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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/
Sustained, Difficult Experiences that Make it Hard to Go On
A man must stay in his own orbit and take his directives from within. If through fear of loneliness, intimidation, or suggestion, he joins the marching groups of time, he will not reach his best. Covert hypnosis might sound like something that just would not work. After all, if they are going to be hypnotized, a person has to be aware of things. The back-and-forth action of an old pocket watch repeated words. You are getting sleepy. Those kinds of things cannot be done without the subject knowing what you are trying to do. Some people claim to be able to contact the unconscious mind of others. Manipulating thoughts of other without the subjects being aware of what they are doing is what covert hypnosis is. Of course, with something this sinister, there are huge controversies surrounding the subject. Who has not ever been sleep deprived? A lack of sleep degrades both short-term and long-term memory. Sleep deprived decision-makers are likely to have access to fewer strategic options, decision criteria and other information in their long-term memory. This knowledge, however, is crucial for making informed strategic decisions. That is why people use sleep deprivation to get others to do what they want. Intense emotions such as fear, anger, and shame can alter individuals’ capacities for decision-making, emotional regulation, and relating to others. It is well established that emotion plays a key role in human social and economic decision making. People evaluate objective features of alternatives such as expected return in a subjective way, and emotions are understood to influence these subjective evaluations. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
People often play on old fears to get other to do what they want them to do. The history of neuroscientific research on fear has developed extensively over the last 50 years, in particular focusing on the neural structures involved in fear, and how fear can affect decision making processes. The neurocircuitry supporting fear conditioning has been extensively investigated in animal models and humans and highlights the central role of amygdala in fear acquisition, storage, and expression. The amygdala triggers the release of stress hormones epinephrine and cortisol, which increase heart rate, respiration, and blood pressure, helping the body prepare to enact fight or flight. Very often the effects of fear on cognition are beyond our control. It is easier for emotions to invade our thought processes than it is for us to take cognitive control of our emotions because the amygdala is better at driving the prefrontal cortex than vice versa. Although there may be some experiences of fear that agents find tolerable, enjoyable, or even worth seeking (exempli gratia, horror movies, haunted houses, roller coasters), experiences of genuine and sustained fear for the wellbeing of one’s self, one’s loved ones, or fear for the security of one’s environment are all forms of suffering. To be fearful in these senses is to suffer. These physiological components of fear experiences have been shown to alter a variety of everyday cognitive processes. Fear has been shown to alter processes of visual perception, risk perception, and information uptake. Fear has been shown to sometimes radically alter individuals’ practices of decision-making. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Perhaps unsurprisingly, experiences of fear sometimes prompt individuals to make more risk-averse decisions, and to be more pessimistic about the likelihood of beneficial events in the future. Fear in some cases alters study subjects’ capacity for making decisions by making them excessively focused on the possibility of catastrophic events. This means that fearful subjects are not able to proceed in decision-making as they ordinarily would, because they are held up by fear of risks or devasting outcomes. As such, fear can certainly have serious effect on belief, and in some cases, can have epistemic costs. In conjunction with the ways fears can augment what agents see, perceive as dangerous, how agents process information, and make decisions, fears can certainly alter individuals’ beliefs in relation to processes of perception, information-processing, and decision-making. If a fearful individual is more likely to visually process only some parts of their environment, or to be able to take in more limited amounts of new information, this can limit what they know about their environment. If a fearful agent is more likely to perceive some object or event as risky than their non-fearful counterpart, their beliefs about that object or event may not accurately reflect the actual risk posed. Fear can have serious implications for what agents believe, and for how accurately those beliefs reflect reality. In some cases, this can amount to epistemic damage. Fear can also disrupt agents’ ways of relating to others: subject can become more suspicious of others, less trusting, and more circumspect. