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Hope Often is Shattered so Thoroughly that a Man May Never Recover it
Faith and hope and this-Worldly resurrection have found their classic expression in the messianic vision of the prophets. They do not predict the future, like a Cassandra or the chorus of the Greek tragedy; they see the present reality free from the blindfolds of public opinion and authority. They do not want to be prophets but feel compelled to express the voice of their conscience—of their “knowing-with”—to say what possibilities they see and to show the people the alternative and to warn them. This is all they aspire to do. It is up to the people to take their warning seriously and to change their ways, or to remain deaf and blind—and to suffer. Prophetic language is always the language of alternatives, of choice, and of freedom; it is never that of determinism, for better or worse. The shortest formulation of prophetic alternativism is the verse in Deuteronomy: “I put before you today life and death, and you chose life!” In the prophetic literature the messianic vision rested upon the tension between “what existed or was still there and that which was becoming and was yet to be there.” In the postprophetic period a change took place in the meaning of the messianic idea, making its first appearance in the Book of Daniel around 164 B.C. and in pseudo-epigraphical literature which was not incorporated in the collection of the Old Testament. This literature has a “vertical” idea of salvation as against the “horizontal” historical idea of the prophets. The emphasis is on the transformation of the individual and largely on a catastrophic end of history, occurring in a final cataclysm. This apocalyptic version is not that of alternatives but of prediction; not that of freedom but of determinism. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
In the later Talmudic or Rabbinical tradition, the original prophetic alternativistic vision prevailed. Early Christian thought was mor strongly influenced by the apocalyptic version of messianic thought, although, paradoxically, as an institution the Church usually retreated to a position of passive waiting. Nevertheless in the concept of the “Second Coming” the prophetic concept remained alive and the prophetic interpretation of Christian faith has again and again found its expression in revolutionary and “heretical” sects; today the radical wing in the Roman Catholic Church, as well as in the various non-Catholic Christian denominations, shows a marked return to the prophetic principle, to its alternativism as well as to the concept that spiritual aims must be applied to the political and social process. Outside of the Church, original Marxist socialism was the most significant expression of the messianic vision in a secular language, only to be corrupted and destroyed by the communist distortion of Marx. In recent years the messianic element in Marxism has found its voice again in a number of socialist humanist, especially in Yugoslavia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. Marxists and Christians have become engaged in a World-wide dialogue, based on the common messianic heritage. If hope, faith, and fortitude and love their servitude and dependence? It is precisely the possibility of this loss that is characteristic of the human existence. We start out with hope, faith, and fortitude—they are the unconscious, “no-thought” qualities of the sperm and the egg, of their union, of the growth of the foetus, its birth. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
However, when life begins, the vicissitudes of the environment and accident begin to further or to block the potential of hope. Most of us had hoped to be loved—not just to be coddled and to be fed, but to be understood, to be cared for, to be respected. Most of us hoped to be able to trust. When we were little, we did not yet know the human invention of the lie—not only that of lying with words but that of lying with one’s voice, one’s gesture, one’s eyes, one’s facial expression. How should the child be prepared for this specifically human ingenuity: the lie? Most of us are awakened, some more and some less brutally to the fact that people often do not mean what they say or say the opposite of what they mean. And not only “people,” but the very people we trusted most—our parents, teachers, leaders. Few people escape the fate that at one point or another in their development, their hopes are disappointed—sometimes completely shattered. Perhaps this is good. If a man did not experience the disappointment of his hope, how could his hope become strong and unquenchable? How could he avoid the danger of being an optimistic dreamer? However, on the other hand, hope often is shattered so thoroughly that a man may never recover it. In fact, the responses and reactions to the shattering of hope vary a great deal, depending on many circumstances: historical, personal, psychological, and constitutional. Many people, probably the majority, react to the disappointment of their hopes by adjusting to the average optimism which hopes for the best without bothering to recognize that even the good but perhaps, indeed, the worst may occur. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
As long as everybody else whistles, such people whistle too, and instead of feeling their hopelessness, they seem to participate in a kind of pop concert. They reduce their demands to what they can get and do not even dream of that which seems to be out of their reach. They are well-adjusted members of the herd and they never feel hopeless because nobody else seems to feel hopeless. They present the picture of a peculiar kind of resigned optimism which we see in so many members of contemporary Western society—the optimism usually being conscious and the resignation unconscious. Another outcome of the shattering of hope is the “hardening of the heart.” We see many people—from juvenile delinquents to hard-boiled but effective adults—who at one point of their lives, maybe at five, maybe at twelve, maybe at twenty, cannot stand to be hurt any more. Some of them, as in a sudden vision or conversation decide that they have had enough, that they will not feel anything any more; that nobody will ever be able to hurt them, but that they will be able to hurt others. They may complain about their bad luck in not finding any friends or anyone who loves them, but it is not their bad luck, it is their fate. Having lost compassion and empathy, they do not touch anybody—nor can they be touched. Their triumph in life is not to need anybody. They take pride in their untouchability and pleasure in being able to hurt. Whether this is done in criminal or legitimate ways depends much more on social factors than on psychological ones. Most of them remain frozen and hence unhappy until their lives run out. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Not so rarely, a miracle happens and a thaw begins. It may simply be that they meet a person in whose concern or interest they believe, and new dimensions of feeling open. If they are lucky, they unfreeze completely and the seeds of hope which seem to have been destroyed altogether come to life. Another and much more drastic result of shattered hope is destructiveness and violence. Precisely because men cannot live without hope, the one whose hope has been utterly destroyed hates life. Since he cannot create life, he wants to destroy it, which is only a little less of a miracle—but much more easy to accomplish. He wants to avenge himself for his unlived life and he does it by throwing himself into total destructiveness to that it matters little whether he destroys others or is destroyed. Usually the destructive reaction to shattered hope is to be found among those who, for social or economic reasons, are excluded from the comforts of the majority and have no place to go socially or economically. It is not primarily the economic frustration which leads to hate and violence; it is the hopelessness of the situation, the ever-repeated broken promises, which are just as conducive to violence and destructiveness. In fact, there is little doubt that groups which are so deprived and mistreated that they cannot even be hopeless because they have no vision of hope are less violent that those who see the possibilities of hope and yet recognize at the same time that the circumstances make the realization of their hopes impossible. Psychologically speaking, destructiveness is the alternative to hope, just as attraction to death is the alternative to the love of life, and just as joy is the alternative to boredom. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
Not only does the individual live by hope. Nations and social classes live through hope, faith, and fortitude, and if they lose this potential they disappear—either by their lack of vitality or by the irrational destructiveness which they develop. The development of hope or hopelessness in an individual is largely determined by presence of hope or hopelessness in his society or class. However shattered an individual’s hope may have been in childhood, if he lives in a period of hope and faith, his own hope will be kindled; on the other hand, the person whose experience leads him to be hopeful will often tend to be depressed and hopeless when his society or class has lost the spirit of hope. Today, and increasingly so since 9/11, the COVID pandemic, crisis at the Southern Border, hyperinflation, and perhaps specifically in America ever since the defeat of the Republican Party in New York and California, hope is disappearing fast in the Western World. The hopelessness is covered up as optimism and, in a few, as revolutionary nihilism. However, whatever a man thinks about himself is of little importance in comparison with what he is, with what he truly feels, and most of us are not aware of what we feel. The signs of hopelessness are all here. Look at the bored expression of the average person, the lack of contact between people—even when they desperately try “to make contact.” Look at the incapacity to plan seriously for overcoming the ever-increasing poisonousness of the city’s water and air and the predictable famine in American cities and poor countries, not to speak of the inability to get rid of the daily threat to the lives and plans of all of us—the thermonuclear weapon. Whatever we say or think about hope, our inability to act or plan for life betrays our hopelessness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
We know a little about the reasons for this growing hopelessness. Before 9/11 people thought that the World was a safe place, that wars were a thing of the past. And yet, people found out that the government had been warned about the 9/11 attacks and ignored the warnings. Then came the invasion at our southern border, with its comedy of pretensions both from the democrats and republicans. And neither one of the current political parties has tried to use their power to crush illegal immigration to save America. However, there are still other reasons for the increasing hopelessness: the formation of the totally bureaucratized industrial society and the powerlessness of the individual. If America and the Western World continue in their state of unconscious hopelessness, lack of faith and of fortitude, it its predictable that they will not be able to resist the temptation of the big bang by nuclear weapons, which would end all problems—overpopulation, boredom, and hunger—since it would do away with all life. Progress in the direction of a social and cultural order in which man is in the saddle depends on our capacity to come to grips with our hopelessness. First of all, we have to see it. And second, we have to examine whether there is a real possibility of changing our social, economic, and cultural life in a new direction which will make is possible to hope again. If there is no such real possibility, then indeed hope is sheer foolishness. However, if there is a real possibility, there can be hope, based on examination of new alternatives and options, and on concerted actions to bring about the realization of these new alternatives. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
The unity in which we seek consist in a certitude emanating from the nature of man who seeks God and the nature of God who seeks man. Such certitude bathes in an intuitive act of cognition, participating in the divine essence and is related to the natural spirituality of intelligence. This is not by any means to say that there is an equivalence of all faiths in the traditional religions of human history. It is, however, to emphasize the distinction between the spiritual and the temporal which all religions acknowledge. For duration of thought is composed of instants superior to time, and is an intuition of the permanence of existence and it metahisotical reality. The basic and poignant concern of every faith is to point to and overcome the crisis in our apocalyptic epoch—the crisis of man’s separation from man and of man’s separation from God—the failure of love. The truth that the human heart is able, and even yearns, to go to the very lengths of God is related to Being in pure act, moving with centrifugal and ecumenical necessity outward into the manifold modes, yet simultaneously, with dynamic centripetal power and with full intentional energy, returning to the source. The darkness and cold, the frozen spiritual misery of recent time, are breaking, cracking, and beginning to move, yielding to efforts to overcome spiritual muteness and moral paralysis. In this way, it is hoped, the immediacy of pain and sorrow, the primacy of tragedy and suffering in human life, may be transmuted into a spiritual and moral triumph. For the uniqueness of man lies in his capacity for self-transcendence. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
God is not to be treated as an exception to metaphysical principles, invoked to prevent their collapse. He is rather their chief exemplification, the source of all potentiality. The personal reality of freedom and providence, of will and conscience, may demonstrate that “he who knows” commands a depth of consciousness inaccessible to the profane man, and is capable of that transfiguration which prevents the twisting of all good to ignominy. This religious content of experience is not within the province of science account as if it were itself metaphysical or religious; it challenges the tendency to make a religion of science—or a science of religion—a dogmatic act which destroys the moral dynamic of man. Indeed, many men of science are confronted with unexpected implications of their own thought and are beginning to accept, for instance, the trans-spatial and trans-temporal dimension in the nature of reality. No convincing image of man can arise, in spite of the many ways in which human thought had tried to reach it, without a philosophy of human nature and human freedom which does not exclude God. This image of Homo cum Deo implies the highest conceivable freedom, the freedom to step into the very fabric of the Universe, a new formula for man’s collaboration with the creative process and the only one which is able to protect man from the terror of existence. This image implies further that the mind and conscience are capable of making genuine discriminations and thereby may reconcile the serious tensions between the secular and religious, the profane and sacred. The idea of the sacred lies in what it is, timeless existence. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
By emphasizing timeless existence against reason as a reality, we are liberated, in our communion with the eternal, from the otherwise unbreakable rule of “before and after.” Then we are able to admit that all forms, all symbols in religions, by their negation of error and their affirmation of the actuality of truth, make it possible to experience that knowing which is above knowledge and that dynamic passage of the universe to unending unity. Mankind must be directed toward a reality that is eternal and away from a preoccupation with that which is illusory and ephemeral. The story of Adam and Eve’s disobedience, of Abraham’s pleading with God for the salvation of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, of Jonah’s mission to Nineveh, and many others parts of the Bible impressed me deeply. However, more than anything else, I was moved by the prophetic writings, by Isaiah, Amos, Hosea; not so much by their warnings and the announcement of disaster, but by their promise of the “end of days,” when nations “shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more;” when all nations will be friends, and when “the Earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” The vision of universal peace and harmony between all nations touched me deeply when I was twelve and thirteen years old. Probably the immediate reason for this absorption by the idea of peace and internationalism was from growing up in a Christian environment. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
The more insane and dehumanized this World of our seems to become, the more may an individual feel the need of being together and of working together with men and women who share one’s human concerns. I certainly felt that need and have been grateful for the stimulating and encouraging companionship of those with whom I have had the good fortune of working. When the Holy Spirit fills the atmosphere of a room, the spirit of man is conscious of it, not his sense. The faculties of those present are alert and clear and they retain freedom of action. The spirit is made tender and the will pliable to the will of God. All the actions of a person moved by the true and pure presence of God are in accord with the highest ideal of harmony and grace. The holiness of God: When realized by the believer it produces worship and godly awe, with a hatred of sin. On the ground of the blood of Calvary, God draws near to men, seeking their love, and His presence does not terrorize. A truth faith given of God in the spirit, having its origin in Him, reckoning without effort upon Him to fulfill His written Word is trusting God. It coexists with the full use of every faculty in intelligent action. “Faith” is a fruit of the Spirit and cannot be forced. When we have a reliance upon God, one has an attitude of the will, of trust and dependence upon God, taking Him at His word, and depending upon His character of faithfulness. The spirit, when waiting on God, is in restful cooperation with the Holy Spirit, awaiting God’s time to act and to fulfill His promises. The true waiting upon God can be coexistent with the keenest activity of mind. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Praying to God: Having access to the Holiest of all, on the ground of the blood. Penetrating in spirit through the in abnormal suffering may be the fruit of (unconscious) acceptance of suffering caused by evil spirits, often under the name of “the will of God.” “The depth” signifies “the depth-experience” or “the experience of the depths” which is faith. Faith as ultimate concern is the portal through which one must ass in order to attain New Being. God is the ground of being, but He is encountered only in the experience of the holy, and all religious symbols take their origin from this experience of ultimacy. Jesus is the Christ only because He is received as such by faith, and He rose from the dead only because his disciples had an ecstatic experience of the New Being. The Spiritual Community is created by the Spiritual Presence which drives man’s spirit beyond itself into faith and love. The Protestant principle which constitutes the essence of Protestantism is based upon an experience of God who jealously demands that ultimacy be reserved for Him alone. Finally, the Kingdom of God breaks through into history in a faith-charged moment that is the Kairos. One can see faith everywhere in the World as an operative reality. There is a universality, or omnipresence of faith in the Christian World. Do not look at the human situation and wonder if faith is there. Know it is there, and find it by attuning with the ultimate concern which throbs beneath the surface. An adequate understanding of faith demands that one eventually pass from formal faith to material faith. Faith which is found in the criterion of the Cross and of the Christ is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern; it is produced by the Spirit, not by human activity. