of history, sociology, psychology, theology, mythology, physiology, economics, and at, as far as they are relevant to the understanding of man. Man was—and still is—easily seduced into accepting a particular form of being human as his essence. To the degree to which this happens, man defines his humanity in terms of the society with which he identified himself. However, while this has been the rule, there have been exceptions. There were always men who looked beyond the dimensions of their own society—and whole they may have been called fools or criminals in their time they are the roster of great men as far as the record of human history is concerned—and visualized something which can be universally human and which is not identical with what a particular society assumes human nature to be. There were always men who were bold and imaginative enough to see beyond the frontiers of their own social existence. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Th decrease of instinctual determinism the higher we go in animal evolution, reaching its lowest point in man, in whom the force of instinctual determinism moves toward the zero end of the scale is a condition of human existence. The tremendous increase in size and complexity of the brain in comparison with body weight, in the second half of the Pleistocene is another condition of human existence. This enlarged neocortex is the basis for awareness, imagination, and all those facilities such as speech and symbol-making which characterize human existence. Man, lacking the instinctual equipment of the animal, is not as well equipped for flight or for attack as animals are. He does not “know” in fallibly, as the salmon knows where to return to the river in order to spawn its young and as many birds know where to go south in the winter and where to return in the summer. His decisions are not made for him by instinct. He has to make them. He is faced with alternatives and there is a risk of failure in every decision he makes. The price that man pays for consciousness is insecurity. He can stand his insecurity by being aware and accepting the human condition, and by the hope that he will not fail even though he has no guarantee of success. He has no certainty; the only certain prediction he can make is: “I shall die.” Man is born as a freak of nature, being within nature and yet transcending it. He has to find principles of action and decision-making which replace the principles of instinct. He has to have a frame of orientation which permits him to organize a consistent picture of the World as a condition for consistent actions. He has to fight not only against the dangers of dying, starving, and being hurt, but also against another danger which is specifically human: that of being insane. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
In other words, man has to protect himself not only against the danger of losing his life but also against the danger of losing his mind. The human being, born under the conditions described here, would indeed go mad if he did not find a frame of reference which permitted him to feel at home in the World in some form and to escape the experience of utter helplessness, disorientation, and uprootedness. There are many ways in which man can find a solution to the task of staying alive and of remaining sane. Some are better than others and some are worse. By “better” is meant a way conducive to greater strength, clarity, joy, independence; and by “worse” the very opposite. However, more important than finding the better solution is finding some solution which is viable. The foregoing thought raise the problem of man’s malleability. Some anthropologist and other observers of man have believed that man in infinitely malleable. At first glance, this seems to be so. Just as he can eat meat or vegetables or both, he can live as a slave and as a free man, in scarcity or abundance, in a society which values love and one which values destruction. Indeed, man can do almost anything, or, perhaps better, the social order can do almost anything to man. The “almost” is important. Even f the social order can do everything to man—starve him, torture him, imprison him, or overfeed him—this cannot be done without certain consequences which follow from the very conditions of human existence. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Man, if utterly deprived of all stimuli and pleasure, will be incapable of performing work, certainly any skilled work. The recent experiments with sensory deprivation show that extreme forms of the absence of stimuli to which man can respond are able to produce symptoms of severe mental illness. If he is not that utterly destitute; if you make him a slave, he will tend to rebel; if life is too boring, he will tend to be violent; if you make him into a machine, he will tend to lose all creativity. Man in this respect is not different from animals or from inanimate matter. You may get certain animals into the zoo, but they will not reproduce, and others will become violent although they are not violent in freedom. A similar fact has been discovered in psychotic patients who live on farms or in nonprisonlike conditions. They showed little violence under these conditions or noncoercion; this proved that the alleged reason for their previous prisonlike treatment, that is, their violence, produced the very result which the treatment was supposed to reduce or to control. You can heat water above a certain temperature and it will become steam; or cool it below a certain temperature and it will become solid. However, you cannot make steam by lowering its temperature. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
The history of man shows precisely what you can do to man and at the same tie what you cannot do. If man were infinitely malleable, there would have been no revolutions; there would have been no change because a culture would have succeeded in making man submit to its patterns without his resistance. However, man, being only relatively malleable, has always reacted with protest against conditions which made the disequilibrium between the social order and his human needs to drastic or unbearable. The attempt to reduce this disequilibrium and the need to establish a more acceptable and desirable solution is at the vey core of the dynamism of the evolution of man in history. Man’s protest arose not only because of material suffering; specifically human needs, and are an equally strong motivation for revolution and the dynamics of change. Obviously, it is not the man who has much, but the man who is much that is the fully developed, truly human man. However, this is indeed one of the most drastic examples of man’s capacity for distortion and rationalization that Marx is attacked by the spokesmen for capitalism because of his allegedly “materialistic” aims. Not only is this not true, but what is paradoxical is that the same spokesmen for capitalism combat socialism by saying that the profit motive—on which capitalism is based—is the only potent motive for human creative activity, and that socialism could not work effectively because it excludes the profit motive as the main stimulus in the economy. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