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Both fears directly related to one’s relationship (exempli gratia, fears of the person with whom one is in relationship, or fears that something bad may happen to them) and unrelated fears (exempli gratia, fears of some other perceived danger) can stall one’s ability to relate to others: they can distract individuals, make one unable to focus on treating others well, or disrupt one’s capacity for trusting ways of relating. If fear can have these effect, causing suffering, fundamentally altering even one’s most basic capacities for visual perception, risk perception, information uptake, making subjects less sure of themselves and their futures, making it difficult or impossible to relate to others in practiced ways, it seems unsurprising that serious experiences of fear can, in some instances, be disorienting. In addition to the ways fears can disrupt these foundational capacities, they can also make one question who one is, and how one should continue to act in everyday life. Disorientation is sustained, difficult experiences that make it hard to go on. Disorientations regularly follow devasting experiences like the loss of a loved one, serious illness, trauma, o oppression, and they can also follow more neutral or beneficial events like migration, feminist education, queer identification, or consciousness-raising. In all cases, to be disoriented is to feel up in the air, and unsure of oneself, in more or less debilitating ways. Disorientations are not one-time events: they may be triggered by discrete events (exempli gratia, the death of a loved one), but to be disoriented in this sense is a sustained experience. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Less metaphorically, to be disoriented is to have difficulty making plans, feeling secure and confident in one’s actions, or being able to go about one’s daily life with ease. Think of the common feelings following the loss of a loved one or diagnosis of a serious illness: who am I now? How can I go one with my life? My home and job may not feel comfortable anymore. I may struggle to feel happy, and be constantly questioning myself and my decisions. Disorientation is used to capture a sense in which major life experiences can make it hard to know how to go on in the sense of becoming unsure of how we should identify ourselves, what we should believe, what projects we should pursue, and what actions we should prioritize. Psychopathological offenders also use panic to get victims to do what they want. An offender may scare a large group of people and keep repeating a fearful trigger word to get others to shout it and warn people, until there is total chaos in what was a peaceful environment. A moral panic is a widespread fear, most often an irrational one, that someone or something is a threat to the values, safety, and interests of a community or society at large. Typically, a moral panic is perpetuated by the news medica, fueled by politicians, and often results in the passage of new laws or politicians that target the source of panic. In this way, moral panic can foster increased social control. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Moral panics are often centered around people who are marginalized in society due to their race or ethnicity, class, sexuality, nationality, or religion. As such, a moral panic often draws on known stereotypes and reinforces them. It can also exacerbate the real and perceived differences and divisions between groups of people. Moral panic is well known in sociology of deviance and crime and is related to the labeling theory of deviance. Manipulators also use confusion as a method of control. One hypnotic process that stands out in this context is called, “the confusion technique.” This method can be employed by manipulators to induce a trance-like state by overwhelming the listener with a barrage of information that does not quite connect logically. They talk incessantly, and eventually, you submit and do what they want. Why do some people do this? The goal is to disorient you to the point where you seek any relief. When the instruction finally simplifies, offering a clear action, your brain latches on, grateful for direction instead of confusion. This is the essence of the confusion technique: it leads you through a maze until you are so desperate for a way out that you will latch onto the first clear directive which is often what the manipulator wants you to do. Confusion can be a manipulation that preys on our desire to escape discomfort, offering a solution that aligns with a manipulator’s wishes. Being aware of such techniques is crucial. The confusion technique is often employed without conscious intent; many manipulators are not studying manuals about unethical influence. They have simply learned that their method yield results they want. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