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Instead of erecting a holy community out of the World, true faith understands allows one to see the whole World as already being the holy community. Nobody escapes it. All, even unawares, belong to it. The Christian message must indeed become all things to all men, but it must also be itself. Its roots can be traced back to the experience of the holy as the mysterium tremendum et fascinosum. God’s very presence forces the acknowledgement of the infinite gulf between Him and the creature. In ontological terms, because God is the ground of being, He is also the abyss of being in that He can never be contained within the narrow confines of a finite form of being. This is the meaning of the Cross of Jesus the Christ, for Jesus as a being sacrificed Himself to the New Being. Symbols which originate in and express the experience of faith remain subject to the criterion of the Cross. Victory over religious heteronomy, over the demonization and profanization of the churches, also lies in the sign of the Cross. Only grace effect salvation, and anything that infringes upon this divine prerogative must be met with prophetic protest. Everyone knows that religion has its human, erroneous, even sinful side, but this awareness should never undercut our confidence that God’s grace can reach us, even though conveyed in vessels of clay. Prophecy, in the sense of protect, is a delicate business indeed. Culture is the fruit of the creative activity of man. The role of theology as that of mediating between the human situation and divine revelation, and the method of correlation demands that the answers of theology be clothed in the language of man’s existential condition. The all-important concept of faith is defined in terms of man’s experience of and need for the unconditioned. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Jesus the Christ is meaningful because in Him appears the New Being which heals man’s estrangement. The Spiritual Community is explained on the basis of man’s quest for unambiguous life. And the eschatological fulfilment of the Universe is accomplished in the essentialization of man, for in him is found the unity of the multiple dimensions of life. In a certain sense any Christian theology is anthropocentric, for the Creed declares that Jesus Christ came down from Heaven for us men and for our salvation. However, one could hold, for example, that sin is the problem of man, for man must be saved from sin; or that grace is the problem of man, for man is saved through grace; or that morally good life; or, finally, that faith is the problem of man, for the way to salvation is illuminated by the light of faith. However, man can also be seen as the problem of man. If man becomes what he essentially is, salvation is achieved. This fulfilled man is the New Man; he posses New Being. Furthermore, according to the doctrine of the microcosm and the multidimensional unity of life, the Universe itself is saved in the salvation of man. Christ, the depth of culture, is translated to mean that New Being is the ultimate concern of man. The New Being provides ontological breadth, ultimate concern imparts experiential depth, and the anthropological emphasis gives vitality to Christ as the depth of culture. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Early Christianity did not consider itself as a radical-exclusive, but as the all-inclusive religion in the sense of saying: “All that is true anywhere in the World belongs to us, the Christians.” And it is significant that the famous words of Jesus, “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your Heavenly Faither is perfect” (which was always an exegetic riddle), would, according to recent research, be better translated, “You must be all-inclusive as your Heavenly Father is all-inclusive.” First, one must say that revelatory experiences are universally human. Religions are based on something that is given to a man wherever he lives. He is given a revelation, a particular kind of experience which always implies saving powers. One never can separate revelation and salvation. There are revealing and saving powers in all religions. God has not left Himself unwitnessed. As I think of the blessings God has given us and the many beauties of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I am aware that along the way we are asked to make certain contributions in return, contributions of time or of money or of other resources. These are all valued and all necessary, but they do not constitute our full offering to God. Ultimately, what our Father in Heaven will require of us is more than a contribution; it is a total commitment, a complete devotion, all that we are and all that we can be. The Lord Jesus as Christ shapes our behaviour and forms our character in all area of our life—personally, within the home, in our professions and community life, as well as in our devotion to the Church that bears his name. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
If we can pattern our life after the Master, and take His teachings and examples as the supreme pattern for our own, we will not find it difficult to be consistent and loyal in every walk of life, for we will be committed to a single, sacred standard of conduct and belief. Whether at home or in the marketplace, whether at school or long after school is behind us, whether we are acting totally alone or in concern with a host of other people, our course will be clear and our standards will be obvious. We will have determined, as the prophet Alma said, “to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in fall places that we may be in, even until death,” reports Mosiah 18.9. This loyalty obviously includes support of the institutional church, but one of the purposes of that church is to alter an improve the way we live every other aspect f our lives as well, wherever we are and in whatever circumstance we find ourselves “even until death.” The ability to stand by one’s principles, to live with integrity and faith according to one’s belief—that is what matters, that is the difference between a contribution and commitment. That devotion to true principle—in our individual lives, in our home and families, and in all places where we meet and influence other people—that devotion is what God is ultimately requesting of us. How do we feel about honour and integrity? What is our reaction to polite lying to facilitate easy social relationships? How much tolerance have we for either suppression or misrepresentation to facts to promote business advantage? How sacredly do we regard the good name oof another? Do we pass on spicy bits of entertaining conversation, repeating rumors and stories which have not been submitted to the test of truth? #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
I may not be able to stop all graft and dishonesty in high places, but I myself can be honest and upright, gull of integrity and true honour. We simply must have love and integrity and strong principles in our homes. We must have an abiding commitment to marriage and children and morality. We must succeed where success counts most for the next generation. Surely that home is strongest and most beautiful in which we find each person sensitive to the feelings of others, striving to serve others, striving to live at home the principles we demonstrate in more public settings. We need to try harder to live the gospel in our family circles. Our homes deserve our most faithful commitments. A child has the right to feel that in his home he is safe, that there he has a place of protection from the dangers and evils of the outside World. Family unity and integrity are necessary to supply this need. A child needs parents who are happy in their relationship to each other, who are working happily toward the fulfillment of ideal family living, who love their children with a sincere and unselfish love, and who are committed to the family success. If full integrity were to rule in family life, just imagine the reversal that would take place. Husbands would be faithful to wives, and wives to husbands. There would be no living in adulterous relationships in lieu of marriage. Homes would abound in love, children and parents would have respect for one another. How else will our children come to value honesty and integrity? A successful life, the good life, the righteous Christian life requires commitment—whole souled, deeply held, eternally cherished commitment to the principles we know to be true in the commandments God has given. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
The Sacramento Fire Department truly are jacks-of-all-trades, but they are also masters of them all. Given then any challenge; they will face it and overcome it. That is one of the most awesome things of the fire service. Call the Sacramento Fire Department, present them with a problem, and they will figure it out and work you through it. The fire department is there to help people. They are there to help families. Simply put, their best day is their worst day. When you are at your worst and life has you down, when you have got something horrible going on, whether it is a fire, a medical problem, or some other type of disaster, they were be there to help you every time. The Sacramento Fire Department will do everything they can to make things better again. These firefighters are talented and are the cream of the crop in society. The fire department also makes sure they protect their personnel in every way imaginable. Whether it is protective clothing, and assuring that they have the proper personal protective equipment (PPE) including good, reliable, and safe self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA), assuring that they have radios and that they work, assuring that they have the training needed to do their job, the support of the fire department administration or the upper echelon, the proper apparatus, firehouses, tools, and equipment, and more than anything else, the proper amount of personnel. Their goal is to make sure they have anything that will help them do their jobs to the best of their abilities and stay safe. Therefore, consider making a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department, to insure they have all the necessary resources. I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one Nation, Under God, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justic for all. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
In 1901, Mrs. Winchester reported an entity came after her. It beat and shook her bedstead with great force. Mrs. Winchester was not aware of any blows, but she was perceived to tremble violently. After this the servants would hear the sound of scraping under her bed, and Mrs. Winchester would be raised a few inches into the air. It seemed then that the noisy apparition was only interested in her. So Mrs. Winchester decided to sleep in a different room every night in hopes of avoiding the apparitions. On 1 October it ascended into the Daisy Bedroom, making a mighty noise. A young male servant, going into that room one morning, saw two wooden boards of the floor begin to move. He held out his hands and one of the boards was thrust toward him. He shoved it back, and again it returned to him. This happened apparently twenty times in succession, by which stage other people had entered the room and seen the tussle between the servant and the uninvited guest. The chairs walked about the room of themselves, Mrs. Winchester’s shoes were hurled over her head, and every loose thing moved about the chamber.
Come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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His Fearlessness is Based on Lack of Love
When hope has gone life had ended, actually or potentially. Hope is an intrinsic element of the structure of life, of the dynamic of man’s spirit. It is closely lined with another element of the structure of life: faith. Faith is not a weak form of belief or knowledge; it is not faith in this or that; faith is the conviction about the not yet proven, the knowledge of the real possibility, the awareness or pregnancy. Faith is rational when it refers to the real yet unborn; it is based on the faculty of knowledge and comprehension, which penetrates the surface and sees the kernel. Faith, like hope, is not prediction of the future; it is the vision of the present in a state of pregnancy. The statement that faith is certainty needs a qualification. It is certainty about the reality of the possibility—but it is not certainty in the sense of unquestionable predictability. The child may be still born prematurely; it may die in the act of birth; it may die in the first two weeks of life. This is the paradox of faith: it is the certainty of the uncertain. (In Hebrew the word “faith” (Emunah) means certainty. Amen means certainly.) It is certainty in terms of man’s vision and comprehension; it is not certainty in terms of the final outcome of reality. We need no faith in that which is scientifically predictable, nor can there be faith in that which is impossible. Faith is based on our experience of living, of transforming ourselves. Faith that others can change is the outcome of the experience that I can change. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
There is an important distinction between rational and irrational faith. While rational faith is the result of one’s own inner activeness in thought or feeling, irrational faith is submission to something given, which one accepts as true regardless of whether it is or not. The essential element of all irrational faith is its passive character, be its object an idol, a leader, or an ideology. Even the scientist needs to be free from irrational faith in traditional ideas in order to have rational faith in traditional ideas in order to have rational faith in the power of his creative thought. Once his discovery is “proved,” he needs no more faith, except in the next step he is contemplating. In the sphere of human relations, “having faith” in another person means to be certain of his core—that is, of the reliability and unchangeability of his fundamental attitudes. In the same sense we can have faith in ourselves—not in the constancy of our opinions, but in our basic orientation to life, the matrix of our character structure. Such faith is conditioned by the experience of self, by our capacity to say “I” legitimately, by the sense of our identity. Hope is the mood that accompanies faith. Faith could not be sustained without the mood of hope. Hope can have no base except in faith. There is still another element linked with hope and faith in the structure of life: courage, or, as Spinoza called it, fortitude. Fortitude is perhaps the less ambiguous expression, because today courage is more often used to demonstrate the courage to die rather than courage to live. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
Fortitude is the capacity to resist the temptation to compromise hope and faith by transforming them—and thus destroying them—into empty optimism or into irrational faith. Fortitude is the capacity to say “no” when the World wants to hear “yes.” However, unless we mention another aspect of it: fearlessness, fortitude is not fully understood. The fearless person is not afraid of threats, not even of death. However, as so often, the word “fearless” covers several entirely different attitudes. I mention only the three most important ones: First, a person can be fearless because he does not care to live; life is not worth much to him, hence he is fearless when it comes to the danger of dying; but while he is not afraid of death, he may be afraid of life. His fearlessness is based on lack of love of life; he is usually not fearless at all when he is not in the situation of risking his life. In fact, he frequently looks for dangerous situations, in order to avoid his fear of life, of himself, and of people. A second kind of fearlessness is that of the person who lives in symbiotic submission to an idol, be it a person, an institution, or an idea; the commands of the idol are scared; they are far more compelling than even the survival commands of his body. If he could disobey or doubt these commands of the idol, he would face the danger of losing his identity with the idol; this means he would be running the risk of finding himself utterly isolated, and thus at the verge of insanity. He is willing to die because he is afraid of exposing himself to this danger. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
The third kind of fearlessness is to be found in the fully developed person, who rests within himself and loves life. The person who has overcome greed does not cling to any idol or any thing and hence has nothing to lose; he is rich because he is empty, he is strong because he is not the slave of his desires. He can let go of idols, irrational desires, and fantasies, because he is in full touch with reality, inside and outside himself. If such a person has reached full “enlightenment,” he is completely fearless. If he has moved toward this goal without having arrived, his fearlessness will also not be complete. However, anyone who tries to move toward the state of being fully himself knows that whenever a new step toward fearlessness is made, a sense of strength and joy is awakened that is unmistakable. As if a new phase of life had begun, he feels. He can feel the truth of Goethe’s lines: “I have put my house on nothing, that’s why the whole World is mine.” (Ich hab mein Haus auf nichts gestellt, deshalb gehoert mir die ganze Welt.) Hope and faith, being essential qualities of life, are by their very nature moving in the direction of transcending the status quo, individually and socially. It is one of the qualities of all life that it is in a constant process of change and never remains the same at any given moment. If the stagnation is complete, death has occurred; life that stagnates tends to die. It follows that life in its moving quality tends to break out of and to overcome the status quo. We grow either stronger or weaker, wiser or more foolish, more courageous or more cowardly. Every second is a moment of decision, for the better or the worse. We feed our sloth, greed, or hate, or we starve it. The more we feed it, the stronger it grows; the more we starve it, the weaker it becomes. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
What holds true for the individual holds true for a society. If it does not grow, it decays; it is never static; if it does not transcend the status quo for the better, it changes for the worse. Often, we, the individual or the people who make up a society, have the illusion we could stand still and not alter the given situation in the one or the other direction. This is one of the most dangerous illusions. The moment we stand still, we begin to decay. This concept of personal or social transformation allows and even compels us to redefine the meaning of resurrection, without any reference to its theological implications in Christianity. Resurrection in its new meaning—for which the Christian meaning would be one of the possible symbolic expressions—is not the creation of another reality after the reality of this life, but the transformation of this reality in the direction of greater aliveness. Man and society are resurrected every moment in the act of hope and of faith in the here and now; every act of love, of awareness, of compassion is resurrection; every act of sloth, of green, of selfishness is death. Every moment existence confronts us with the alternatives of resurrection or death; every moment we give an answer. This answer lies not in what we say or think, but in what we are, how we act, where we are moving. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