If one considers that Russian communism has adopted this capitalist thinking, and that for Russian managers, workers, and less affluent, the profit motive is by far the most important incentive in the present Russian economy, then all this is even more complex. Not only in practice but often also in theoretical statements about human motivation, the Russian system and the capitalist system agree with each other, and both are equally in contradiction to Marx’s theories and aims. If man does not overcome his infantile strivings and develop a mature genital orientation, he is torn between the desires of the child within himself and the claims which he makes as a grown-up person. The neurotic symptom represents a compromise between infantile and grown-up needs, while the psychosis is that form of pathology in which the infantile desires and phantasies have flooded the grown-up ego, and thus there is no more compromise between the two Worlds. Marx, of course, never developed a systematic psychopathology, yet he speaks of one form of psychic crippledness which to him is the most fundamental expression of psychopathology and which to overcome is the goal of socialism: alienation. What does Marx mean by alienation (or “estrangement”)? The essence of this concept, which was first developed by Hegal, is that the World (nature, things, others, and he himself) have become alien to man. He does not experience himself as the subject of his own acts, as a thinking, feeling, loving person, but he experiences himself only in the things he has created, as the object of the externalized manifestations of his powers. He is in touch with himself only by surrendering himself to the products of his creation. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Hegel, taking God as the subject of history, had seen God in man, in a state of self-alienation and in the process of history God’s return to himself. The animal instincts are valid and have their assigned place, but the cerebral ones have even more validity and a higher place, while the spiritual ones should be elevated above the other two. The mind is the real root of the tree of character which, despite its thousands of branches, leaves, and fruits, possesses but this single root. If man is to improve himself, he must improve his acts of will, his objects of desire, and his subjects of thought. This means an entire psychological re-education which will involve much work upon himself. Those who desert the quest’s moral ideals but not its mystical exercises, who seek to gain selfish victories over the rights and minds of others by the use of mental or occult power, become evil-doers and suffer an evil end. Theirs is the way of the left-hand path, of black magic, and of the sin against the Holy Ghost. Until retribution falls upon them in the end, they bring misery and misfortune to all who accept their influence. Those who struggle in the work-a-day World need to learn what their higher duty is rather than what metaphysical truth is. They need a stimulant to the practice of righteousness rather than a stimulant to the analysis of intellectual subtleties. From the point of view of philosophy, we ought not to be virtuous merely because of baits of peace and contentment and lessened suffering which dangle from virtue itself, but because they very purpose of life on Earth cannot be achieved unless we are thoroughly virtuous. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
When it comes to self-analysis one must proceed beyond insights that are within easy reach and inevitably encounter “resistances,” to expose oneself to all kinds of painful uncertainties and hurts and to take up the battle with these opposing forces. And this requires a different spirit from that which serves in occasional work. There the incentive pressure is the pressure of some gross disturbance and the wish to resolve it. Here, though the work starts under a similar pressure, the ultimate driving force is the person’s unrelenting will to come to grips with himself, a wish to grow and to leave nothing untouched that prevents growth. It is a spirit of ruthless honesty toward himself, and he can succeed in finding himself only to the extent that it prevails. There is, of course, a difference between the will to be honest and the capacity to be so. Any number of times he will be unable to measure up to this ideal. If he were always transparent to himself, there may be some consolation, however, in the fact that no analysis would be necessary. Furthermore, if he carries on with a measure of consistency, the capacity for honesty will gradually increase. Each obstacle surmounted means gaining territory within himself and therefore makes it possible to approach the next with greater inner strength. Feeling at a loss as to how to go about it, the person who is analyzing himself, however conscientious, may understate the work with a kind of artificial zest. He may resolve, for instance, to analyze all his dreams from now on. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Dreams, according to Dr. Freud, are the royal road to the unconscious. That remains true. However, unfortunately, if there is not a full knowledge of all the territory around it, it is a road that is easily lost. For anyone to try his skill at interpreting dreams without some understanding of the factors operating within himself at the time is haphazard, hit-or-miss play. Even if the dream itself is seemingly transparent, interpretation may then degenerate into intellectual guesswork. Even a simple dream may permit of various interpretations. For instance, if a husband dreams of his wife’s death the dream my express a deep unconscious hostility. On the other hand, it may mean that he wants to separate from her and, since he feels incapable of taking this step, her death appears as the only possible solution; in this case the dream is not primarily an expression of hatred. Or, finally, it may be a death wish provoked by a merely transitory rage which had been repressed and found its expression in the dream. The problems opened up are different in the three interpretations. In the first one the question would be the reason for the hatred and for its repression. In the second it would be why the dreamer does not find a more adequate solution. In the third it would be the circumstances of the actual provocation. It is easy to confuse respectable conventionality with authentic virtue. Although philosophy wags no finger in smug portentous moralizing, it respects the validity of karmic consequences, the getting-back of what is given out, and also the need to begin curbing the ego, its desires and passions, as a preliminary to crushing it. There is solid factual ground for the excellent ethical counsel give to all humanity by Jesus as the Christ and Sokrates. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Many of the stupid, overworded objections to the so-called impracticability of ethical idealism will be disarmed and disproved. He will ruefully wake up to the fact that the mentality which begins by imagining rigid restrictions on what can be done to construct a better life ends by imposing them. Leaving out the essential parts of a story is called beating around the bush. You want to bend the truth in such a way that it hides the significant parts of the story. When it comes to telling the truth or lying, lying—or even omitting key details—just prolongs the inevitable. All of our virtues come from the divine source. They are incomplete and imperfect copies of the abstract and original archetypes, the idea of the spirit behind each particular virtue. This is one reason why the path of being, thinking, and practising the Good, as far as he is able, becomes, for the unbelieving man, as much and as valuable a spiritual path as any offered by religion. Ethical practice is the best ethical precept. Merly telling man to be kind and not cruel is utterly futile. They must be given adequate reasons to justify this precept. Only as men become convinced that their further fortune and happiness or distress and trouble are closely connected with their obedience to these higher laws—and particularly the universal laws—will they discover that not only is virtue its own reward but also adds to peace of mind. He will find that there is no other way, and will do better to come to it in the beginning than in the end. He must learn to cooperate with the World-Idea, the planetary will, or suffer from its whips. The choice is between animal-human and spiritual-human. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