The freedom to follow the commands of reason is a psychological problem. Let us return to our example of the man who is confronted with the choice of either smoking or not smoking this cigarette or, to put it differently, to the problem of whether he has the freedom to follow his rational intention. We can imagine an individual whom we can predict with near certainty that he will not be able to follow his intention. Assuming he is a man deeply bound to a mothering figure and with an oral-receptive orientation, a man who is always expecting something from other, who has never been able to assert himself, and because of all this is filled with intense and chronic anxiety; smoking, to him, is the satisfaction of his receptive craving, and a defense against his anxiety; the cigarette, to him, symbolizes strength, adultness, activity, and for this reason he cannot do without it. His craving for the cigarette is the result of his anxiety, his receptiveness, etcetera, and is as strong as these motives are. There is a point where they are so strong that the person would not be able to overcome his craving unless some drastic change went to occur in the balance of forces within him. Otherwise we can say that he is, for all practical purposes, not free to choose what he had recognized to be better. On the other hand, we may imagine a man of such maturity, productivity, lack of greed, that he would not be able to act in a way that is contrary to reason and to his true interests. He also would not be “free”; he could not smoke because he would feel on inclination to do so. This is a state of beatitude in which man is not free to sin. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Freedom of choice is not a forma abstract capacity which one either “has” or “has not”; it is, rather, a function a person’s character structure. Some people have no freedom to choose the good because their character structure has lost the capacity to act in accordance with the good. Some people have lost the capacity of choosing the evil, precisely because their character structure has lost the craving for evil. In these two extreme cases we may say that both are determined to act as they do because the balance of forces in their character leaves them no choice. In the majority of men, however, we deal with contradictory inclinations which are so balanced that a choice can be made. The act is the result of the respective strength of conflicting inclinations within the person’s character. It must be clear by now that we can use the concept “freedom” in two different senses: In one, freedom is an attitude, an orientation, part of the character structure of the mature, fully developed, productive person: in this sense I can speak of a “free” person as I can speak of a loving, productive, independent person. In fact, a free person in this sense is a loving, productive, independent person; freedom in this sense has no reference to a special choice between two possible actions, but to the character structure of the person involved; and in this sense the person who “is not free to choose evil” is the completely free person. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
The second meaning of freedom is the one which we have mainly used so far, namely, the capacity to make a choice between opposite alternatives; alternatives which, however, always imply the choice between the rational and the irrational interest in life and its growth versus stagnation and death; when used in this second sense the best and the worst man are not free to choose, while it is precisely the average man with contradictory inclinations, for whom the problem of freedom of choice exist. If we speak of freedom in this second sense the question arises: On what factors does this freedom to choose between contradictory inclination depend? Quite obviously the most important factor lies in the respective strengths of the contradictory inclinations, particularly in the strength of the unconscious aspects of these inclinations. However, if we ask what factor support freedom of choice even if the irrational inclination is stronger, we find that the decisive factor in choosing the better rather than the wore lies in awareness. Awareness of what constitutes good or evil; which actions in the concrete situation is an appropriate means to the desired end; awareness of the forces behind the apparent wish; that means the discovery of unconscious desires; awareness of the real possibilities between which one can choose; awareness of the consequences of the one choice as against the other; awareness of the fact that awareness as such is not effective unless it is accompanied by the will to act, by the readiness to suffer the pain of frustration that necessarily results from an action contrary to one’s passions. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Many of the patient’s difficulties in expressing his thoughts and feelings are related to the analyst. Thus the person who is unable to associate freely—whether because it would threaten his defenses or because he has lost too much of his own initiative—is likely to transfer to the analyst his aversion to the process of his chagrin at failure, and react with an unconscious defiant obstruction. That his own development, his happiness, is at stake is practically forgotten. And even if the process does not give rise to hostility toward the analyst, there is the further fact that fears concerning the analyst’s attitude are always present to some degree. Will he understand? Will he condemn? Will he look down upon me or turn against me? Is he really concerned with my own best development, or does he want to mold me into his pattern? If I make personal remarks about him, will he feel hurt? If I do not accept his suggestions, will he lose patience? It is this infinite variety of concerns and obstacles that makes unreserved frankness such an extremely difficult task. As a result, evasive tactics will inevitably occur. Th patient will deliberately omit certain incidents. Certain factors will never occur to him in the analytical hour. Feelings will not be expressed because they are too fleeting. Details will be omitted because he considers them trivial. “Figuring out” will take the place of a free flow of thoughts. He will stick to a long—winded account of daily occurrences. There is almost no end to the ways in which he may consciously or unconsciously try to evade this requirement. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