Modern man is threatened by a World created by himself. He is faced with the conversion of mind to naturalism, a dogmatic secularism and an opposition to a belief in the transcendent. He begins to see, however, that the Universe is given not as one existing and one perceived but as the unity of subject and object; that the barrier between them cannot be said to have been dissolved as the result of recent experience in the physical sciences, since this barrier has never existed. Confronted with the question of meaning, he is summoned to rediscover and scrutinize the immutable and the permanent which constitute the dynamic, unifying aspect of life as well as the principle of differentiation; to reconcile identity and diversity, immutability and unrest. He begins to recognize that just as every person descends by his particular path, so he is able to ascend, and this assent aims at a return to the source of creation, an inward home from which he has become estranged. It is the hope of RELIGIONS PERSPECTIVES that the rediscovery of man will point the way to the rediscovery of God. To this end a rediscovery of first principles should constitute part of the quest. These principles, not to be superseded by new discoveries, are not those of historical Worlds that come to be and perish. They are to be sought in the heart and spirit of man, and no interpretation of a merely historical or scientific Universe can guide the search. The rediscovery of man will point the way to the rediscovery of God. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
To this end, a rediscovery of first principles should constitute part of the quest. These principles, not to be superseded by new discoveries, are not those of historical Worlds that come to be and perish. They are to be sought in the heart and spirit of man, and no interpretation of a merely historical or scientific Universe can guide the search. We are attempting not only to ask dispassionately what the nature of God is, but also to restore to man life at least the hypothesis of God and the symbols that relate to him. It endeavours to show that man is faced with the metaphysical question of the truth of religion while he encounters the empirical question of its effects on life of humanity and its meaning for society. Religion is here distinguished from theology and its doctrinal forms and is intended to denote the feelings, aspirations and acts of men, as they relate to reality. Our souls are nourished by the spiritual and intellectual energy of World thought, by those religious and ethical leaders who are not merely spectators but scholars deeply involved in the critical problems common to all religions. It is important to recognize that human morality and human ideals thrive only when set in a context of transcendent attitude toward religion and when we point to the ground of identity and the common nature of being in the religious experience of man, the essential nature of religion may be defined. Thus, we must be committed to re-evaluating the meaning of everlastingness, an experience which has been lost and which is the content of the visio Dei constituting the structure of all religions. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
It is the many absorbed everlastingly into the ultimate unity, a unity subsuming the fluency of God and the everlastingness of passing experience. Jesus as the Christ is united to God, and man is united to God in Eternal life. Jesus as the Christ has an essential manhood that appears and it is our destiny also to realize this essentialized humanity. Revelation also insists that Jesus as the Christ is the Son of God and promises that we shall become sons of God. Grace is needed somehow to about for their mysterious union. If this is supernaturalism, so be it. However, the problem demands a solution. There is an ambivalent attitude toward the historicity of Jesus as the Christ: on the one hand, it is of supreme importance because the New Being appeared in Jesus, but, on the other hand, the Christ would in no way be affected if no trace of the historical Jesus could be found. Jesus of Nazareth is the historical locale of particularly striking upheaval of creative ontological dynamism. The New Being was manifest in Jesus, but not identified with him. Thus, after the resurrection the power of the New Being is just as operative as it was before the moment of the incarnation, but Jesus lies dead in the tomb. Such an interpretation tends to makes Jesus expendable, once he had manifested the eternal principle that being overcomes nonbeing. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
If the timeless New Being overshadows the historical Jesus, there is danger that an impersonal principle may replace the personal intervention of God. The New Being imparts a metaphysical profundity and stability to the system. Certainly theology must speak intelligibly to man, but revelation far outstrips the range of human questions. Finally, the separation of the New Being from Jesus runs the risk depersonalizing the New Being and making Jesus superfluous. The demand to give up illusions about life and its condition as life humanity demands we give up conditions which need illusions. Men cannot remain children forever; they must in the end go out into “hostile life.” We may call this “education to reality.” If man asks himself how he ever became interested in those fields of thought which were destined to occupy the most important place throughout his life, he will not find it easy to give a simple answer. Perhaps he was born with an inclination for certain questions, or perhaps it was the influence of certain teachers, or of current ideas, or of personal experiences which led him along the path of his later interests—who knows which of these factors have determined the course of life? Indeed, if one wanted to know precisely the relative weight of all these factors, nothing short of a detailed historical autobiography could even attempt to give the answers. There is a strange and mysterious reason for human reactions. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
This was the incident: I had known a young woman, a friend of the family. Maybe she was twenty-five years of age; she was beautiful, attractive and in addition a painter, the first painter I ever knew. I remember having heard that she had been engaged but after some time had broken the engagement; I remember that she was almost invariably in the company of her widowed father. As I remember him, he was an old, uninteresting, and rather unattractive-looking man, or so I thought (maybe my judgment was somewhat biased by jealousy). Then one day I heard the shocking news: her father had died, and immediately afterwards she had killed herself and left a will which stipulated that she wanted to be buried together with her father. I had heard of the Elektria complex—the incestuous fixation between daughter and father. However, I was deeply touched. I had been quite attracted to the young woman; I had loathed the unattractive father; never before had I known anyone to commit suicide. I was hit by the thought “How is it possible?” How is it possible a beautiful young woman should be so in love with her father, that she prefers to be buried with him to being alive to the pleasures of life and of painting? Certainly I knew no answer, but the “how is it possible” stuck. And it was a puzzling and frightening experience at a time when I was beginning to develop into an adolescent. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
Dreams and fantasies are also of eminent importance as a means toward understanding. Since they are relatively direct expression of unconscious feelings and strivings, they must open up avenues for understanding that are otherwise hardly visible. Some dreams are rather transparent; as a rule, however, they speak a cryptic language that can be understood only with the assistance of free associations. The particular point at which the patient turns from co-operation to defensive maneuvers of one kind or another furnishes another help for understanding. As the analyst gradually discovers the reasons for these resistances, he gains increasing understanding of the patient’s peculiarities. Sometimes the fact that a patient stalls or fights, and the immediate reason why he does so, are transparent. More often astute observation is necessary to detect that a blockage exists, and the help of the patient’s free associations is necessary to understand the reasons for it. If the analyst succeeds in understanding the resistance, he will gain an increased knowledge as to the precise factors that hurt or frighten the patient and the precise nature of the reaction they produce. If he touches upon then, similarly illuminating are the themes that the patient omits, or deserts quickly. If, for example, the patient rigidly avoids expressing any critical thoughts concerning the analysts, though he is otherwise overexacting and overcritical, the analyst will have an important. Another example of this kind would be a patient’s failure to tell a specific incident which had occurred the previous day and had upset him. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
All these clues help the analyst to obtain gradually a coherent picture of the patient’s life, past and present, and of the forces operating in his personality. However, they also help toward an understanding of the factors operating in the patient’s relationship to the analyst and the analytical situation. For several reasons it is important to understand this relationship as accurately as possible. If, for instance, a hidden resentment toward the analyst remained under cover, for one thing, it would block the analysis entirely. If he has an unsolvd resentment in his heart toward the person to whom he reveals himself, with the best will in the World, a patient cannot express himself freely and spontaneously. Second, since the patient cannot feel and react differently toward the analyst from the way he does toward other person, he unconsciously displays in analysis the same irrational emotional factors, the same strivings and reactions, that he displays in other relationships. Thus the co-operative study of these factors makes it possible for the analyst to understand the patient’s disturbances in his human relationships in general, and these, as we have seen, are the crucial issue in the whole neurosis. The clues that may help toward a gradual understanding of the patient’s structure are, in fact, practically infinite. However, it is important to mention that the analyst makes use of the clues not only be means of precise reasoning but also, as it were, intuitively. In other words, he cannot always precisely explain how he arrives at his tentative assumption. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
In my own work, for example, I have arrived sometimes at an understanding through free associations of my own. While listening to a patient some incident may emerge in my mind that the patient has told me long ago, without my knowing offhand what bearing it has on the present situation. Or a finding regarding another patient may occur to me. I have learned never to discard these associations, and they have often proved helpful when they were seriously examined. When people are given little to no time to make decision, using this tactic, the manipulator has his mind made up. He has just got to get you to agree. However, the thing you need to agree on is pretty important, and you do not like the rush he is putting you in. The rush people put on others to sign contracts, for instance, before they have time to read the document and think about the subject often times makes one suspicious. Therefore, it is always good to do a bit of research. Sometimes you will find out the person who is trying to force you into a contract is somehow connected to the benefactors of that contract and is going to get a kickback when they get you to sign. It is important to be careful about what you sign because some people can get fired for signing contracts without understanding them or they may lose something valuable. Do not let anyone rush you into making any decision and research things. It seems like since we have not been honouring immigration laws, people have been coming to America, and some of them working at reputable companies, and running scams on consumers, which cause them to get arrested, lose their homes, cars, and several hundreds of thousands of dollars, in some case millions. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
The psychiatrist is a graduate physician. As a holder of the M.D. degree, he has received basic education in medical sciences (anatomy, bacteriology, pathology, physiology, and so on) and supervised experiences with each of the clinical specialties (such as medicine, surgery, neurology, obstetrics). The basic structure of undergraduate medical training is essentially standard in a majority of American medical schools; most commonly there are two years of basic science instruction followed by two years of training and supervised apprenticelike experience in the clinical fields. The basic four years of medical college instruction received by the man who ultimately becomes a psychiatrist (and who may have had this as a goal upon entering medical school) are not different from those of any other M.D. He has spent the same number of class hours as any other physician in the study of chemistry, anatomy, pathology, bacteriology. (He may have entered medical college after completing a four-year college degree; more frequently he will have started his medical training at the end of three years of premedical study. His premedical education has to emphasize the sciences (especially chemistry and physics), and depending upon his initiative and ability and upon the quality of his premedical school, he may have studied more or less of psychology, sociology, history and other subjects.) The amount of instruction and exposure to general human psychology and particularly to psychopathology and to psychiatric illness which he received during the two preclinical years will depend upon the medical college he attended; it may be as little as 20 hours and rarely exceeds 180 hours. By contrast he is likely to have devoted at least 500 hours to the study of anatomy. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
Following medical school, the aspirant psychiatrist must complete a one-year internship in an accredited hospital in which his clinical diagnostic and therapeutic skills are further developed over the full range of medical illness. At the end of this internship, he had satisfied the basic requirement to qualify for the practice of medicine, and he may then undertake specialized training in the field of psychiatry. This training is knowns as a “residency” and encompasses a three-year period of instruction and supervision by the staff of an accredited psychiatric hospital. As a psychiatric resident he will be exposed to some formal, didactic instruction on the subjects of psychiatric nosology, psychopathology, techniques of interviewing, special diagnostic procedures, special medical therapies (exempli gratia, electroshock, drugs), and principles of psychotherapy. How much formal instruction he receives will depend upon the particular psychiatric staff responsible for his training. Also, whether his theoretical orientation is “psychobiologic,” “psychoanalytic,” or “eclectic” will depend upon the setting in which he happens to take his residency. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
Apart from these possible particulars of his training he will over the course of the three years be exposed to a wide variety and large number of patients (hospitalized and outpatient) for which, with varying degrees and emphases of supervision, he will be directly responsible and whose treatment, especially when it is psychotherapy, he will provide. In essence, the psychiatric residency is an intensive and extensive apprenticeship in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with emotional disorders who are referred to clinics or hospitals. At the end of the three years, some eleven or twelve years after his high school graduation, at an average age of thirty-plus, the physician is fully qualified to begin his professional career as a psychiatrist and, if he chooses (and many do), to specialize in psychotherapy with the ambulatory patient. (If he wishes to specialize in the field of child psychiatry, he must complete two years of residence on a children’s service in addition to two years of experience on adult services. Many men take additional specialized training in psychoanalysis; to qualify as a full-fledged analyst the psychiatrist must complete several additional years of training in an analytic institute. If he sees fit to do so–when the analyst has recognized some possible connection, when he has gained an impression as to the unconscious factors that may be operating in a certain context, he will tell the patient his interpretation. If he thinks the patient can stand it and can utilize it, the analyst will offer an interpretation. In the following days, we will cover the clinical psychologist and the psychiatric social worker. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
With all the responsibilities the Sacramento Fire Department and EMS has, such has having to be experts in dealing with weapons of mass destruction, saving people from burning buildings, extracting people from serious cars accidents, and even being shot at and attacked in the line of duty, what makes it even tougher is that they have to do it with little to no funding. The Sacramento Fire Department has to expand their programs and provide additional services without any additional money each time the fire services have been called upon to do something else, and it is usually beyond what they always envisioned was the job of being a firefighter. The fire department is always taking on more responsibilities. And it seems that as son as they learn a new area and skill, expectations and tasks increase. It is going to keep happening as long as the fire service is as talented and as full of as many service heroes as it is. The public is going to continue to call them every time there is a new problem or challenge. When you look at the history of the fire service as a whole, you will see that, given any problem, they will always come up with a solution. Please take time to donate money to the Sacramento Fire Department to insure they are well taken care of and have all the supplies and resources they require. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
The need to reach out to a loved one is of cardinal importance in the release of a trapped spirit, commonly called a ghost. In the Winter of 2010, a caretaker was shingling the roof, and he was just coming in from the roof on the fourth-floor balcony on a cold day—he had left the window ajar and secured—when suddenly he heard the window sash come down. He turned around on the fourth-floor platform and he saw the young girl, her hair windswept behind her. She was wearing white. He could not see anything blow the waist, and he confronted her for a short period, but could not being himself to talk—and she went away. Another caretaker was in one of the kitchens when she felt the presence of someone in the room. She turned around and saw an older man dressed in black at the other end of the kitchen. Then the cabinets creaked loudly and began to open on their own; she ran out of the kitchen and never went back in that particular one again.
One night, on a Friday the 13th tour, a wild, abnormal impulse came over guest to run all over Mrs. Winchester’s mansion screaming. Then the guest suddenly started rolling on the floor, and groaning and pulling the chairs around, beating on the floor with one’s hands and feet, but the guest eventually distinctly perceived that the impulse had something wild in it, and was contrary to the gentleness and sweetness of Mrs. Winchester. A medium that was present believed that the individual had likely given a fanatical demon admission to one’s emotional nature. Counterfeit workings of evil spirits may take place of a “blank mind” and “passive body” and is the primary condition necessary for evil spirits to work. Evil supernatural powers respond to the law of passivity fulfilled in mind and body. They then can produce manifestations. “I pray that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and all discernments: so that ye may distinguish the things that differ, that ye may be sincere and void of offence.” (Phil. 1.9-10 mg.)