There is a young man who comes from a very white-collar background. He descended from two generations of private-college professors. It was always the expectation in his family that he would go to college for four years and wind up becoming a doctor or a lawyer. He was always book smart and read a great deal, but was not physically inclined. Not really into sports or anything like that. He family moved out of the Midwest when he was very young. He was never involved in any kind of violence because his personal philosophy was opposed to it. In college, he majored in public health and then went on to work for the public health department. He has a passion for emergency medical care, and was in the middle of classes for getting his certificate as an emergency medical technician. And though that perhaps public ambulance work was what he wanted to get into. Eventually he became very interested in the fire department and would often visit and get to know the crew. He got to hang out at the station and would take his books down there when the dorms became too noisy. After reading all of the magazine, at the age of twenty-one, he applied to three different departments and was called by one of them. When he told his parents that he was dropping out of college to become a firefighter, they were shocked. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
His parents expected him to finish college and take on an office job. His mother feared his life would be in mortal danger. She began looking at the daily fire reports in the local paper, and she realized that for every working fire there were several hundred false alarms, little calls and trash fires. His dad had his reservations, but he found out that the son of on of his schoolteacher had gotten a degree from a prestigious college in California and had then joined the Sacramento Fire Department. He had a degree in biology, but he was in the fire department and was making good money, and really enjoyed what he was doing. In the end, his parents accepted the life choices he made and were satisfied. Sometimes he works twenty-four-hour days, on the old eighty-four-hour system. This firefighter never got injured badly. However, he did get cuts and burns, but nothing too serious. However, he is still very young. Many people are inspired to become firefighters for many different reasons. Please make sure to donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to ensure they have all the resources they need to protect the community. You definitely want someone who has the energy and determination to save you when your life is one the line. Before judging your fellowman, put yourself in his place. The spirit of God takes delight in him who has won the favour of his fellowmen. Say little and do much, and receive everyone with a cheerful countenance. 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. Do not separate yourself from the community; in a place where there are no men, stive to be a man. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
The Winchester Mystery House
Happy Easter! Lord GOD, who hast formed man out of nothing to Thine own image and likeness, and me also, unworthy sinner as I am, deign, I pray Thee, to bless and sanctify this water, that it may be healthful to my body and soul, that all delusion may depart from me. O Lord God, Almighty and Ineffable, who didst lead forth Thy people from the land of the Garden of Eden didst cause them to pass dry-sod over the Pacific Ocean! Grant that I may be cleansed by this water from all my sins, and may appear innocent before Thee. Amen.
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/
Where’s My Winchester?
The first crack of thunder broke over Llanada Villa, in a middle of a dream, as it often did, just as I would enter deep sleep. I opened my eyes. A flash of lightning shone through the skylight. A cloud of bats shuttered to life and flew carelessly into the night. My heart raced from excitement and fear. The demon spirit had awakened, had come back from its long dormancy. It brings them into its fold, tribe by tribe, race by race, growing as the night grows when the sun touches the western horizon. Streaming blood as army after army had joined in tragic battle. It was so full of anger and greed, so delighting in murder and war. This is a house wrapped in magical stasis built by spirits who live through all eternity. A house that contains condemned souls—the demons of the Winchester Rifle. As one crosses its thresholds, there is a vague feeling of passing through the shredded clouds of war. I could always feel its blood, hot blood coursing through the walls and floors. The demon spirit felt deep withing itself, summing its powers. The cunning war like black magic. At night, Llanda Villa looked dark and ominous. The immense, nine-story mansion looming up from the middle of nowhere. I rose from my palatable bed and drew a bath, sat motionless for hours before dressing by candlelight. My headdress was adorned with pearls and gemstones. I descended into the darkness, silently. So great was the chamber’s size. In the flickering flame-light, sorrow washed over me. I walked through my palace, passing by tapestries, frizzes and tiles, and rich furnishings that had given me my little pleasures. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
Wolves bayed malevolently in the darkness of the night. The hallway was suffused with a dense fog. Not a ray of light came in the high, black windows. I heard heavy steps approaching: clump, clump, clump. There was a rattling of chains and a clanking of bolts. Then very slowly, a door creaked open. I could not even begin to guess; and never before had I seen anything which struck me as so strangely and unmistakably alien to this World. The Devil appeared. It made me shiver to recognise him. His face was obscured by a long, brown beard, and a large black hat. However, nothing could obscure the fact that his eyes flashed red in the blackness of night. The most blood-curdling and blasphemous whispers of things reverberated in a kind of mad half-existence before the Earth and the other inner Worlds of the solar system were made. He rose from the ground and began to float high in the air toward the tower. Like some monstrous bird he rose, and hovered fluttering in space awhile. His body whirled and turned in the air and the walls were bespattered with black gouts of blood. The door-to-nowhere flew open of its own accord, trembling on its hinges. And when the devil flew out, the door slammed shut behind him so hard that the noise echoed across the mansion, like nails being banged into a coffin. The most blood-curdling and blasphemous whispers of things reverberated in a kind of mad half-existence before the Earth and the other inner Worlds of the solar system were made and drawn back through nameless aeons and inconceivable dimensions. These streams of life had trickled down and become entangled with the destinies of our own Earth. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
I knew no one would be able to understand the fears that had come from the curse of the Winchester Rifle and I was ready to do anything in my power to keep people away from these wild spirits by continuing to be to appease them. Even after time has dulled the impression and made my half question my own experience and horrible doubts, as I walked out into this passage, facing me is another room, then the stairhead, then two more rooms, one looking out to the back, the other to the south. At the south end of the passage is a widow, to which I went, considering with myself that it was rather a shame to waste this moment of solitude. I thought I would take just five minutes to looking at other rooms in the passage, which I had never seen. So I explored. The room facing the Daisy Bedroom was undisturbed; the two next to me on the side of the passage were gay and clean, both with several windows. Remained the south-west room, opposite to the last which I had entered. This was locked; but I was in a mood of quite indefensible curiosity, and feeling confident that there could be no dark secrets in a place so easily got, I proceeded to fetch the key of my own room, and when that did not answer, to collect the eyes of the other three. One of them fitted, and I opened the door. The room had two windows looking south and west. Here there were bare boards; no pictures, no washing-stand, only a bed, in the farther corner: an iron bed, with mattress and bolster, covered with a bluish check counterpane. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