A second task confronting the patient in analysis is to face his problems squarely—to gain an insight into them by recognizing factors that were hitherto unconscious. This is not only an intellectual process, however, as the word “recognize” might suggest; as emphasized in analytical literature since Ferenczi and Rank, it is both an intellectual and an emotional experience. If I may use a slang expression, it means gaining information about ourselves which we feel in our “guts.” The insight may be a recognition of an entirely repressed factor, such as the discovery made by a compulsively modest or benevolent person that actually he has a diffuse contempt for people. It may be a recognition that a drive which is at the level of awareness has an extent, intensity, and quality that were never dreamed of: a person may know that he is ambitious, for instance, but never have suspected before that his ambition is an all-devouring passion determining his life and containing the destructive element of wanting a vindictive triumph over others. Or the insight may be a finding that certain seemingly unconnected factors are closely interrelated. A person may have known that he has certain grandiose expectations as to his significance and his achievements in life, and have been aware also that he has a melancholy outlook and a general foreboding that he will succumb to some pending disaster within a brief span, but never have suspected that either attitude represents a problem or that the two have any connection. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
In this case his insight might reveal to him that his urge to be admired for his unique value is so rigid that he feels a deep indignation as its nonfulfillment and therefore devalues life itself: like an inveterate aristocrat who is faced with the necessity of stooping to a lower standard of living, he would rather stop living than be satisfied with less than he feels entitled to expect. Thus his preoccupation with impending disaster would actually represent an underlying wish to die, partly as a spiteful gesture toward life for not having measured up to his expectations. It is impossible to say in general terms what it means to a patient to obtain an insight into his problems, just as it would be impossible to say what it means to a person to be exposed to sunshine. Sunshine may kill him or save his life, it may be fatiguing or refreshing, its effect depending on its intensity and also on his own condition. Similarly, an insight may be extremely painful or it may bring an immediate relief. There are several reasons why an insight may produce relief. To begin with the least important consideration, it is often a gratifying intellectual experience merely to learn the reasons for some phenomenon not hitherto understood; in any situation in life it is likely to be a relief merely to recognize the truth. If such memories help one to understand precisely what factors influenced one’s development at the start, this consideration applies not only to elucidations of present peculiarities but also to memories of hitherto forgotten childhood experiences. #RandolphHarris 12 of 2019
More important is the fact that an insight may reveal to a person his own true feelings by showing him the speciousness of his former attitude. When he becomes free to express the anger, irritation, contempt, fear, or whatever it was that was hitherto repressed, an active and alive feeling has replaced a paralyzing inhibition and a step is take toward finding himself. The inadvertent laughter that frequently occurs at such discoveries reveals the feeling of liberation. Even if the finding itself is far from agreeable, even if the person recognizes, for instance, that all his life he has merely tried to “get by” or has tried to hurt and dominate other, this may hold true. In addition to producing this increase in self-feeling, in aliveness, in activity, the insight may remove the tensions generated by his former necessity to check his true feelings: by increasing the forces that were needed for repression it may increase the amount of available energies. The extent to which the patient has gained true and lasting insight into his personality, or the degree to which he has learned how to use the natural equipment of his personality in achieving more effective adaptation to future problems or stresses are vital dimensions in the patient’s total response to psychotherapy. Some of these criterion measures are relatively objective, accessible, and easy to record. Others require the development of particular methods of assessment, direct and indirect. Some are of a nature that demand clinical appraisal and subjective judgment; with these it is necessary to avoid so far as possible the usual sources of error in the fallible human observer-evaluator, especially the bias which operate if the expert responsible for an activity is asked to be a judge of its success. #Randolphharris 13 of 20