The demonic presence in the atmosphere is felt by the senses of the body, as breath, wind, et cetera, while the mind is passive or inactive. The person affected by this demonic presence will be moved almost automatically to actions one would not perform of one’s own will and with all one’s faculties in operation. One may not even remember what one had done when under the power of this presence, just as a sleepwalker knows nothing of one’s actions when in that state. The inaction of the mind can often be seen by the vacant look in the eyes. Ghosts by their very nature are quite unable to understand fully their own predicament. They are kept in place, both in time and space, by their emotional ties to the spot. Nothing can pry them loose from it so long as they are reliving over and over again in their minds the events leading to their unhappy deaths.
Come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Certain Varieties of Demons Live on the Juices in Human Blood
Hope is a vigorous principle; it is furnished with light and heat to advise and execute; it sets the head and heart to work, and animates a man to do his utmost. Hope is paradoxical. It is neither passive waiting nor is it unrealistic forcing of circumstances that cannot occur. It is like the crouched tiger, which will jump only when the moment for jumping has come. Neither tired reformism nor pseudo-radical adventurism is an expression of hope. If there is no birth in our lifetime, to hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate. There is no sense in hoping for that which already exists or for that which cannot be. Those whose hope is weak settle down for comfort or for violence; those whose hope is strong see and cherish all signs of new life and are ready every moment to help the birth of that which is ready to be born. Among the confusion about hope one of the major ones is the failure to distinguish between conscious and unconscious hope. This is an error, of course, which occurs with regard to many other emotional experiences, such as happiness, anxiety, depression, boredom, and hate. It is amazing that in spite of the popularity of Dr. Freud’s theories his concept of the unconscious has been so little applied to such emotional phenomena. There are perhaps two main reasons for this fact. One is that in the writings of some psychoanalysts and some “philosophers of psychoanalysis” the whole phenomenon of the unconscious—that is, of repression—refers to desires of the pleasures of the flesh, and they use repression—wrongly—and synonymous with suppression of sexual wishes and activities. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
In doing so they deprive Dr. Freud’s discoveries of some of their most important consequences. The second reason lies probably in the fact that it is far less disturbing for the post-Victorian generations to become aware of repressed sexual desires than of those experiences like alienation, hopelessness, or greed. To use only one of the most obvious examples: most people do not admit to themselves feelings of fear, boredom, loneliness, hopelessness—that is to say, they are unconscious of these feelings. (Speaking of the “unconscious” is another form of alienated thinking and speaking. There is no such things as “the unconscious,” as if it were an organ or a thing in space. One can be “conscious of” or “unconscious of” outer or inner events; that is, we deal with a psychic function, not with a localized organ.) This is so for a simple reason. Our social pattern is such that the successful man is not supposed to be afraid or bored or lonely. He must find this World the best of all Worlds; in order to have the best chance for the best of all Worlds; in order to have the best chance for promotion he must repress fear as well as doubt, depression, boredom, or hopelessness. There are many who feel consciously hopeful and unconsciously hopelessness is not primarily what people think about their feelings, but what they truly feel. This can be recognized least from their word and phrases, but can be detected from their facial expressions, their way of walking, their capacity to react with interest to something in front of their eyes, and their lack of fanaticism, which is shown in their ability to listen to reasonable argument. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The dynamic viewpoint applied in this report is to social-psychological phenomena and is fundamentally different from the descriptive behaviourist approach in most social-science research. From the dynamic standpoint, we are not primarily interested in knowing what a person thinks or says or how he behaves now. We are interested in his character structure—that is, in the semipermanent structure of his energies, in the directions in which they are channeled, and in the intensity with which they flow. If we know the driving forces motivating behaviour, not only do we understand present behaviour but we can also make reasonable assumptions about how a person is likely to act under changed circumstances. In the dynamic view, surprising “changes” in a person’s thought or behaviour are changes which mostly could have been foreseen, given the knowledge of his character structure. More could be said about what hope is not, but let us press forward and ask what hope is. Can it be described at all in words or can it only be communicated in a poem, in a song, in a gesture, in a facial expression, or in a deed? As with every other human experience, words are insufficient to describe the experience. In fact, most of the time words do the opposite: they obscure it, dissect it, and kill it. Too often, in the process of talking about love or hate or hope, one loses contact with what one was supposed to be talking about. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Poetry, music, and other forms of art are by far the best-suited media for describing human experience because they are precise and avoid the abstraction and vagueness of worn-out coins which are taken for adequate representations of human experience. Yet, taking these qualifications seriously, it is not impossible to touch upon feeling experience in words which are not those of poetry. If people did not share the experience one talks about, at least to some degree, this would not be possible. To describe it means to point out the various aspects of the experience and thus to establish a communication in which the writer and the reader know that they re referring to the same thing. In making this attempt, I must ask the reader to work with me and not expect me to give him an answer to the question of what hope it. I must ask him to mobilize his own experiences in order to make our dialogue possible. To hope is a state of being. It is an inner readiness, that of intense but not-yet-spent activeness. The concept of “activity” rests upon one of the most widespread of man’s illusions in modern industrial society. Our whole culture is geared to activity—activity in the sense of being busy, and being busy in the sense of busyness (the busyness necessary for business). In fact, most people are so “active” that they cannot stand doing nothing; they even transform their so-called leisure time into another form of activity. If you are not active making money, you are active driving around, playing golf, or just chatting about nothing. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
What is dreaded is the moment in which you have really nothing “to do.” Whether one calls this kind of behaviour activity is a terminological question. The trouble is that most people who think they are very active are not aware of the fact that they are intensely passive in spite of their “busyness.” Even if it is only a new man or woman as a partner for pleasures of the flesh, they constantly need the stimulus from the outside, be it other people’s chatter, or the sight of movies or travel and other forms of more thrilling consumption excitements. They need to be prompted, to be “turned on,” tempted, seduced. They always run and never stand. They always “fall for” and never get up. And they imagine themselves to be immensely active while they are driven by the obsession to do something in order to escape the anxiety that is aroused when they are confronted with themselves. Hope is a psychic concomitant to life and growth. If a tree which does not get sun bends its trunk to where the sun comes from, we cannot say that the tree “hopes” in the same way in which a man hopes, since hope in man is connected with feelings and awareness that the tree may not have. And yet it would not be wrong to say that the tree hopes for the sunlight and expressed this hope by twisting its trunk toward the sun. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Is it different when the child is born? He may have no awareness, yet his activity expresses his hope to be born and to breathe independently. Does the suckling not hope for his mother’s milk? Dos the infant not hope to stand erect and to walk? Does the sick man not hope to be well, the prisoner to be free, the hungry to eat? Do we not hope to wake up to another day when we fall asleep? Do pleasures of the flesh not imply a man’s hope in his potency, in his capacity to arouse his partner, and the woman’s hope to respond to arouse him? Revelation is an unmerited gift, and we can never be sure that our human questions exhaust its riches. Man is not merely a questioner. He is also a hearer of the Word, and he must open himself to its full impact even when it communicates startling truths, such as the Trinity, or hard truths, such as divine punishment, things he might not ask about if the questions were left to him alone to formulate. Furthermore, the question-answer dialogue is not the sole means to express the human attitude before the revelatory events. Questions and answers are, after all, but figures of speech, and their limitation is seen in this, that the mystery of divine revelation can be described in other terms. It is not only an answer; it is also a fulfilment, a transformation, an elevation, and a gratuitous intervention. Man stands before revelation not simply to play the quizmaster; he stands before it as before the sun, to be cheered and warmed and inspire. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
In the transfiguration episode all that Peter could utter was, “Lord, it is well that we are here!” (Mt 17.4 RSV). Man does more than question; he also exclaims in crimes of marvel, of wonder, of awe. They kerygmatic aspect of theology must be given its due. It can still only create the impression that it succeeds, but it can never fully succeed, since the receptacle which is the question remains the old wineskin that is burst by the new wine of the answer. The new wine is the kerygma, the divine good news which far surpasses human expectations. Consequently, the bad news of man’s existential situation cannot be the measure of the good news of revelation. In fact, it is revelation that lays bare the roots of the human condition by revealing the true nature and extent of sin, for the bad news of the existential situation it itself a mystery that needs unveiling. When it comes to the Christian mysteries, we know that creation means that “being” is essentially good, the fall or estrangement means that man is a finite mixture of being and nonbeing, and the New Being means that man always participates in being enough to offset the threat of non-being. The New Being is essential manhood, the complete actualization of human potentialities, the term of the historical process of the essentialization of man, the final reunion with the ground of being. Is this merely an ontological humanism? The lost son who returned home is not simply once again at home. He is at home again in a way other than the fondest remembrance of his father’s house had possibly permitted him to hope, other than the human existential question had possibly permitted him to hope, other than the existential question had possibly permitted him to expect. The New Being that he found is other and more than mere reunion. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
In contrast, the manifestation of demon power—the agency of demons is always brought more conspicuously into notice when God also is at work, in proportion to the manifestation and power of God’s work among souls. When the Son of God was manifest in the flesh, it called forth the activity and outspoken agency of demons more than ever before. Demons are of a multiplied variety. They are of various types, greater in diversity than human beings, and these demons always seek to possess a person congenial to them in some characteristic. The Christian Bible tells us of unclean demons, of fortune telling demons, of despotic demons, theological demons, screeching and yelling demons. There are demons that act particularly on the body, or some organ or appetite of the body. There are others that act more directly upon the intellect, or the sensibilities, and emotions and affections. There are others of a higher order that act directly on man’s spiritual nature, upon the conscience or the spiritual perceptions. These are the ones that act as angels of light, and sidetrack and delude many who are real Christians. How demons fasten on human beings—they seek out those who make-up and temperament is most congenial to themselves, and then seek to fasten themselves on to some part of the body, or brain, or some appetite, or some faculty of the mind—either the reason, or imagination, or perception; and when they get access, they bury themselves into the very structure of the person, so as to identify themselves with the personality of the one they possess. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
In a great many instances, they do not get possession of the individual, but obtain such a hold on some part of the mind as to torment the person with periodical attacks of something strange and abnormal, out of all proportion to the general character and make-up of the individual. These demons feed themselves on the person with whom they are allied. There are allusions in Christian Scripture, and facts gathered from experience, sufficient to prove that certain varieties of demons live on the juices in human blood. There are religious demons, not holy, but nevertheless religious, and filled with a devilish form of religion which is the counterfeit of true, deep spirituality. These pseudo-religious demons very rarely attack young beginners, but they hover around persons who advance into deeper experiences, and seek every opportunity to fasten themselves upon the conscience, or the spiritual emotions of persons of high states of grace, and especially if they are of a vivid or energetic temperament. These are the demons that play havoc among many professors of holiness. One way they get hold of persons is as follows: A soul goes through a great struggle, and is wonderfully blessed. Floods of light and emotion sweep through the being. The shore lines are all cut. The soul is launched out into a sea of extravagant experience. At such a juncture these demons hover round the soul, and make strange suggestions to the mind of something odd, or outlandish, or contrary to common sense or decent states. They make these suggestions under the profession of being the Holy Ghost. They fan the emotions, and produce a strange, fictious exhilaration, which is simply their bait to get into faculty of the soul. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