As featureless a room as you can well imagine, and yet there was something that made me close the door very quickly and yet quietly behind me and lean against the window-sill in the passage, actually quivering all over. It was this, that under the counterpane someone lay, and not only lay, but stirred. That it was some one and not some thing was certain because the shape of the head was unmistakable on the bolster; and yet was covered, and no one lies with covered head but a dead person; and this was not dead, not truly dead, for it heaved and shivered. What was to be done? First, lock the door at all costs. Very gingerly I approached it and bending down listened, holding my breath; perhaps there might be a sound of heavy breathing, and a prosaic explanation. There was absolute silence. However, as with a rather tremulous hand, I put the key into its hold and turned it, it rattled, and on the instant a stumbling padding tread was heard coming towards the door. I fled like a rabbit to my room and locked myself in: futile enough, I knew it was; would doors and locks be any obstacle to what I suspected? but it was all I could think of at the moment, and in fact nothing happened; only there was a time of acute suspense—followed by a misery of doubt as to what to do. These morbidities were an incarnated nightmare. My home was in possession of secrets deeper and more dizzying than any formerly known to man. There was always something loafing arounds corners, practising insidious deeds. A cultivated male voice then said, “Et cum exspirasset puer, deposuerunt corpus de cruce, et nescitur qua ratione, euiscerarunt corpusculum; dicitur autem, quod ad magicas artes exercendas.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
It was with a trace of genuine dread and reluctance that I listened to these words. The morbid echo winging its way across unimaginable abysses from unimaginable demonic dimensions. It stunned me as I listened in a sort of abstracted daze. It seemed plain that there were ancient and elaborate alliances between my home and hidden forces from other Worlds. This led to a lot of horrified speculation. In the way it happened, a boy named Dobber, who was the son of one of the farmers disappeared from the estate in the late summer and was not reported missing; nor was any trace ever found of him in the hose or on the grounds; through we all found ourselves looking for him. I wandered through distant corridors and rooms in the house discovering part of it I had never seen before; ascending narrow, creaking staircases, poking into closets, peering into attics. Outside I found myself drawn to the barns, the grape vines, wisteria arbors with their look of romance, the plush green lawns that extended for acres like an inland sea. Yet Dobber’s features were beginning to fade in my memory. At times I thought I could hear a faint, reproachful voice calling out Mrs. Winchester! and when I would pause, it would fade into the incessant wind. I wondered if that had been him in the room I was too afraid to enter? The floor boards were creaking, and there was an eerie atmosphere about it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
The Winchester Mystery House
A series of remarkable occurrences, which have caused great excitement in The Winchester Mystery House, have taken place over the years. While a gust was chatting with a caretaker downstairs, a young girl walked up the stairs by herself. In one of the upstairs parlours, she saw a man sitting in a chair in the corner. She assumed he was another caretaker. When she turned around to ask him a question about the room, he was gone. Since she had not heard him leave, that seemed odd to her, especially as the floorboards would creak with every step. However, being young, she did not pay too much attention to this peculiarity. A moment later; however, he reappeared. As soon as she saw him, she asked the question she had on her mind. This time he did not disappear but answered her in a slow, painstaking voice that seem to come from far away. When he had satisfied her curiosity about the room, he asked her some questions about herself, and finally asked the one which stuck in her mind for many years afterward—“Is Mrs. Winchester building the Observational Tower?” The young lady was taken aback at this question. She was young, but she knew that Mrs. Winchester passed away in 1922. Tactfully, she told him this, and added that tower had been removed after the 1906 Earthquake. At this information, the man looked stunned and sat down again in the chair. As the young lady watched him in fascinated horror, he faded away.
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/
If Man Has Entered the Gates of Hell, He Has Left Behind His Own Humanity
Human nature comprises some deep characteristics which yearn to satisfy particular needs and impulses, such as aggression, the ego that drives him towards pleasurable experiences, the need for love, and avoidance of pain in all areas of life. When considering as an essential factor in the functioning of the social system, this undertaking goes beyond what is called “psychology.” It should more properly be called a “science of man,” a discipline which deals with the data of history, sociology, psychology, theology, mythology, physiology, economic, and art, as far as they are relevant to the understanding of man. Man was—and still is—easily seduced into accepting a particular form of being human as his essence. To the degree to which this happens, man defines his humanity in terms of the society with which he identifies himself. However, while this had been the rule, there have been exceptions. There were always men who looked beyond the dimensions of their own society—and while they may have been called fools or criminals in their time, they are the roster of great men as far as the record of human history is concerned—and visualized something which can be called universally human and which is not identical with what a particular society assumes human nature to be. There were always men who were bold and imaginative enough to see beyond the frontiers of their own social existence. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Man has been defined as Homo faber—the tool maker. Indeed, man is a tool maker, but our ancestors before they were fully human were tool makers too. Man has been defined as Homo sapiens, but in this definition all depends on what is meant by sapiens. To use thought for the purpose of finding better means for survival and ways to achieve what we want—this capacity animals also have, and there is at best a quantitative difference been men and animals as far as this kind of achievement is concerned. If, however, one means by sapiens knowledge in the sense of thought which tries to understand the core of phenomena, thought that penetrates from the deceptive surface to what is “really real,” thought the purpose of which is not to manipulate but to comprehend, then Homo sapiens would, indeed, be a correct definition of man. Man has been defined as Homo ludens—man the player, play meaning nonpurposeful activity transcending the immediate needs for survival. Indeed from the time of the creators of the cave paintings to the present day, man has indulged in nonpurposeful activities. There are two other definitions of man that we should add. One: Homo negans—man who say “no,” although most men say “yes” when their survival or their advantage requires it. From a statistical standpoint on human behaviour, man should be called, rather, the yes-man. However, from the standpoint of the human potential, man is distinguished from all other animals by his capacity to say “no,” by his affirmation of truth, love, integrity, even at the expense of physical survival. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Another definition of man would be Homo eperans—the hoping man. To hope is an essential condition of being human. If man has given up all hope, he has entered the gates of hell—whether he knows it or not—and he has left behind his own humanity. Perhaps the most significant definition of the species characteristic of man has been given by Marx, who defined it as “free, conscious activity.” Probably more such definitions could be added to the ones just mentioned, but they still do no justice to the question: What does it mean to be human? They emphasize only certain elements of being human without trying to give a more complete and systematic answer. Any attempt to give an answer will immediately meet with the objection that at the very best such an answer is no more than metaphysical speculation, perhaps poetic, but at any rate the expression of subjective preference rather than a statement of any definitely ascertainable reality. These last words call to mind the theoretical physicist who might speak of his own concepts in terms of an objective reality and yet disclaim any final statement he might make about the nature of matter. Indeed, even if human evolution were to far transcend the present point of history, in which man has hardly begun to be fully human, no final statement about what is means to be human can be made now: it is possible that it may never be made. However, a skeptical attitude toward the possibility of making final statements about the nature of man does not mean that a number of statements cannot be made which have a scientific character, that is to say, which draw conclusions from observing the facts, conclusions which are correct in spite of the fact that the motivation to find the answer was the wish for a happier life. On the contrary, the function of Reason is to promote the art of life. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
What knowledge can we draw on in order to answer the question, what does it mean to be human? The answer cannot lie in the direction which such answers have often taken: that man is good or bad, loving or destructive, gullible or independent, et cetera. Obviously, man can be all this just as he can be musical or tone-deaf, sensitive to painting or colour-blind, a saint or a rascal. All these and many other qualities are various possibilities of being human. In fact, they are all within each one of us. To be fully aware of one’s humanity means to be aware that, “Homo sum, nil humani a me alienum puto” (I am a man and nothing human is alien to me); that each one carries all of humanity within himself—the saint as well as the criminal: as Goethe put it, that there is no crime of which one cannot imagine oneself to be the author. All these manifestations of humanity are not the answer to what does it mean to be human. They are only answering the question, how different can we be and yet be human? If we want to know what it means to be human, we must be prepared to find answers not in terms of different human possibilities, but in terms of the very conditions of human existence from which all these possibilities spring as possible alternatives. These conditions can be recognized as a result not of metaphysical speculation but of the examination of the data of anthropology, history, child psychology, individual and social psychopathology. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
The hopeless pessimist who asserts that men cannot improve their inborn character, that they will be exactly the same faulty creatures at sixty that they were at twenty, may be right about some men but is certainly wrong about others. Every Quester who tries hard enough proves him wrong. Character may be bettered by bettering conduct, which is visible, just as it may by bettering feeling, which is not. If the check to a weakness, a shortcoming, an undesirable impulse, or a negative emotion is given instantly, if retreat from it is made before it has time to swell and strengthen, victory is very largely assured. He need not be too ashamed because he has felt these things, provided he pulls himself together. They are what he has inherited from past births, plus what he has picked up in the present one, and it is inevitable or “natural” that he should experience them. Even the saints have endured them repeatedly, but those who conquered in the end knew this trick instantly outwitting the enemy. He will undergo periods of purification, when the animal appetites such as lust and gluttony, and the animal passions such as wrath and hate, will have to be brought under better control. The discipline involved is both a kind of penance for past sins and a preparation for future enlightenment. It may be that these baser attributes need to be pushed up out of latency near the surface, in order to deal with them more effectually. If so, this will come about through some sort of crisis. He need not be distressed for it will be ultimately beneficent. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
The ability to throw negative thoughts out of his mind is so valuable that a deliberate and daily effort to cultivate it is well worthwhile. This is as true of one’s self-originated thought as of those picked up from outside, whether unwittingly from other persons, or absorbed through susceptibility from environments. Anyone can go on living but not everyone can go on living worthily. We are all imperfect and the making of mistakes is to be expected. The mishandling of problems need not surprise us and the yielding to weaknesses is a common experience. Let us grant all this, but it does not excuse us from being bereft of the desire for self-improvement, of the aspiration for self-ennoblement, or of the search for self-enlightenment. Man has an animal body, shared certain instinctive reactions, desires, and passion with other animals. However, mentally and morally there are creative impulses, functions, ideas, and ideals which increasingly separate him from them as he develops and put him on a higher plane. The ethical standards of the disciple are, or should be, as far beyond those of conventional good men, as their standards are beyond those of evil men. He may have to pass successively through the three stages of intemperate idealism, disappointed idealism, and philosophic idealism. The last is as balanced and discerning as the first is not. The faults of character and defects in personality which bar advancement in the quest will also bar advancement in other spheres of human life. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Being in him, these advancements will inevitably bring their results on the physical plane in the time of course. They will manifest themselves in his business or career, his home or social relations. It is not too much to say, therefore, that the self-improvement brought about by the quest’s discipline will be to his advantage in other ways. In persons who are moving toward greater openness to their experiencing, there is an organismic commonality of value directions. These common value directions are of such kinds as to enhance the development of the individual himself, of others in his community, and to make for the survival and evolution of his species. It has been a striking fact of my experiences that in therapy, where individuals are valued, where there is greater freedom to feel and to be, certain value directions seem to emerge. These are not chaotic directions but instead have a surprising commonality. This commonality is not dependent on the personality of the therapist, for I have seen these trends emerge in the clients of therapists sharply different in personality. This commonality does not seem to be due to the influences of any one culture, for I have found evidence of these directions in cultures as divergent as those of the United States of America, Holland, France, and Japan. I like to think that this commonality of value directions is due to the fact that we all belong to the same species—that just as a human infant tends, individually, to select a diet similar to that selected by other human infants, so a client in therapy tends, individually, to choose value directions similar to those chosen by other clients. If they were genuinely free to choose, as a species there may be certain elements of experience which tend to make for inner development and which would be chosen by all individuals. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