Through the joint efforts of psychiatrist, psychologists, and social workers there is presently available a sturdy armamentarium of psychometric and sociometric devices that can yield complex measures of the patient’s level of mental health. There is increasing evidence of readiness to use multiple measures in evaluating the effectiveness of treatment. With all of the above evidences of the vitality of the research endeavour in psychotherapy, it is to be hoped that within the next 25 years we shall have a fair answer to our questions: Does psychotherapy work? Does a particular method of therapy work better with certain patients than another method? It is probable that, in addition to perfection of research techniques, the answering of these crucial questions will require establishment of special research clinics in order to assure the participation in the evaluation studies of therapists who represent them major schools and who presumably practice different forms of psychotherapy. In this regard, it is interesting to note that the often-voiced opinion that different approaches may be differentially effective with different problems has no led to a general pattern of staffing clinics or hospitals with therapists representing schools of apparently divergent orientation and practice. The homogeneity of the theoretical “climate” in most treatment centers is probably not so much a function of administrative policy (or oversight) as a “mating” tendency among therapists. To paraphrase the old saw about the birds, “Psychotherapists of persuasion agglutinate.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
This tendency toward professional cohabitation of therapists trained in a particular school is probably only a natural response to subtle psychological pressures, and it might be hypothesized that such homogeneous clinics have a higher therapeutic effectiveness on the average than would a group of therapists of diverse persuasion. Obvious differences of conviction interfere with certainty, reduce certainty depress confidence, and impaired confidence is likely to lower competence! Again and again, an “objective” and a “wile” are quite distinct. The wile is a means used by the foe to gain an objective. The evil spirits must use “wiles” to carry out their objective. Their objective is deception, but their “wiles” will be counterfeits. They are liars, but how can they succeed in getting their lies into the mind of a man? They do not need wiles to make themselves liars, but they need the wile to get the lies accepted by the self-actualized. The wiles of the ultimate negative and his emissaries are countless and fitted to the individual self-actualized. If he is to be moved by suffering from any course of action detrimental to their interests, they will play upon his sympathies by the suffering they cause to someone near and dear to him. Of if he shrinks from personal suffering, they will work upon this to make him change his course. To those who are naturally sympathetic, they will use a counterfeit love. Those who can be attracted by intellectual things will be drawn from the spiritual sphere by being driven to excessive study, or be given mental attractions of many kinds. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
While others—those who are oversensitive and conscientious—may be constantly charged with the blame of apparently continuous failure. They lying spirits lash the person for what they themselves but, but if the believer understands how to refuse all blame from them, he can use their very doings as a weapon against them. For this conflict with the powers of darkness the self-actualized must learn by experience how to take and use the armour for the battle. The objective is clearly not victory over sin—this is assumed—but VICTORY OVER THE ULTIMATE NEGATIVE. The call to stand in armour; to stand in the evil day; to stand against the powers of darkness; to stand after accomplishing the work of overthrowing them—having overcome all—by the strength of God. The armour is provided that the child of God should be able to stand against the wiles of the ultimate negative—clearly showing that the self-actualized can be made able to conquer all the principalities and powers of hell if he fulfills the necessary conditions, and uses the armour provided for him. If it is provided for meeting a real foe, and God evidently demands a real knowledge of it on the part of the self-actualized—to whom the fact of the provision, the real fact of the foe, and the fact of the fight must be as real facts as any other facts declared in the Scriptures, it must be a real armour. The armoured Christians is armoured with truth, righteousness of life, marking and keeping peace. Self-preservation (the root meaning of the word “salvation) and control, faith as a shield, scriptures on hand and often memorized, and praying without ceasing. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The non-armoured Christian is much different. One is opened to lies, through ignorance. Unrighteousness through ignorance, divisions and quarrels, reckless unwatchfulness, doubt and unbelief, relying on reason instead of God’s Word. Relaying on work without prayer. The self-actualized who takes up the whole armour of God as a covering and protection against the foe should himself then start walking in victory over the enemy. To do this he must have his spirit indwelt by the Holy Spirit, so that he is strengthened with the might of God to stand unshaken—and to be given continuously a supply of Jesus as the Christ to keep his spirit sweet and pure; have his mind renewed so that he has his understanding filled with the light of truth, displacing the lies of the ultimate negative, and destroying the veil with which the ultimate negative once held it—the mind being clarified so that he intelligently understands what the will of the Lord is; have his body subservient to the Spirit, and obedient to the will of God in life and service. Let a person be brought before your tribunals who is plainly under demonical possession. The wicked spirit, bidden to speak by a follower of Jesus as the Christ, will as readily make the truthful confession that he is a demon as elsewhere he has falsely asserted that he is a god. Or, if you will, let there be produced one of the “god-possessed,” as they are supposed. If they do not confess, IN THEIR FEAR OF LYING TO A CHRISTIAN, that they are demons, then and there pray for their souls, or bodies void of a soul. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
ALL THE AUTHORITY AND POWER WE HAVE OVER THEM IS FROM OUR NAMING THE NAME OF CHRIST, AND RECALING TO THEIR MEMORY THE WORD WITH WHICH GOD THREATENS THEM AT THE HAND OF JESUS AS THE CHRIST, THEIR JUDGE, AND WHICH THEY EXPECT ONE DAY TO OVERTAKE THEM. FEARING CHRIST IN GOD AND GOD IN CHRIST, THEY BECOME SUBJECT TO THE SERVANTS OF GOD AND CHRIST. SO AT ONE TOUCH AND BRETHING, OVERWHELMED BY THE THOUGHT AND REALIZATION OF THOSE JUDGMENT FIRES, THEY LEAVE AT OUR COMMAND THE BODIES THEY HAVE ENTERED, UNWILLING AND DISTRESSED, AND BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES, PUT TO AN OPEN SHAME. Numberless demoniacs throughout the whole World and in your city, many of our Christian men—exorcising them in the name of Jesus as the Christ who was crucified under Pontius Pilate—have healed and do heal, rendering helpless, and driving the possessing demon out the men, though they could not be cured by all other exorcists, and those who use incantations and drugs. CYPRIAN expressed with confidence that they are evil spirits that inspire the false prophets of the Gentiles, and deliver oracles by always mixing truth with falsehood to prove what they say, he adds: “Nevertheless these evil spirits adjured by the living God IMMEDIATELY OBEY US, SUBMIT TO US, OWN OUR POWER, and are forced to come out of the bodies they possess.” The one under demon-power is an involuntary victim. (The willing soul is known as a medium.) The chief characteristic of demonomania is distinct “other personality” within. (This is different to demon-influence, for in this, men follow their own wills, and retain their own personality.) #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
These demons have a longing for a body to possess, as it seems to give then some relief, and they enter the bodies of animals as well as men. There are distinctly individual peculiarities of the spirits. They converse through organs of speech, and give evidence of personality, desire, fear. They give evidence of knowledge and power not possessed by the subject. In Germany, Pastor Blumhardt gives instances of demons speaking in all the European languages, and in some languages unrecognizable. In France there were some cases having the “gift of tongues,” speaking in German, Latin, Arabic. The demon possession of the body entirely changes the moral character of those they enter, compelling them to act entirely contrary to their normal behaviour. Reserved, reticent men will weep, sing, laugh, talk; meek souls will rage; ordinarily pure-tongued men and women will speak of things not to be named among children of God, and act in manner and conduct contrary to their normal dignity and behaviour—all of which they are not responsible for while under “control” of this other personality within them. In brief, they will exhibit traits of character utterly different from those which belong to them normally. There are also nervous and muscular symptoms peculiar to demon possession in the body. There is also an afflatus of the breast, which is a special mark of demon possession. Oracular utterances are given in jerks and sentences, quite unlike the calm coherent sequence of language seen in the utterances of the apostles at Pentecost. There is “levitation” of the body—well known by spiritists—when the subject will say he is quite unconscious of possessing a body; and there is invariably a passive mind. There is often a distinct voice which speaks through the lips of the subject, expressing thoughts and word unintentionally. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