The degrees of evilness are at the same time the degrees of regression. The greatest evil is those strivings which are most directed against life; they love for death, the incestuous-symbiotic striving to return to the womb, to the soil, to the inorganic; the narcissistic self-immolation which makes man an enemy of life, precisely because he cannot leave the prison of his own ego. Living this way is living in “hell.” There is lesser evil, according to the lesser degree of regression. There is lack of love, lack of reason, lack of interest, lack of courage. Man is inclined to regress and to move forward; this is another way of saying he is inclined to good and evil. If both inclinations are still in some balance, he is free to choose, provided that he can make use of awareness and that he can make an effort. He is free to choose between alternatives which in themselves are determined by the total situation in which he finds himself. If, however, his heart has hardened to such a degree that there is no longer a balance of inclinations, he is no longer free to choose. In the chain of events that lead to the loss of freedom the last decision is usually one in which man can no longer choose freely; at the first decision he may be free to choose that which leads to the good, provided he is aware of the significance of his decision. Man is responsible up to the point where he is free to choose for his own action. However, responsibility is nothing but an ethical postulate, and often a rationalization for the authorities’ desire to punish him. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Precisely because evil is human, because it is the potential of regression and the loss of our humanity, it is inside every one of us. The more we are aware of it, the less are we able to set ourselves up as judges of others. Man’s heart can harden; it can become inhuman, yet never nonhuman. It always remains man’s heart. We all are determined by the fact that we have been born human, and hence by the never-ending task of having to make choices. We must choose the means together with the aims. We must not rely on anyone’s saving us, but be very aware of the fact that wrong choices make us incapable of saving ourselves. Indeed, we must become aware in order to choose the good—but if we have lost the capacity to be moved by the distress of another human being, by the friendly gaze of another person, by the song of a bird, by the greenness of grass, no awareness will help us. If man becomes indifferent to life, there is no longer any hope that he can choose the good. Then, indeed, his heart will have so hardened that his “life” will be ended. If this should happen to the entire human race or to its most powerful members, then the life of mankind may be extinguished at the very moment of its greatest promise. Our hope is to point to a new dimension of morality—not that of constraint and prohibition but a morality that lies as a fountainhead within the human soul, a mortality of aspiration to spiritual experience. It suggests that necessity is laid upon us to infer entities that are not observed and are not observable. For an unseen Universe is necessary to explain the seen. The flux is seen, but to account for its structure and its nature we infer particles of various kinds to serve as the vertices of the changing patterns, placing less emphasis on the isolated units and more on the structure and nature of relations. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The process of knowing involves an immaterial becoming, an immaterial identification, and finally, knowledge itself is seen to be a dependent variable of immateriality. And somewhere along this spiritual pilgrimage man’s pure observation is relinquished and gives way to the deeper experience of awe, for there can be no explanation of a phenomenon by searching for its origin but only by discerning its immanent law—this quality of transcendence that abides even in matter itself. The present situation in the World and the vast accretion of knowledge have produced a serious anxiety which may be overcome by re-evaluating the character, kindship, logic, and operation of man in relation to his work. For work implies goals and intimately affects the person performing the work. Therefore the correlation and relatedness of ideas, facts and values that are in perpetual interplay could emerge from these volumes as they point to the inner synthesis and organic unity of man and his labours. For though no labour alone can enrich the person, no enrichment can be achieved without absorbing and intense labour. We then experience a unity of faith, labour and grace which prepares the mind for receiving a truth from sources over which it has no control. This is especially true since the great challenge of our age arises out of man’s inventions in relation to his life. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Thus Credo Perspectives seek to encourage the perfection not only of man’s work but also and above all the fulfillment of himself as a person. And so now we are summoned to consider not only man in the process of development as a human subject but also his influence on the object of his investigation and creation. Observation alone is interference. The naïve view that we can observe any system and predict its behaviour without altering it by the very act of observation was an unjustified extrapolation from Newton’s Celestial Mechanics. We can observe the moon or even a satellite and predict its behaviour without perhaps appreciably interfering with it, but we cannot do this with an amoeba, far less with a man and still less with a society of men. It is the heart of the question of the nature of work itself. If we regard our labours as a process of shaping or forming, then the fruits of our labours play the part of a mold by which we ourselves are shaped. And this means, in the preservation of the identity of the knower and the known, that cognition and generation, that is, creation, though in different spheres, are nevertheless alike. It is hoped that the influence of such a series may help to overcome the serious separation between function and meaning and may show that the extraordinary crisis through which the World is passing can be fruitfully met by recognizing that knowledge had not been completely dehumanized and has not totally degenerated into a mere notebook overcrowded with formulas that few are able to understand or apply. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
For mankind is now engaged in composing a new theme. Life never manifest itself in negative terms. And hope lies in drawing from every category of work a conviction that nonmaterial values can be discovered in positive, affirmative, visible things. The estrangement between the temporal and nontemporal man is coming to n end, community is inviting communion, and a vision of the human condition more worthy of man is engendered, connecting spiritual energy which breaks for us the bonds of habit and keeps us in touch with the permanence of being through our work. And as, long ago, the Bearers of Bread were succeeded by the Bearers of Torches, so now, in the immediacies of life, it is the image of man and his vocation that can rekindle the high passion of humanity in its quest for light. Refusing to divorce work from life or love from knowledge, it is action, it is passion that enhances our being. We live in an expanding Universe and also in the moral infinite of that other Universe, the Universe of man. And along the whole stretched arch of this Universe, we may see that extreme limit of complicity where reality seems to shape itself within the work man has chosen for his realization. Work then becomes not only a way of knowledge, it becomes even more a way of life—of life in its totality. For the last ed of every maker is himself. “And the places that have been desolate for ages shall be built in thee: thou shalt rise up the foundations of generation and generation; and thou shalt be called the repairer of the fences, turning the paths into rest.” (Isaiah, 58.12). #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
The chain of associations that reveals a connection need not to be a long one. Sometimes a sequence of only two remarks opens up a path for understanding, provided the second is not a brainchild but is born spontaneously. A patient, for instance, came to analysis feeling tired and uneasy, and his first associations were unproductive. He had been drinking white muscatel and popping reds the night before. I asked him whether he had a hangover, which he denied. The last hour had been very productive for it had brought to light the fact that he was afraid of taking responsibility because he was terrified of possible failure. Thus I asked him whether he wanted to rest on his laurels. At this a memory emerged of his mother dragging him through museums and of his boredom and annoyance at the experience. There was only this one association, but it was revealing. It was partly a response to my remark about his resting on his laurels. I was just as bad as the mother pushing him from one problem to another. (This reaction was characteristic of hum because he was hypersensitive to anything resembling coercion, though at the same time his own initiative for tackling problems was inhibited.) Having become aware of his annoyance with me and of his active reluctance to go on, he then felt free to feel and express another sentiment. Its essence was that psychoanalysis was worse than the situation in the museum because it meant being dragged on to see one failure after another. With this association he unintentionally resumed the thread of the preceding hour, which prevented him from functioning smoothly and effectively meant a “failure.” He thereby revealed one of his basic resistances to psychoanalysis. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
The same patient came another time feeling depressed. He had met a friend the night before who told him about his climbing of a Swiss mountain, the Piz Palu. The report had awakened the memory of a time when he was in Switzerland and could not climb this mountain because it was befogged during the days he had at his disposal. He had been furious at that time, and the night before he felt the old rage rising again. He lay awake for hours evolving plans how he could still assert his wish, how he could overcome all obstacles of war, money, time. Even after he fell asleep his mind fought against the obstacles in this way, and awoke depressed. During the analysis an apparently irrelevant picture came up in his mind of the outskirts of a Midwestern town, which for him was the epitome of the drab and desolate. This mental image expressed his feelings about life at that moment. However, what was the connection? That if he could not climb the Piz Palu, then life was desolate? When he was in Switzerland, he had set his heart upon climbing the mountain, but it is true that the frustration of this special wish was on passion of his; the incident had occurred years ago and he had since forgotten about it. Apparently then it was not the Piz Palu that was bothering him. When he calmed down, he realized that he would not even care to climb it now. The revival of that Swiss experience meant something much more incisive. If he set his will on achieving something, he believed that he should be able to do it, but this illusory belief disturbed him. Even if it was so much out of his command as fog in the mountains, any unsurpassable obstacle meant to him a frustration of his will. If he must relinquish this belief, it meant that life was not worth living. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Repetitive themes or sequences in the material presented by the patient are particularly helpful for understanding. If the associations end always with implicit evidence that the patient has superior intelligence or rationality, or is in general a remarkable person, the analyst will understand that his belief in his possession of these qualities is of paramount emotional value to him. A patient who misses no opportunity to demonstrate how analysis has harmed him will lead to analyst to different hypotheses from those suggested by a patient who misses no opportunity to emphasize his improvement. If the demonstrations of impairment coincide with repeated reports of being unfairly treated, injured, or victimized, in the former instance, the analyst will begin to watch for those factors within the patient that explain why he experiences a large proportion of life in exactly this way, and also for the consequences entailed by this attitude. Since they reveal certain typical reactions, repetitive themes also provide a clue for understanding why the patient’s experiences often follow a certain stereotyped pattern; for example, why he frequently starts on an enterprise with enthusiasm and drops it soon after, or why he frequently encounters similar disappointments with friends or lovers. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
The analyst will find valuable clues also in the patient’s contradictions, of which as many are bound to appear as are present in the patient’s structure. The same holds true of exaggerations, such as reactions of violence, gratitude, shame, suspicion, apparently disproportionate to the provocation. Such a surplus of affect always signalizes a hidden problem, and it leads the analyst to look for the emotional significance that the provocation has for the patient. Who are the experts to whim the unhappy and maladjusted citizens of our urban communities take their problems for consultations, hopefully for cure? Since close of World War II, it has been increasingly clear that experts in the management of functional mental illness are being drawn from three professions—medicine, psychology, and social work. The medically trained expert is a clinical psychologist. And the specialist from social works is the psychiatric social worker. To the extent that all three of these highly trained experts do (in increasing numbers) engage in one-to-one personal conversations with the therapeutic intent to relieve psychological symptoms, modify attitudes, and improve adjustment—and to the extent that their respective efforts must partake of the factors common to all psychotherapeutic exchanges—it follows that there must be certain minimal overlap and similarities in their professional preparation. They do have specific knowledges, skills, values and goals in common. We will discuss these themes at a later time. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
We all know at least one know-it-all. They have an infinite amount of useless knowledge—some of it, even questionable. Narcissists are the typical culprits who use this sort of thing to make you feel inadequate, undereducated, and sometimes just plain stupid. Some people can make you feel as if they are so much smarter than you, and that the deserves the best things in life so much more than you do. It is important to realize people who are condescending are manipulating you into perceiving them as superior. And you can politely ignore their impolite behaviour and be the best you can by using real facts and skills to gain the upper hand. When it comes to a job, for example, sometimes when the boss prefers a person who submissive, pretends to be his or her best friend, knows a lot of details about the boss, and this is the type of person who is selected for the job, it could be a blessing that you are not accepted. People like that tend to be involved in unethical and sometimes illegal things and want someone who will cover deviant behaviour up for them or they want a patsy. So, it is really not the type of job you would be interested in anyway. Underlying principles of respect that were once commonplace in society have increasingly given way to unkind behaviour. To help our children and youth set aside the many negative examples that bombard them, we must first understand respect, reasons we sometimes act disrespectfully, gospel principles that apply, and ways we can be better teachers and exemplars of respect. People merit respect for just being human and also for living an honourable life. We admire their commitment or standards. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Over the years, the Sacramento Fire Department has become law enforcement, doctors, psychiatrists, plumbers, electricians, roofers, and building construction and flood experts. The fire department has also had to become experts when dealing with CO2. The job has become even more complex because of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Before September 11, 2001, the Sacramento Fire Department realized just how vulnerable we are to acts of terrorism. As a result, they are trained to maintain situational awareness and be alert for activity that may indicate possible criminal or terrorist activity. Since the horrific incidents of 9/11, the role of Sacramento Fire Department and EMS personnel in protecting the homeland has increased because of the recognition that the need for information and intelligence is vital. Sacramento Fire and EMS personnel provide a critical link in completing the homeland security role. They serve as additional eyes and ears of law enforcement and report suspicious activity so that further investigation by the proper authority can be initiated. As part of an element of homeland security, the Sacramento Fire Department analyzes public and private sector to identify the threat environment, share information, and establish policy for the operation of combatting the threat of terrorism, and have evolved to deal with a range of criminal and terrorist activity. With the crisis at our Southern Boarder posing a national security threat, please make a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department to ensure they have the latest technology and adequate resources to protect the community. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
To the materialist and the professional skeptic—that is to say, people who do not wish to be disturbed in their belief that death is the end of life as we know it—the notion of ghosts is unacceptable. No matter how much evidence is presented for the reality of the phenomena, they will argue against it and ascribe it to any of several “natural” causes. Either delusion or hallucination must be the explanation, or perhaps a mirage, if not outright trickery on the part of parties unknown. Entire professional groups who deal in the manufacture of illusions have taken it upon themselves to label anything that defies their ability to reproduce it artificially through trickery or manipulation as false or nonexistent. Especially among photographers and magicians, the notion that ghost exist has never been a popular one. However, authentic reports of psychic phenomena along ghostly lines keep coming into reputable report centers such as the various societies for psychic research and to caretakers of The Winchester Mystery House.
Sometimes demons soar round the high altitudes of the spiritual life, like eagles around great mountain tops, and seek to fasten their talons upon the lofty and conspicuous prey. They cause people to run off into things that are odd and foolish, unreasonable and indecent. It leads them to adopt a peculiar voice or twang, or unnatural shouting, or some shaking of the body; or such an influence is manifested by peculiar heresies in the mind, of which there is a nameless variety. It produces a certain wildness in the eye and harshness in voice. Such persons invariably break the law of love, and severely condemn people who do not conform to themselves. As a rule, such persons lose their flesh, for demoniac possession is very wearing on the vital forces and produces a terrible strain on the heart and nervous system.
Granted that even though a certain number of reports about ghosts may be due to inaccurate reporting, self-delusion, or other errors of fact, there still remains an impressive number of cases that cannot be explained by any other means than that of extrasensory perception. In September of 2007, a caretaker felt a cold sport in one of the kitchens, and when others stepped into the room, they felt it, too. Since none of the doors nor windows could be held responsible for the strong cold draft, they knew that its origin was of a psychic nature, as it often is when there are entities present. Moments later, the spirit whispered, “You see me, don’t you? I love everyone…I’ll go, I won’t bother you.” The translucent figure of a boy then floated into the wall.
Come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Fearfulness Hath Surprised the Hypocrites!