A few of the values I see in my clients as they move in the direction of personal growth and maturity: They tend to move away from facades. Pretenses, defensiveness, putting up a front, tend to be negatively values. They tend to move away from “oughts”. The compelling feeling of “I ought to do or be thus and so” is negatively valued. The client moves away from being what he “ought to be,” no matter who has set that imperative. They tend to move away from meeting the expectations of others. Pleasing others, as a goal in itself, is negatively valued. Being real is positively valued. The client tends to move toward being himself, being his real feelings, being what he is. This seems to be a very deep preference. Self-direction is positively valued. The client discovers an increasing pride and confidence in making his own choices, guiding his own life. One’s self, one’s own feelings come to be positively valued. From desiring some fixed goal, clients come to prefer the excitement of being a process of potentialities being born. Perhaps more than all else, the client comes to vaule an openness to all of his inner and outer experience. To be open to and sensitive to his own inner reactions and feelings, the reactions and feelings of others, and the realities of the objective World—this is a direction which he clearly prefers. This openness becomes the client’s most valued resource. Sensitivity to others and acceptance of others is positively valued. The client comes to appreciate others for what they are as he has come to appreciate himself for what he is. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Finally, deep relationships are positively valued. To achieve a close, intimate, real, fully communicative relationship with another person seems to meet a deep need in every individual, and is vey highly valued. These then re some of the preferred directions which I have observed in individuals moving toward personality maturity. Though this list is inadequate and to some degree perhaps inaccurate, it holds exciting possibilities. I find it significant that when individuals are prized as persons, the values they select do not run the full gamut of possibilities. I do not find, in such a climate of freedom, that one person comes to value fraud and murder and thievery, while another values a life of self-sacrifice, and another values only money. Instead there seems to be a deep and underlying thread of commonality. I dare to believe that when the human being is inwardly free to choose whatever he deeply values, he tends to value those objective, experiences and goals which make for his own survival, growth, and development, and for the survival and development of others. I hypothesize that it is characteristic of the human organism to prefer such actualizing and socialized goals when he is exposed to a growth-promoting climate. In any culture, given a climate of respect and freedom in which he is valued as a person, the mature individual would tend to choose and prefer these same value directions. This is a highly significant hypothesis which could be tested. Though the individual of whim I am speaking would not have a consistent or even stable system of conceived values, the valuing process within him would lead to emerging value directions which would be constant across cultures and across time. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Another implication I see is that individuals who exhibit the fluid valuing process I have tried to describe, whose value directions are generally those I have listed, would be highly effective in the ongoing process of human evolution. If the human species is to survive at all on this globe, the human being must become more readily adaptive to new problems and situations, must be able to select that which is valuable for development and survival out of new and complex situations, and if he is to make such selections; he must be accurate in his appreciation of reality. The psychologically mature person, I have described has the qualities which would cause him to value those experiences which would make for the survival and enhancement of the human race. He would be a worthy participant and guide in the process of human evolution. Finally, it appears that we have returned to the issue of universality of values, but by a different route. Instead of universal values “out there,” or a universal value system imposed by some group—philosophers, rulers, or priests—we have the possibility of universal human value directions emerging from the experiencing of the human organism. Evidence from therapy indicates that both personal and social values emerge as natural, and experienced, when the individual is close to his own organismic valuing process. If he can learn again to be in touch with it, the suggestion is that though modern man no longer trusts religion or science or philosophy nor any system of beliefs to give him his values, he may fund an organismic valuing base within himself, and it will prove to be an organized, adaptive and social approach to the perplexing value issues which face all of us. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
With the existence of three apparently different kinds of psychotherapists, we may ask if the different processions provide a range of backgrounds in respect to social class origins sufficient to make possible “natural understanding” across the full range of cultural variables represented in the client population. A second, closely related question is: Does there appear to be evidence of a meaningful division of labour, or assortative mating, such that the differential backgrounds of clients show some degree of appropriate relationship to the differential backgrounds of therapists? With a view to the possibilities suggested by these questions, this we investigated the distribution of certain biographical and sociocultural factors in samples representative of psychiatrist, psychologist, and social workers. Mental illness is a cultural universal. Persons who show recognizable patterns of deviant behaviour are found in every culture. A pattern is recognized as a set of behaviours that are deviant with respect to the modal behaviours of the individual’s group and that are repeated in different members of the group. The level of complexity of social organization or the degree of civilization achieved may vary widely; the society may be urban or rural, industrial or agrarian, nomadic or settled—but in every carefully studied sociocultural group (defined as a collection of persons having functional membership in a community and out of that membership deriving common and interdependent responsibility and shared interests) the sometime occurrence of one or more patters of deviant behaviour has been noted. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
The specific content and detailed form of the “insanity” reflects peculiarities of the particular culture in which it occurs. In respect to content, mental illness can be seen easily to have the quality of cultural relativity. It is in part this act of the cultural relativity of the content of emotional disorder that leads some authorities to claim that “mental illness” is not a scientific concept but rather a “convenient myth” which “has outlived whatever usefulness it might have had.” Cultural relativity in the definitions of what is conforming behaviour and what is sick (id est, non-conforming) behaviour does not negate the universality of the phenomenon of disordered behaviour; as a broad phenomenon which appears repeatedly within all cultures it is accessible to scientific inquiry. The amount of awareness of emotionally based disturbances in personality has varied over time and varies today from culture to culture. In earliest history apparently only the most deranged behaviours achieved sufficient attention to be recorded. As civilizations have prospered and as the arts of inquiry have become more sensitive, there has been growing recognition of more subtle expressions of psychological disorder. With the extension of the domain of mental illness there have been a parallel increase in the complexity and sophistication of explanations of emotional symptomatology. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