When a man has the right stuff in him, all he needs is just opportunity, and nothing else. If he possesses a sufficient degree of talent plus the determination to succeed, there is no stage so humble that it cannot be made a jumping-off ground to better things. The welfare principles of the Church are not simply good ideas; they are revealed truths from God—they hare His ways of helping the needy. In the Lord’s plan, our commitment to welfare principles should be at the very root of our faith and devotion to Him. Since the beginning of time, our Heavenly Father has spoken with great clarity on this subject: from the gentle plea, “If thou lovest me…thou wilt remember the poor, and consecrate of thy properties for their support”; the direct command, “Remember in all things the poor and the needy, the sick and the afflicted, for he that doeth not these things, the same is not my disciple”; to the forceful warning, “If any man shall take of the abundance which I have made, and impart not his portion, according to the law of my gospel, unto the poor and the needy, he shall, with the wicked, lift up his eyes in hell, being in torment.” The two great commandments—to love God and our neighbour—are a joining of the temporal and the spiritual. It is important to note that these two commandments are called “great” because every other commandment hangs upon them. In other words, our personal, family, and Church priorities must begin here. All other goals and actions should spring from the fountain of these two great commandments—from our love for God and for our neighbour. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
We make attempts to preserve the “both-and” of Christ and culture and that is a dualism which holds them together in paradox. The dualist begins with two absolute principles: grace is in God, and sin is in man, and there is no bridging the chasm. This differs from the synthesis in that we see a deeper and more extensive corruption in man and culture, but over this human depravity is cast the cloak of divine forgiveness and reconciliation in Jesus as the Christ. As examples of this motif, we refer to St. Paul, Marcion, and especially Luther. The latter distinguishes but does not divide the Kingdom of God from the kingdom of the World. The dualism is spanned by attributing to Christ the spirit or the how of moral action, but leaving to an autonomous culture the what of the content: From Christ we received knowledge and the freedom to do faithfully and lovingly what culture teaches or requires us to do. Although sinful culture stands under the condemnation of God, the same divine authority commands us to participate in it. Hence the paradox of Christ and culture. The estimate is that this dualistic paradox corresponds to the human experience in which man is forever bumping up against the prevalence of sin, and yet always receiving the gift of grace. This dualist’s position inclines also to a cultural conservatism because it does not contribute to the content of culture, but views social and political institutions as bulwarks against sin rather than as beneficial agencies for good. However, we try to keep in our theonomy a beneficial side, religious substance in culture. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The Giver of all life has proclaimed, “All things unto me are spiritual, and not at any time have I given unto you a low which was temporal.” This means to me that, “spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived.” Unfortunately, there are those who overlook the temporal because they consider it less important. They treasure the spiritual while minimizing the temporal. While it is important to have our thoughts inclined toward Heaven, if our hands are not also inclined toward our fellowman, we miss the essence of our religion. Evil spirits sometimes work in “Christian” gatherings. Suppose “conviction of sin” by deceiving spirits…I untied with a number of brethren and sisters one whole week every month, in prayer to God to pour out more of His Spirit, gifts and power. After having done this for some time with great earnestness, such powerful and wonderful manifestations of God and His Holy Spirit (apparently) took place that we no longer doubted God had heard our prayer, and His Spirit had descended into our midst, and on our gathering. Amongst other things, this spirit, which we thought to be the Holy Spirit, used a fifteen-year-old girl as his instrument, through whom everyone belonging to our fathering, and having any sin or burden of conscience, had it revealed to the gathering. Nobody could remain in the meeting with any burden of conscience without it being revealed to the meeting by this spirit. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
To further highlight this illustration: a gentleman of esteem and respect from the neighbourhood came to the meeting, and all his sins were exposed in the presence of the gathering by the fifteen-year-old girl. Thereupon he took me into an adjoining room, so broke down, and admitted to me, with tears, that he had committed all these sins which the girl had exposed. He confessed this and all other sins known to him. Then he came again into the meeting, but hardly had he entered when the same voice said to him, “Ha! you have not confessed all yet; you have stolen ten gulden, that you have not confessed.” In consequence, he took me again into the adjoining room and said, “It is true, I have also done this…” This man had never seen this fifteen-year-old girl in his life, neither she him. With such events, was it astonishing that a spirit of holy awe came over all at the meeting, and there was one controlling note which can only be expressed in the words, “Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings? Fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites.” There was a most earnest spirit of adoration, and who could doubt when even the strong were broken down, and nobody dared remain in the meeting if they were a hinderance. And yet we had to unmask this spirit which had brought about these things—and which we took to be the Holy Ghost—as a terrible power of darkness. I had such an uneasy feeling of distrust which could not be overcome…As I made this know for the first time to an older brother and friend…he said, “Brother Winchester, if you continue to foster unbelief, you can commit the sin against the Holy Ghost which will never be forgiven.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
These were terrible days and hours for me, because I did not know whether we had to do with the Power of God or a disguised spirit of the ultimate negative, and once thing only was clear to me, that I and this meeting should not let ourselves be led by a spirit when we did not have clear light and confirmation whether this power was from above or below. Thereupon I took the leading brethren and sisters to the uppermost room of the house, and made known to them my position and said we must all cry and pray that we may be able to prove whether it was a power of light or darkness. As we came downstairs the voice of this power said, using the fifteen-year-old girl as his instrument, “What is this rebellion in your midst? You will be sorely punished for your unbelief.” I told this voice that it was true we did not know with whom we had dealings. However, if it was an angel of God, or the Spirit of God, we wanted to be in that attitude that we would not sin against Him, but if it was an ultimate negative, we would not be deceived by him. “If you are the power of God, you will be in accord as we handle the Word of God.” “Try the spirits whether thy be of God.” We all knelt down and cried and prayed to God in such earnestness, that He would have mercy upon us, and reveal to us in some manner whom we had dealings with. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Then the power had to reveal itself of its own accord. Through the person which he had been using as his instrument he made such abominable and terrible grimaces, and shrieked in such a piercing tone, “Now I am found out, now I am found out…” There are many good people and organizations in the World that are trying to meet the pressing needs of the less affluent and those who have not, everywhere. We are grateful for this, but the Lord’s way of caring for the less affluent is different from the World’s way. The Lord has said, “It must needs be done in mine own way.” He is not only interested in our immediate needs; He is also concerned about our eternal progression. For this reason, the Lord’s way has always included self-reliance and service to our neighbour in addition to caring for the less affluent. This very hour there are many members of the Church who are suffering. They are hungry, stretched financially, and struggling with all manner of physical, emotional, and spiritual distress. They pray with all the energy of their souls for succor, for relief. Brethren, please do not think that this is someone else’s responsibility. It is mine, and it is yours. We are all enlisted. “All” means all—every Aaronic and Melchizedek Priesthood holder, rich and poor, in every nation. In the Lord’s plan, there is something everyone can contribute. The lesson we learn generation after generation is that rich and poor are all under the same scared obligation to help their neighbour. It will take all of us working together to successfully apply the principles of welfare and self-reliance. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Not only are teachers more rare, but the most sensitive seekers feel shyly inhibited from approaching them. Statistical studies of psychotherapy consistently report that about two thirds of neurotic patients are improved immediately after treatment, regardless of the type of psychotherapy they have received, and the same improvement rate has been found for patients who have not received any treatment that was deliberately psychotherapeutic. It has been suggested that some sort of “systematic ideology” may be an essential element in successful therapy: Whether the therapist talks in terms of psychoanalysis or Christian Science is from this point of view relatively unimportant as compared with the formal consistency with which the doctrine employed is adhered to, for by virtue of this consistency the patient receives a schema for achieving some sort and degree of personality organization. In essence, psychotherapy is conversation with therapeutic intent. As conversation it entails all of the modes of communication (some facilitant and some deterrent) that are active whenever two persons speak to one another. Language carries the major mediational load and is the primary transmitter of communication in conversation. We have long been aware of the distinction between connotative and denotative language—words have “agreed upon” meaning as specified by the dictionary, but they also have more or less individualistic meanings for each person who uses them. If it were humanly possible for persons to restrict their language to purely denotative words, communication would be easier (simple and more accurate); it is not. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
While members of a culture may share the same official dictionary, they naturally do not share in identical personal experiences whereby words acquire the personal connotations that individuals unconsciously seek to use in their conversations. Some words make for better communication because they have a scientifically precise definition, or in the nature of things to which they refer there is a limited range of possible connotations; other words tend to contribute a lot of “static” to communication because they do not permit of objective definition but rather represent certain personal meanings of high frequency in a particular group of persons. Th following lists will suggest this aspect of communication problem. More Denotative Words: Inch, minute, black, round, north. More Connotative Words: Good, strong, liberal, pretty, smart. This is only one of the problem areas receiving intensive investigation in the rapidly evolving technical fields known as psycholinguistics and communication theory. Man has long been aware that his oral communications are neither given nor received purely in terms of the words spoken (and their explicit or implicit meanings) but that additional and particular meanings are communicated by the general contextual communication is undoubtedly the facial expression of the conversants. The particular meaning of a word is frequently signaled by a frown or a smile or a grimace. And responses to questions or assertions may be wordlessly communicated by a nod, by a smile, by “silence freighted with meaning.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
When communication is emotionally charged, when the topic of conversation is loaded with emotional “meanings” as is frequently the case in psychotherapy, it is imperative that the therapist be skilled in receiving (and sending?) wordless messages or words whose meaning has been silently labeled by the emotional attitude of the sender. In accepting candidates for advanced training in the specialty of psychotherapy, it is generally true that considerable emphasis is given to intellectual ability, with applicants of every superior general intelligence being preferred. There is little in the nature of substantive information or treatment technique to be learned that justifies such emphasis. However, sensitivity to the subtle aspects of the wordless communications in psychotherapy is a most important dimension of therapeutic skill. This skill is not too readily learned but rather reflects native or very early acquired aptitudes that are highly correlated with general intelligence. And a high level of general intelligence is required to meet the scholastic requirements (many of them irrelevant to psychotherapy) that loom large in the formal education of the physician, psychologist, and social worker. This nonlinguistic aspect of oral communication is a difficult area for research but it is part of the total domain of psycholinguistics. Any general theory of communication must and will encompass the conversations of psychotherapy and, as a general theory, the researches generated by it must inevitably show those particulars of the communication process which are common to all such conversations. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Thus, the essentials of the communication process are identical regardless of the school of psychotherapy under whose aegis a particular therapeutic conversation is being conducted. The participants do not have access to special communication media beyond those of any other conversation—they are limited to words and sentences, to assertions and questions, to the silent “labels” of smiles and frowns, tics and tears, and to silences. Within the frame of the communality of the communication process which is shared by all approaches to psychotherapy is a particular common factor—the therapist. Regardless of his theoretical allegiance, the therapist is an expert conversationalist whose specialized equipment include: sensitivity to the emotional nuances of the patient’s communication, an ability to listen selectively, facility in encouraging the patient to start and continue conversations, deftness in leading the patient to particular topics, capacity both to tolerate the patient’s silences and to use his own silence in communication. These are basic common skills of all expert psychotherapists, contributing to their capacity to establish and maintain communication. The presence of these skills in high degree is, unfortunately, not necessarily correlated with the achievement of a valid understanding of the patient (a common goal of most schools) nor with achievement of successful treatment (the ultimate goal of all schools). #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Closely related to the liberation of energies, the lifting of a repression frees the way for action. As long as a striving or feeling is repressed the person is caught in a blind alley. As long as he is entirely unaware of a hostility to others, for example, and knowns only that he feels awkward with people, he is helpless to do anything about his hostility; there is no possibility of understanding the reasons for it or of discovering when it is justified or of diminishing or removing it. However, if the pression is lifted and he feels the hostility as such, then and only then can he take a good look t it and proceed to discover the vulnerable spots in himself which produced it and to which he has been as blind as to the hostility itself. By thus opening up the possibility of eventually changing something about the disturbing factors, the insight is likely to produce considerable relief. Even if immediate change is difficult, there is the vision of a future way out of the distress. This holds true even though the initial reaction may be one of hurt or fright. If you remember or cast study on Clare, well, her insight into the fact that she had excessive wishes and demands for herself provoked a panic in her at first, because it shook the compulsive modesty which was one of the pillars supporting her feeling of security. However, as son as the acute anxiety subsided it gave her relief, for it represented the possibility of a liberation from the shackles that had tied her hand and foot. However, the first reaction to an insight may be one of pain rather than relief. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
There are two principal kinds of negative responses to an insight. One is to feel it only as a threat; the other is to react in discouragement and hopelessness. Different though they appear, these two responses are essentially merely variations in degree. They are both determined by the fact that the person is not, or not yet, able and willing to give up certain fundamental claims on life. Which claims they are depends of course, on his neurotic trends. It is because of the compulsive nature of these trends that the claims are so rigid and so hard to relinquish. One who is obsessed by a craving for power, for instance, can do without comfort, pleasure, women, friends, everything that usually makes life desirable, but power he must have. As long as he is determined not to relinquish this claim, any questioning of its value can only irritate or frighten him. Such fright reactions are produced not only by insights disproving the feasibility of his particular striving but also by those revealing that its pursuit prevents him from attaining other objectives that are also important to him, or from overcoming painful disabilities and sufferings. Or, to take other examples, one who suffers from his isolation and his awkwardness in contacts with others, but is still basically unwilling to leave his ivory tower, must react with anxiety to any insight showing him that he cannot possibly attain the one objective—less isolation—without abandoning the other—his ivory tower. As long as a person basically refuses to relinquish his compulsive belief that he can master life through the sheer force of his will, any insight indicating the fictitious nature of that belief must arouse anxiety, because it makes him feel as if the ground on which he stands is pulled away from under him. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
If he wants to become free, the anxiety produced by such insights is the person’s response to a dawning vision that he must eventually change something in his foundations. However, the factors that must be changed are still deeply entrenched, are still vitally important to him as a means of coping with himself and others. He is therefore afraid to change, and the insight produces not relief but panic. And if he feels deep down that such a change, though indispensable for his liberation, is entirely out of the question, he will react with a feeling of hopelessness rather than fright. In his conscious mind this feeling is often overshadowed by a deep anger toward the analyst. When he cannot do anything about them anyhow, he feels that the analyst is being pointlessly cruel in leading him to such insights. If they do not ultimately serve some purpose we affirm, this reaction is understandable because none of us is willing to endure hurts and hardships. A negative reaction to an insight is not necessarily the last word in the matter. Sometimes, in fact, it is of relatively short duration and quickly changes to relief. The factors that determine whether a person’s attitude toward a particular insight can change through further psychoanalytic work require that the change is within the range of possibility. Brainwashing—a scary word. No one wants to believe that they could be brainwashed, but it happens. It happens more than you ever know. Brainwashing is known by other names too—mind abuse, coercive persuasion, and thought control. What happens, is a person or even a group of people use systematic methods to get the victim to bend or conform to things they would not conform to otherwise. Think about members of a cult. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