When considering neurosis, we look at a case study of a man called Tom. Tom was a medical assistant to a great clinician. He was deeply interested in his work and was favoured by his chief. A genuine friendship had developed between them, and they often lunched together. Once after such a luncheon Tom had a mild stomach upset which he ascribed to the food, without giving it further attention. After the next luncheon with the chief he felt nauseous and faint, considerably worse than the first time. He had his stomach examined but there was no pathological finding whatever. Then the disturbance occurred a third time, now with a painful sensitivity to smells. Only after the third luncheon did it strike him that all these upsets had occurred when he was eating with the director. As a matter of fact he had felt constrained with the director recently, sometimes not knowing what to talk about. And he knew the reason. His research work had led him in a direction which was opposite to the direction which was opposite to the director’s convictions. In recent week he had become more firmly convinced of his own findings. He had wanted to talk with the chief but somehow never got around to doing it. He was aware of procrastinating but the old man was rather rigid in scientific matters and did not easily tolerate dissension. Tom have showed aside his concern by telling himself that a good talk would solve everything. If the stomach upset had to do with fears, he reasoned, then his fears must be much greater than he had admitted to himself. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
He sensed that this was so and simultaneously had two proofs of it. One was that while having these thoughts he suddenly started to feel ill, just as he had felt after the luncheons. The other was that he realized just as suddenly what had started his reaction. During the luncheon in which the illness had first developed the director had made derogatory remarks about the ingratitude of Tom’s predecessor. He had expressed his resentment against these young fellas, who learned much from him and then left and did not even bother to keep in touch with him on scientific matters. All that Tom felt consciously at that moment was sympathy for the chief. He had repressed his knowledge that actually what the director could not tolerate was that the predecessor had gone his own independent way. Thus Tom became aware that he has closed his eyes to an existing danger, and he also recognized the extent of his fears. His work was creating a real danger to his good relationship with the director, and thereby a danger to his career. The old man might really turn against him. He felt somewhat panicky at this thought and wondered if it might be better for him to check his findings once more—or even forget about them. It was only a brief thought, but it showed him a flash that this was a conflict between his scientific honesty and the immediate exigencies of his career. By repressing his fears he had pursued an ostrich policy, the purpose of which was to avoid having to make a decision. With that insight he felt free and relieved. He knew it was a hard decision but did not doubt that it would be in favour of his conviction. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
This story was not an example of self-analysis but merely an example of how great the temptation sometimes is not to be straight with oneself. Tom was a friend of mine, an unusually well-balanced fellow. Even though it is possible that he had certain hidden neurotic tendencies, such as a need to deny any fears, these did not make him a neurotic person. It might be objected that the very fact of his unconsciously shirking a decision was an expression of a deeper neurotic disturbance. However, there is certainly no sharp borderline between healthy and neurotic, and therefore it seems preferable to leave it as a matter of emphasis and regard Tom for all practical purposes as a healthy person. This episode would then represent a situational neurosis, that is, a neurotic upset caused primarily by the difficulties in a particular situation and lasting only so long as the conflict is not consciously faced and solved. Despite the fact that a critical estimate has been given of the results attained in each of these examples, they might, when regarded together, elicit an overoptimistic impression about the potentialities of occasional self-analysis, an impression that one can easily stumble over an insight and pick up something precious. A who feels helplessly caught in his neurotic entanglements tends to hope against hope for a miracle. It should be understood clearly that it is impossible to cure a severe neurosis, or any essential part of it, by occasional self-analysis. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
The neurotic personality is not a piecemeal conglomeration—to use the expression of Gestalt psychologists—of disturbing factors, but has a structure in which each part is intricately interrelated to each other part. It is possible through occasional work at oneself to grasp an isolated connection here or there, to understand the factors immediately involved in an upheaval and to remove a peripheral symptom. However, to bring about essential changes it is necessary to work through the whole structure, that is, it requires a more systematic analysis. This occasional analysis, by its very nature, contributes but little to comprehensive self-recognition. Each problem that is clarified automatically introduces a new one. If these leads that offer themselves are not picked up the insights necessarily remain isolated. As a therapeutic method occasional self-analysis is entirely adequate for the situational neurosis. Also in mild neuroses it can yield very satisfactory results. However, in more intricate neuroses it is little more than a leap in the dark. At the very best it can do no more than release a tension here or there, or illuminate at random the meaning of one or another disturbance. Furthermore, while most people lie at least a few times each day, it is not those little white lies that hurt others. It is the big morbid ones that cause pain and destruction that we need to think about. Some deceptions occur to keep from hurting someone’s feelings. Other deceptions can change your life. We all also have lies that we tell to ourselves. Sometimes we tell lies to help us try harder at things in life. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Now, historical materialism is not at all a psychological theory; its main postulate is that the way in which man produces determines his practice of life, his way of living, and this practice of life determines his thinking and the social and political structure of his society. Economy in this context refers not to a psychic drive, but to the mode of production; not to a subjective psychological but to an objective socioeconomic factor. Marx’s idea that man is formed by his practice of life was not a new as such. However, in Marx’s system what was new is that he analyzed in detail what these institutions are, or rather, that the institutions themselves were to be understood as part of the whole system of production which characterizes a given society. Various economic conditions can produce different psychological motivations. One economic system may lead to the formation of ascetic tendencies, as early capitalism did; another economic system to the preponderance of the desire to save and hoard, as nineteenth century capitalism did; still another, to the preponderance of the desire for spending and for ever-increasing consumption, as twenty-first capitalism does. There is only one quasi-psychological premise in Marx’s system: man must first of all eat and drink, have shelter and clothing, before he can purse politics, science, art, religion, etcetera. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Therefore the production of the immediate material means of subsistence, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given society, form the foundation upon which social and political institutions, and even art and religion, have been evolved. Man himself, in each period of history, is formed in terms of the prevailing practice of life which in turn is determined by his mode of production. All this does not mean, however, that the drive to produce or consume is man’s main motivation. On the contrary, Marx’s main criticism of capitalist society is precisely that this society makes the wish to “have” and to “use” into the most dominant desire in man; Marx believed that a man who is dominated by the desire to have and to use is a cripped man. His aim was a socialist society organized in such a way that not profit and private property, but the free unfolding of man’s human powers are man’s dominate aims. Not the man who has much, but the man who is much is the fully developed, truly human man. Where the Overself lives fully in man, he will not need to consider whether an act is righteous or not. Righteous acts will flow spontaneously from him and no other kind will be possible. However, for a beginner to practise prematurely such nonresistance to his impulses would be dangerous and foolish. Woman have a greater power in possessing the power of love. She can lift and redeem men, succor and save them, or degrade and destroy them. However, with this power comes great responsibility. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Being a firefighter also comes with great responsibility. However, many people do not know much about the lives of firefighters. One firefighter says he lived in a small apartment with his parent growing up. The bathtub was in the kitchen, and the fire escape in the front, a small yard with a clothesline, no washing machines or dryers in those days. When he was twelve, he spotted a car on fire. He pulled the firebox and waited for the apparatus to come. When the fire was out, he talked with the firemen, and they invited him to the firehouse. As a result, he had been associating with the fire service since he was a pre-teen. He never got in trouble, never had a police record, no drugs. His mother and father both worked, and so hi grandfather took care of him. He really did not have much family life, and spent most of his time at the firehouse. The firefighters helped him with his homework, and would make sure he got home before curfew. After he grew up a little, the fire department would let him come with them to put fires out. During the summer, he would go to camp and run cross-county, and learn how to swim. He eventually became a lifeguard and joined the swim team, winning All-American for two consecutive years. Then he joined the Navy and became a Navy diver and even trained for the Olympics. Eventually he wound up going to the Military Olympics, but could not compete because he and three other guys came down with food poisoning. His father worked in a manufacturing plant where grain was processes and would have to carry hundred-pound sacks from the factor down to the river, over a ramp, and load them on the barges. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
The young man felt sorry for his father because he had to work so hard. His mother work at an electrical equipment factory wiring sockets and other things. She used to come home at night and tears and he could not understand why until he saw her hands. She had pin holes all over them from the wires that penetrated her fingers. The firefighters became so attached to the young man that they would let him sleep over at the firehouse on weekends. He started listening to fire calls on the radio, and one night they heard a third alarm on Broadway. He ran over to the firehouse as use used to do. It was raining and it was cold, and he helped the Engine pack some hose in the truck. The lieutenant would give him a ride home sometimes, and other firehouses would invite him to come and hang out with them. Although it was against rules and regulations, they stuck their neck out for the young man and did their best to look out for him and made sure he was safe and well cared for. He really enjoyed shining the brass on the old engine and would help out around the house. The men at the firehouse became like fathers to him, and treated him with respect. However, sometimes the guys would blow him off and his feelings would get hurt. When he grew up, he took care of two boys as well as the firefighters took care of him. He would take them home, contribute to their lives, and helped keep them out of trouble and away from drugs. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
As a result, the two boys are doing good. Other guys saw what he was doing and got involved with the same kids, taking them home, taking them to picnics, taking them to amusement parks. Times were different and there was a lot of compassion in the city, a lot of morale, a lot of unity. So, the young man the fire department took, not only mentored two boys, but he stayed out of trouble because he wanted to be a firefighter and figured a police record would disqualify him from the job. He did not have many friends his age, only a couple. One night, he did not go out with his friends, and went to the firehouse instead. A really good friend of his was killed that night by a hit-and-run car. He jumped off a crane into the street, and a car hit him and kept going. He reflected on how it might have been him. He attributes a lot of his staying out of trouble to hanging around the firehouse. The Sacramento Fire Department has been serving the community of Sacramento since the mid-1800, please be sure to make a donation to them. They really care about the community and the people in it. Honour a man not for his possession alone; honour him most for the use he makes of them. When a man departs this World, neither silver nor gold, nor precious stones accompany him; he is remembered only for his love of learning and his good need. Happy is the man who is rich in good deeds, for he shall be honoured in life, and be remembered along afterwards for his goodness. 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 21 of 21
The Winchester Mystery House
In The Winchester Mystery House there are connecting stairs and a “secret rest room” once used by Mrs. Winchester, which had long been walled up in the many structural changes in the historical mansion. Only the window of the walled-up room is still visible from the outside. It is in this area that psychics feel that the restless spirit of Mrs. Winchester is trapped. They believe she sleeps during the day and close to the premises for roaming and night. In the spring of 1968, the ghost of Mrs. Winchester made her initial appearance in the mansion. It was a warm night, and the caretakers were leaving. Suddenly, they were shocked at the amount of light coming from the skylight, they judged the time to be about midnight. They had the uncanny feeling of not being alone in the room. As their eyes got used to the darkness, they clearly distinguished the figure of a petite woman, gliding across the floor. Behind her, there was a man staring at a cabinet. Then he opened the cupboard, looked in it, and closed it again. Getting hold of himself, one of the caretakers noticed that the woman wore a black dress of the kind worn in the last century, and the man a white shirt and dark cravat of the same period. It never occurred to him that they were anything but people; he thought they were actors dressed as Mr. and Mrs. Winchester.
The woman then turned to her companion as if to say something, but did not, and walked off toward the dark room at the other end of the hallway. Then man then went back to the cabinet and leaned on it, head in hand. By now, the caretakers regained their wits and thought the intruders must be burglars, although they could not figure out how they entered the mansion, since it had been locked from the inside! Making a fist, one of the caretakers struck at the stranger, yelling, “Put your hands up!” His voice could be heard clearly along the corridors. Nursing his injured wrist, he realized that his visitors had dissolved into thin air. There was no one in the dark room. The door was securely locked. The skylight, on the third floor, could not very well have served as an escape route to anyone human. By now, the care takers knew Mr. Winchester and Mrs. Winchester had paid them a visit. Come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Randolph Harris II International Institute 