That is scary, but even scarier is the fact that advertisers have learned these dark techniques and use them regularly on the unsuspecting public. By controlling the physical and social environment, an attempt is made to destroy loyalties to any unfavourable groups or individuals, to demonstrate to the individual that his attitudes and patterns of thinking are incorrect and must be changes, and to develop loyalty and unquestioning obedience to the ruling party. The term is most appropriately used in reference to a program of political or religious indoctrination or ideological remolding. The techniques of brainwashing typically involve isolation from former associates and sources of information; and exacting regimen requiring absolute obedience and humility; strong social pressures and rewards for cooperation; physical and psychological punishments for non-cooper ranging from social ostracism and criticism, deprivation of food, seep, and social contact, to bondage and torture; and continual reinforcement. Furthermore, currently we do know for sure that our brain processes result from the interactions of different factors: genetics (for small part), experience and thus learning, as well as triggers deriving from internal and external environments. Without the constant relationships with the context, we could not exist. The complete absence of context is “impossible.” Every kind of triggers and stimuli leaves traces in our brain that, if beneficial, may become good incentives or memories somehow comforting us in bad days, but if negative, may represent a sort of “wound” that might lead to a permanent “scar.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
In both cases there are new fingerprints in the brain that continuously changes and remodels itself through neuroplasticity, that is one of its most peculiar functions permitting neuronal development, growth, repair and survival. Perhaps, while trying to answer the question of being or not being free, we could say that we are slavers of the dynamic activity of the brain working in the range of milliseconds, the so-called connectome that modifies functions through neuroplasticity, just to simply explain the complexity of these processes. People often persuade people that they need particular foods or products because they are good for them and will help them achieve goals that they want so people start to associate these items with their desires and consumer them. When people ask too many questions, like a series of questions, but are not having a conversation, that is an indication that they are up to something. It is also possible to use fear to control people and get them to do things that they would not do. These methods have been used to get people to commit suicide or jump out of buildings, when they were not actually in any danger. However, because individuals are naïve, or unaware, psychopathological offenders know that it is easy to use fear to manipulate individuals. Some may even use anger to try to control an individual, and make them do something they had not intended to do. A girl pushed her sister down the stairs and she died. However, she blamed in on her young brother and everyone believed that he was guilty. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Why did everyone believe the little brother was the guilty party? Well, when he was born, doctors discovered he had an extra Y chromosome (XYY). They told his parents that this was a killer gene because it makes men more aggressive. As a result, his father and mother called him a freak and just knew that he was going to grow up and be a killer. So, when his sister killed the other sister, they knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was guilty. However, he was innocent. Because he was blamed and sent to juvenile hall, when he got out, he fulfilled a self-fulfilling prophecy and because a kill. However, in the process, his sister also became a series killer because she was able to get away with murder at a young age. Had the boy not been stigmatized, and people listened to him, they could have got his sister the help she needed to become a well-rounded adult. Later research indicated that having an extra Y chromosome does not necessarily make someone more aggressive. So because this boy was stigmatized and framed, countless lives were ruined. Sometimes this kind of stigmatization is done intentionally so doctors can create a case study to back up their junk science. Isolation is also another way of brainwashing an individual. Psychopathological offenders like to isolate youth and convince them of certain things that are not true so these individuals grow up disoriented and disturbed, it is a method of control. For instance, if you can isolate someone in a community where everyone they come into contact with is crazy, incompetent, violent, and a criminal, they may believe that is how the World really is. However, there are some good people out there. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Awareness of what is good and evil is different from theoretical knowledge of what is called good and evil in most moral systems. To know on the authority of tradition that love, independence, and courage are good and that hate, submission, and cowardice are bad means little, as the knowledge is alienated knowledge learned from authorities, conventional teaching, etcetera, and is believed to be true only because it comes from these sources. Awareness means that the person makes that which he learns his own way, by experiencing it, experimenting with himself, observing others and, eventually, gaining a conviction rather than having an irresponsible “opinion.” However, deciding on the general principles is not enough. Beyond this awareness one needs to be aware of the balance of forces within oneself, and the rationalizations which hide the unconscious forces. Let us take a specific example: A man is greatly attracted by a woman and experiences a strong wish to have pleasures of the flesh with her. He thinks consciously that he has this wish because she is so beautiful, or so understanding, or so in need of being loved, or that he is so sexually starved, or so in need of affection, or so lonely, or…He maybe aware that by having an affair with her he might mess up both their lives; that she is frightened and seeking for protective strength, and hence will not easily let him go. In spite of knowing all this he goes ahead and has an affair with her. Why? Because he is aware of his desire but not of the forces underling it. What could these forces be? The forces are his vanity and narcissism. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
If he has set his mind on the conquest of this young lady as a proof of his attractiveness and value, he will usually not be aware of this real motive. He will fall for all the rationalizations mentioned above, and many more, and thus act according to this true motive precisely because he cannot see it, and is under the illusion that he is acting according to other more reasonable motives. The next step of awareness is that of the full awareness of the consequences of his act. At the moment of decision his mind is filled with desires and soothing rationalization. If he could clearly see the consequences of his act; if he could see, for instance, a long-protracted, insincere love affair, his getting tried of her because his narcissism can be satisfied only by fresh conquests, yet his continuing to make false promises because he feels guilty and afraid of admitting that he never really loved her, the paralyzing and weakening effect of this conflict on him and on her, etcetera, his decision, however, might be different. However, even awareness of the underlying, real motivations and of the consequences is not enough to increase the inclination for the right decision. Another important awareness is necessary: that of when the real choice is made, and to be aware of what the real possibilities are between which a person can choose. Assume he is aware of all motivations and of all consequences; assume he has “decided” not to go to be with this woman. He then takes her out to a show and before taking her home he suggests, “Let’s have a drink together.” On the face of it this sounds harmless enough. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
There seems to be nothing wrong in having a drink together; in fact, if the balance of forces were not already so delicate, there would be nothing wrong. If at the moment he could be aware of what “having a drink together” will lead to, he might not ask her. He would see that the atmosphere will be romantic, that the drink will weaken his willpower, that he will not be able to resist the next step of dropping into her apartment for another drink, and that almost certainly he will find himself enjoying pleasures of the flesh with her. With full awareness he would be able to foresee the sequence as being almost unavoidable, and if he could foresee it, he could refrain from “having a drink together.” However, since his desire makes him blind to seeing the necessary sequence, he does not make the right choice when he still would have the possibility of doing so. In other words, the real choice here is made when he invites her to have a drink (or perhaps when he asked her to the show) and not when he starts enjoying pleasures of the flesh with her. At least point of the chain of decision he is no longer free; at an earlier point he might have been free had he been aware that the real decision was to be made right there and then. The argument for the view that man has no freedom to choose the better as against the worse is to some considerable extent based on the fact that one looks usually at the last decision in a chain of events, and not at the first or second ones. Indeed, at the point of final decision the freedom to choose has usually vanished. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
However, the freedom to choose may still have been there at an earlier point when the person was not yet so deeply caught in his own passions. One might generalize by saying that one of the reasons why most people fail in their lives is precisely because they are not aware of the point when they are still free to act according to reason, and because they are aware of the choice only at the point when it is too late for them to make a decision. 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 thoughtless person passing a fire engine house and seeing the men and women sitting around or amusing themselves with games or sports sometimes conclude that the firefighter has an easy life, but a little reflection brings the conviction that they are under a watchful, waiting strain. With long hours, deprived of many of the pleasures of family life, the gong may at any moment send them to battle with the flames for days and nights without sleep or as long as human endurance permits. And the gong may also send them to their deaths. The firefight leads a strenuous life and faces death frequently. However, the victories of peace achieved by firefighters are their own best reward, though they should have a full mead of appreciation and support from the public they serve fearlessly, loyally, faithfully. Therefore be sure to open up your hearts to the Sacramento Fire Department and make a donation to ensure that they have support from the community and the resources they need to continue saying lives and property. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
After Mrs. Winchester died in 1922, construction ceased. Carpenter left their tools and immediately stopped all work. The furniture was moved out of the home and auctioned off. It took six moving trucks, six weeks to empty her house of all the furniture. Although the house was empty, it did not seem to be. A caretaker had been closing the house one evening when he became aware of a sound issuing from somewhere inside of the house that was very much like the sawing of wood. Then other noises began to accompany this sound—among them knocking and hammering and planning. It was as if half a dozen carpenters were in busy employment. The caretaker was of a bold disposition and, wishing to discover more, took off his shoes, and quietly descended the stairs with a flashlight in his hand. The noises of work continued as he came down into the hallway; but then, when he unlatched the door and went into the parlour, all was silent and still. None of the tools had been touched. None of the wood had been moved. Having examined every part of the room, he began to doubt the evidence of his sense in this matter. However, after he was leaving the house, the noises of sawing and hammering began again and continued for approximately half an hour. When they ceased, he went home. He had decided to tell no one about his experience, but, instead, to listen the next day for any unusual sounds. On the following day they began again, just as before. So he confided in the board of trustees, and a few of them agreed to watch with him on the next day. The noises commenced once more but, instead of entering the parlour, many of them rushed horrified out of the house. A few months later, the haunted house was opened as a tourist attraction.
Take pleasure in the antiques, the gardens and experience the homemaking of Victorian times. Enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café. 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 Syndrome of Decay
The ballot is stronger than the bullet. Sexual relations between family members who are not spouses, formally known as incest, is illegal across the United States of America because of the harm that it can cause to family relationships. With genetic inbreeding there is a high rate of birth defects. Incest has long been taboo and has been the subjects of myths, legends and literature (for example Oedipus—the tragedy of Sophocles). A large number of sources explain why incest should be banned. The reasons for the band range from psychodynamic traditions to genetic, sociological, religious, and historical needs in relations between kinship systems. Peter Choate and Radha Sharan note a high incidence of pathological genes in offspring. If incest leads to pregnancy and childbirth, the risk of genetic defects in such offspring is higher than that of offspring of unrelated couples—especially if both partners have a recessive gene in incest. The pathology of incestuous fixation depends obviously on the level of regression. In the most benign cases there is hardly any pathology to speak of except, perhaps, a slight overdependence on and fear of women. The deeper the level of regression the more intense are both the dependence and the fear. On the most archaic level, both dependence and fear have reached a degree which conflicts with sane living. There are other elements of pathology which also depend on the depth of regression. The incestuous orientation conflicts, as narcissism does, with reason and objectivity. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
If I fail to cut the umbilical cord, if I insist on worshipping the idol of certainty and protection, then the idol becomes sacred. It must not be criticized. If “mother” cannot be wrong, how can I judge anyone else objectively if he is in conflict with “mother” or disapproved of by her? This form of impairment of judgement is much less obvious when the object of fixation is not mother but the family, the nation, or the race. Since these fixations are supposed to be virtues, a strong national or religious fixation easily leads to biased and distorted judgments which are taken for truth because they are shared by all others who participate in the same fixation. After the distortion of reason, the second most important pathological trait in incestuous fixation is the lack of experiencing another being as fully human. Only those who share the same blood or soil are felt to be human; the “stranger” is a barbarian. As a consequence I remain also a “stranger” to myself, since I cannot experience humanity beyond that crippled form in which it is shared by the group united by common blood. Incestuous fixation impairs or destroys—in accordance with the degree of regression—the capacity to love. The third pathological symptom of incestuous fixation is conflict with independence and integrity. The person bound to mother and tribe is not free to be himself, to have a conviction of his own, to be committed. He cannot be open to the World, nor can he embrace it; he is always in the prison of the motherly racial-national-religious fixation. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Man is only fully born, and thus free to move forward and to become himself, to the degree to which he liberates himself from all forms of incestuous fixation. Incestuous fixation is usually recognized as such, or it is rationalized in such a way as to make it appear reasonable. Somebody strongly bound to his mother may rationalize his incestuous tie in various ways: It is my duty to serve her; or, She did no much for men and I owe her my life; or, She has suffered so much; or She is so wonderful. If the object of fixation is not the individual mother but the nation, the rationalizations is the concept that one owes everything to the nation, or that the nation is so extraordinary and so wonderful. The tendency to remain bound to the mothering person and her equivalents—to blood, family, tribe—is inherent in all men and women. It is constantly in conflict with the opposite tendency—to be born, to progress, to grow. In the case of normal development, the tendency for growth wins. In the case of severe pathology, the regressive tendency for symbiotic union wins, and it results in the person’s more or less total incapacitation. Dr. Freud’s concept of the incestuous strivings to be found in any child is perfectly correct. Yet the significance of this concept transcends Dr. Freud’s own assumption. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Incestuous wishes are not primarily a result of sexual desire, but constitute one of the most fundamental in man: the wish to remain tied to where he came from, the fear of being free, and the fear of being destroyed by the very figure toward whom he had made himself helpless, renouncing any independence. In their less severe manifestations, necrophilia, narcissism, and incestuous fixation are quite different from each other, and very often a person may have one of these orientations without sharing in the others. Also, in their non-malignant forms no one of these orientations causes grave incapacitation of reason and love, or creates intense destructiveness. (As an example for this, I would like to mention the person of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was moderately mother-fixed, moderately narcissistic, and a strongly biophilous person. In contrast, Mr. Hitler was an almost totally necrophilous, narcissistic and incestuous person.) However, the more malignant the three orientations are, the more they converge. First of all there is a close affinity between incestuous fixation and narcissism. Inasmuch as the individual has not yet fully emerged from mother’s womb or mother’s breast, he is not free to relate to others or to love others. He and his mother (as one) are the object of his narcissism. This can be seen most clearly where the personal narcissism has been transformed into group narcissism. There we find very clearly incestuous fixation blended with narcissism. It is this particular blend which explains the power and the irrationality of all national, racial, religious, and political fanaticism. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
In the most archaic forms of incestuous symbiosis and narcissism they are joined by necrophilia. The craving to return to the womb and to the past is at the same time the craving for death and destruction. If extreme forms of necrophilia, narcissism, and incestuous symbiosis are blended, we can speak of a syndrome which I propose to call the “syndrome of decay.” The person suffering from the syndrome is indeed evil, since he betrays life and growth and is a devotee of death and crippledness. Th best-documented example of a man suffering from the “syndrome of decay” is Mr. Hitler. He was deeply attracted to death and destruction; he was an extremely narcissistic person for whom the only reality was his own wishes and thoughts. Finally, he was an extremely incestuous person. Whatever his relationship to his mother may have been, his incestuousness was mainly expressed in his fanatical devotion to the race, the people who shared the same blood. He was obsessed by the idea of saving the Germanic race by preventing its blood from being poisoned. First of all, as he expressed it in Mein Kampf, to save it from syphilis; second, to save it from being polluted by Jewish people. Narcissism, death, and incest were the fatal blend which made a man like Mr. Hitler one of the enemies of mankind and of life. This triade of traits has been most succinctly described by Richard Hughes in The Fox in the Attic: #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
“After all, how could that monistic “I” of Hitler’s ever without forfeit succumb to the entire act of sex, the whole essence of which is recognition of other “Other”? Without damage I mean to his fixed conviction that he was the universe’s unique sentient centre, the sole authentic incarnate Will it contained or had ever contained? Because this of course was the rationale of his supernal inner ‘Power’: Hitler existed alone. ‘I am, none else beside me.’ The universe contained no other persons than him, only things; and thus for him the whole gamut of the ‘personal’ pronouns lacked wholly its normal emotional content. This left Hitler’s designing and creating motions enormous and without curb: it was only natural for this architect to turn also politician for he saw no real distinction in the new things to be handled: thee ‘men’ were merely him-mimicking ‘things,’ in the same category as other tools and stones. All tools have handles—this sort was fitted with ears. And it is nonsensical to love or hate or pity (or tell the truth to) stones. Hitler’s then was that rare diseased state of the personality, an ego virtually without penumbra: rare and diseased, that is, when abnormally such an ego survives in an otherwise mature adult intelligence clinically sane (for in the new-born doubtless it is a beginning normal enough and even surviving into the young child.) Hitler’s adult “I” had developed thus—into a larger but still undifferentiated structure, as a malignant growth does. The tortured, demented creature tossed on his bed. ‘Rienzi-night,’ that night on the Freinberg over Linz after the opera: that surely had been the climatic night of his boyhood for it was then he had first confirmed that lonely omnipotence within him. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
“Impelled to go up there in the darkness into that high place he had not been shown there all earthly kingdoms in a moment of time? And facing there the ancient gospel question had not his whole being been one assenting Yea? Had he not struck the everlasting bargain there on the high mountain under the witnessing November stars? Yet now…now, when he had seemed to be Rienzi-like the crest of the wave, the irresistible wave which with mounting force should have carried him to Berlin, that crest had begun to curl: it had curled and broken and toppled on him, thrusting him down, down in the green thundering water, deep. Tossing desperately on his bed, he gasped—he was drowning (what of all things always Hitler most feared). Drowning? Then…that suicidal boyhood moment’s teetering long ago on the Danube bridge at Linz…after all the melancholic boy had leaped that long-ago day, and everything since was dream! Then this noise now was the mighty Danube singing in his dreaming drowning ears. In the green watery light surrounding him a dead face was floating towards him upturned: a dead face with his own slightly-bulging eyes in it unclosed: his dead Mother’s face as he has last seen it with unclosed eyes white on the white pillow. Dead, and white, and vacant even of its love for him. But now that face was multiplied—it was all around him in the water. So his Mother was this water, these waters drowning him! At that he ceased to struggle. He drew up his knees to his chin in the primal attitude and lay there, letting himself down. So Hitler slept at last.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
In this short passage all the elements of the “syndrome of decay” have been brought together in the way only a great writer can do. We see Mr. Hitler’s narcissism, his longing to drown—the water being his mother—and his affinity to death, symbolized by his dead mother’s face. The regression to the womb is symbolized in his posture, with his knees drawn up to his chin in the primal attitude. Mr. Hitler is only one outstanding example of the “syndrome of decay.” There are many who thrive on violence, hate, racism, and narcissistic nationalism, and who suffer from this syndrome. They are the leaders of or the “true believers” in violence, war, and destruction. Only the most unbalanced and sick among them will express their true aims explicitly, or even be aware of them consciously. They will tend to rationalize their orientation as love of country, duty, honor, et cetera. However, when the forms of normal civilized life have broken down, as happens in international war or civil war, such people no longer need to repress their deepest desires; they will sing hymns of hate; they will come to life and unfold all their energies at times when they can serve death. Indeed, war and an atmosphere of violence is the situation in which the person with the “syndrome of decay” becomes fully himself. Most likely it is only a minority of the population who are motivated by this syndrome. Yet the very fact that neither they nor those who are not so motivated are aware of the real motivation makes them dangerous carriers of an infectious disease, a hate infection, in times of strife, conflict, cold and hot war. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Hence it is important that they be recognized for what they are: men who love death, who are afraid of independence, for whom only the needs of their own group have reality. They would not have to be isolated physically, as is done with lepers; it would be sufficient if persons who are normal were to understand their crippledness and the malignancy of the strivings hidden being their pious rationalizations, in order that normal persons might acquire a certain degree of immunity to their pathological influence. In order to do this it is, of course, necessary to learn one thing: not to take words for reality, and to see through the deceptive rationalizations of those who suffer from a sickness that only man is capable of suffering from: the negation of life before life has vanished. The recognition of neurotic trend, means the recognition of a driving force in the disturbance of the personality, and this knowledge in itself has a certain value for therapy. Formerly the person felt powerless, at the mercy of intangible forces. The recognition of even one of these forces not only means a general gain in insight but also dispels some of the bewildered helplessness. Knowledge of the concrete reason for a disturbance provides a realization that there is a chance to do something about it. This change may be illustrated with a simple example. A farmer wants to grow fruit trees, but his trees do not thrive, though he puts great efforts into their care and tries all the remedies he knows. After some time he becomes discouraged. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
However, finally he discovers that the trees have a special disease or need a special ingredient in the soil, and there is an immediate change in his outlook on the matter and his mood regarding it, though nothing has changed as yet in the trees themselves. The only difference in the external situation is that there is now a possibility of goal-directed action. Sometimes the mere uncovering of a neurotic trend is sufficient to cure a neurotic upset. A capable executive, for instance, was deeply disturbed because the attitude of his employees, which had always been one of devotion, changed for reasons outside his control. Instead of settling differences in an amicable way, they started to make belligerent and unreasonable demands. Although he was a highly resourceful person in most matter he felt utterly incapable of coping with this new situation, and reached such a measure of resentment and despair that he considered withdrawing from the business. In this instance the mere uncovering of his deep need for devotion of people dependent on him sufficed to remedy the situation. Usually, however, the mere recognition of a neurotic trend does not engender any radical change. In the first place, the willingness to change which is elicited by the discovery of such a trend is equivocal and hence lacks forcefulness, and, in the second place, a willingness to change, even if it amounts to an unambiguous wish, is not yet an ability to change. This ability develops only later. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
The reason why the initial willingness to overcome a neurotic trend does not usually constitute a reliable force, despite the enthusiasm that often goes with it, is that the trend has also a subjective value which the person does not want to relinquish. When the prospect arises of overcoming a particular compulsive need, those force are mobilized which want to maintain it. In other words, soon after the first liberating effect of the discovery the person is confronted with a conflict: he wants to change and he does not want to chance. This conflict usually remains unconscious because he does not like to admit that he wants to adhere to something which is against reason and self-interest. If for any reason the determination not to change prevails, the liberating effect of the discovery will be only a fleeting relief followed by a deeper discouragement. To return to the analogy of the farmer, if he knows or believes that the required remedy is not available to him, his change in spirit will not last long. Fortunately these negative reactions are not too frequent. More often the willingness and the unwillingness to change tend to compromise. The patient then sticks to his resolution to change, but want to get away with as little as possible. If he uncovers the origin of the trend in childhood, or if her merely makes resolution to change, or he may hope that it will be enough, or he will fall back on the delusion that a mere recognition of the trend will change everything overnight. Earlier attempts to train experts in neuropsychiatry have largely failed. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Medical education is still struggling, without notable success, to produce physicians who can understand not only the peculiarities and limitations of the biological apparatus with which man has to effect his adaptations, but who can appreciate the problems of man in making the psychosocial adaptations demanded by modern culture. Neuropsychiatry has been replaced in recent time by the separate specialties of psychiatry and neurology. And within psychiatry there is growing evidence of a “working” schism—on the other hand, there are psychiatrists who treat almost exclusively by the administration of drugs, electroshock, or other physical means, and on the other hand, there are psychiatrist who almost exclusively treat by conversation. In his own nature, man is not a complex of dissociated parts and functions. He is a unity. A proper pill will lift his spirits, so will a proper word. It is probably that an appropriately integrated application of medicine and conversation will accomplish more thorough and lasting therapeutic benefit than will either alone. We do not now understand all that we must in order to be able to prescribe and administer optimally integrated therapy to the emotionally ill, but even if we had such knowledge there are strong forces that would continue to work toward fractioned, one-sided treatment. A very provocative study points up not only the marked dualism in the therapeutic activities of psychiatrists, but also indicates that the selection of physical or psychological treatment is determined less by the nature of the illness than it is by the social class of the patient. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Members of the higher social class (defined by education, occupation, and residence) are much more likely to receive psychotherapy than are members of the lower social class who typically receive electroshock therapy or custodial hospitalization. With this comparison we can once again look at the treatment of mental illness in historical perspective. Today we recognize three major forms of treatment: chemotherapy (the tranquilizers, anti-depressants, and other drugs), shock therapies (electroshock, insulin coma therapy, and variants of these), and psychotherapy. The use of drugs in treatment of emotionally disturbed persons has a long history. The current upsurge of interest and enthusiasm with the advent of the ataractic (tranquilizing) medications is responsive to a technology advance in drug chemistry rather than to any basically new idea. The ancient physicians of Greece had their pharmacopoeia; though their medications were selected with less knowledge both of chemistry and physiology, they allowed for the ubiquitous and potent effect of suggestion which is almost inextricably associated with any clinical use of medication. The Greeks were not without enthusiasm for their prescriptions. While electroshock therapy represents a highly refined and nicely controlled administration of a physical agent to produce sudden unconsciousness, the general notion of severe stimulation and violent psychological shock was a stock-in-trade of early physicians, exempli gratia, immersion to the point of drowning, the “surprise bath,” and comparable procedures. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
The physical and chemical treatments of the early physicians are better recorded than are their prescriptions for psychological counseling, but we do know that the ancients were not totally ignorant of psychogenic factors in hysteria and melancholy and it is likely that therapeutic conversation was effectively engaged in, although the forerunner of our modern psychotherapist may not have been aware that his words were having beneficial impact. If we look to ancillary treatments such as music therapy, recreational therapy, and milieu therapy, we readily find their counterparts in the descriptions of the Aesculapian sanitaria. Objective observation of distinctive avenues of therapeutic approach to the psychiatric patient would suggest that time has brought chiefly refinement and extension rather than basic innovation. Psychotherapy is practiced on a broader scale than ever before in history and with a greatly increased knowledge of psychopathology. When seen in full perspective this historical development constitutes less progress than suggested at first glance. The availability of therapeutic conversion, which many authorities would hold to be the most thorough and effective of psychiatric therapies, is largely restricted by social class membership. It has been true throughout history that the treatment of the emotionally ill person has been determined less by the nature of his illness, less by his need, less by what promised cure than by his ability to pay. Sedation, seclusion, recreation, and extended personal access to the physician for support, reassurance, and exhortation (and possibly insight), have been the prescription for the wealthy. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Institutionalization, restraint, and shock therapy have been the prescription for the indigent psychiatric patient. Neither the essential content and nature of psychiatric treatment nor its distribution have really changed markedly over the centuries. With the development of dynamic psychiatry based upon the more fundamental and durable of psychoanalytic insight, with the modern developments in chemotherapy, and with the growing availability of community mental health centers, it is possible for an enlightened public with the help of the pertinent professions to develop now a truly integrated and logistically feasible program for the treatment of mental illness, with treatment optimally prescribed in accord with the needs of the individual rather than dictated by irrelevant economic factors or denied by an artificially limited supply of personnel. Closely bound up with the wrestling of the spirit is the necessity of prayer—not so much the prayer of petition to a Father as the prayer of one joined in spirit with the Son of God, his will fused with His—declaring to the enemy the authority of Christ over all their power. Sometimes the self-actualized has to “wrestle” in order to pray; at other times, to pray in order to wrestle. If he cannot “fight” he must pray, and if he cannot pray, he must fight. To further highlight this illustration, if the self-actualized is conscious of a weight on his spirit, he must get rid of the weight by refusing all the “causes” of the weight—for it I necessary to keep the spirit unburdened to fight, and to retain the power of detection. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
The delicate spirit-sense becomes dull under “weights” or pressure upon it; hence the enemy’s ceaseless tactics to get “burdens” or pressure on the spirit, unrecognized as from the foe, or else recognized and allowed to remain. The man may feel “bound up” and the cause be in others, for there may be no open spirit or open mind in another disciple to receive from the spirit and mind of the one who feels bound up; there may be no capacity in the other to receive any message of truth; there may be no capacity in the other to receive any message of truth; there may be some thought in the mind of the other which is checking the flow of the spirit. If in the morning the self-actualized finds a “weight” or heaviness on his spirit, and it is not dealt with, he is sure to lose his position of victory through the day. In dealing with weight on the spirit, the moment it is recognized the self-actualized must at once act in spirit, and stand withstand and resist the powers of darkness. Each of these positions requires spirit-action, for these words do not describe a “state” or an “attitude,” nor an act by soul or body. To “stand” is a spirit-action repelling an aggressive move of the enemy; to “withstand” is to make an aggressive move against them; and to “resist” is actively to fight with his spirit, even as a man “resists” with his body another who is physically attacking him. When we consider the Christ of Culture, there is a pro-culture people, those who feel no great tension between church and World, the social laws and the Gospel, the workings of divine grace and human effort, the ethics of salvation and the ethic of social conservation or progress. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
They interpret the culture through Christ and Christ through culture. They establish this harmony by selecting the best elements of civilization and matching them with the eternally true, rational principles exemplified in Christianity. There are, however, several objections to the Christ-of-culture position. First, it constructs apocryphal gospels by exclusive attention to a single trait of Jesus, such as spiritual knowledge, reason, a sense for the infinite, the moral law, or brotherly love. The result is that loyalty to contemporary culture has so far qualified the loyalty to Christ that he has been abandoned in favour of an idol called by his name. Secondly, the culture Christian dilutes the radical power of sin by explaining it as ignorance, superstition, or stupidity which is dispelled by the pure light of reason refracted through Christ. Finally, cultural Christianity is embarrassed by the doctrine of grace because it seems to demean the natural goodness of human nature. Still, we consider Jesus the Christ and the New Being. We recognize the fact of universal estrangement, and the power of sin to tear the cultural fabric asunder. And, we know that the all-pervading influence of grace grasps the human spirit in an ultimate concern and reveals the religious depths of cultural creations. The cultural Christians operate at the level of morality. They are content with the essential harmony of Christ and the World. They are confident in the power of man’s rational spirit, while we rely upon the grace of the divine Spirit. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
The “True” and the “Apparent World”—the seductions that emanate from this concept are of three kinds: An unknown World: we are inquisitive adventurers—the known World seems to make us weary (the danger of the concept lies in its insinuating that “this” World is known to us). Another World, where things are different: something in us recalculates; our silent acquiescence, or reticence thereby lose their value—perhaps everything will be fine, we have not hoped in vain. The World where things are different, where we ourselves (who knows?) are different. A true World: this is the most amazing trick and offense that has ever been perpetrated against us; so much has gotten encrusted on the word true that we unwittingly offer it all up as a present to the “true World”—the true World must also be a truthful World, one that does not cheat us, does not make fools of us: believing in it is virtually having to believe (out of decency, as it is among those worthy of confidence). The concept “the unknown World” insinuates that this World is “known” (as tedious); the concept “the other World” insinuates that the World could be otherwise—supersedes necessity and fate (unnecessary to submit, to adapt); the concept “the true World” insinuates that this World is untruthful, deceitful, dishonest, inauthentic, inessential—and, consequently, not a World adapted to our needs (inadvisable to adapt to it; better to resist it). We therefore divest from “this” World in three ways: With our inquisitiveness—as if the most interesting part were elsewhere; with our submission—as if it were not necessary to submit; as if this World were not a necessity of the highest order; with our sympathy and respect—as if this World did not deserve them, were impure, had been dishonest with us. We have revolted three ways—we have made an x into a critique of the “known World.” 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 Sacramento Fire Department has courage, integrity, selflessness, and determination. They help humanity progress and prosper by saving lives and property. Please make a donation to these heroes. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 