How different would be the history of the World without keeping the fire department in mind—a department that has changed or arrested the course of civilization, and the effect of which has been as far-reaching as that of wars. In every day life the human hazard, the risk of losing all of one’s Earthly possessions, is ever present. When you consider that sixty-four percent of all fires in the United States of America occur in dwelling houses, the question of an adequate fire department is brought home. With the growing number of skyscrapers, enormous factories, and a constantly growing use of chemicals in these factories, and other features of modern life that tend to make fire-fighting more difficult, the fireman’s calling has been raised to the dignity of profession. The fire department must know something of electricity and various branches of mechanics to be efficient. They must have training, skill and judgment. All fires are not alike, and the best fire fighters knows at a glance from the colour of the flames the temperature of the blaze, the amount of water pressure and the size of the nozzle to use, for an inadequate stream would only make the fire worse. Furthermore, the prevention of panics in theaters, schools, and other public buildings have become an important function of the fire department. Statistic show that more persons are killed by being trampled and crushed than actually burned. A cool heard and quick wits and special training are required on the part of the fire fighters to take such measures as will reassure and control the people. Let us make sure that the Sacramento Fire Department receives adequate funding by making a donation. Without them, there would not be a United States of America. 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
Spectral dogs are familiar throughout the Winchester Estate. They tend to be black, and hairy. They are known as “barhgasts.” Suicides, and hanged men, were reputed to come again in that guise, haunting the place of their death. Unbaptised babies also took that form, in order to pursue their offending parents. Mrs. Winchester’s dog known as “Zip” often appears on the estate as a spectral dog. The Winchester Mansion is apparently his lair, but not his alone. The Devil and his Hell Hounds are said to run, howling, across the estate. On 18 April 1906, many people saw and heard a hunting pack in full cry. The dogs were as black as pitch with large and staring eyes. Throughout the night, fire fighters heard the hunters sounding and blowing their horns. These black dogs have been observed jumping over hedges, and frequenting a certain path. One caretake of the mansion “saw a black dog with a chain dangling from its collar, which passed him absolutely noiselessly, and went through a closed door.”
There is a room in the Winchester Mansion, with the largest cupboard in the house, and something used to pass through the cupboard, cross the room, and walk through the wall. The “thing” was large, dark, and animal-like. There are also accounts of a dog, commonly described as white with blood dripping from its fangs. It is believed to presage death. The ghost that brings news of death is known as a “fetch.” Some dogs in the house are invisible, but their panting can be heard as they walk beside a guest; these are believed to be friendly guardians. Dogs are, in addition, held to be highly sensitive to unusual activity that human beings construe as ghost-like. The natural human body has it senses, the spirit also has its senses. There are busy senses within, examining and judging, approving and condemning, joying and grieving, hoping and fearing, after a fashion of their own, which no bodily sense can imitate. There is a spirit within which we call ourselves, and it is perfectly distinct from the body in which we dwell.
If our spirits, which are generated in or without bodies, are elaborated from immaterial substances into separate existences, constituting individual spirits, these individual spirits must be presumed to be composed of spirit substance or substances, and possessed of different faculties. Our very language implies that human spirit is an organism composed of parts mutually related, which though individually different, are generically the same. It is a well-established doctrine of Scripture, that the body is animated by an intelligent and immortal spirit, that feels and acts by means of its material mechanism, without being itself material. The activity given the name of “Poltergeist” is so well known and so frequently attested that it may seem unnecessary to detail its particular manifestations. However, as if something were trying to announce its presence, the activity generally begins with “knocking” or “rapping” in certain rooms. Then characteristically there follow lounder or more frightened noises such as the thumping on floors and walls or the sounds of scratching. These in turn tend to be followed by noises as of furniture being thrown violently around a room that can increase in frequency and intensity within a matter of days or weeks. In one recent case there was heard the distinct noise of someone “grinding his boot heel in a scattering of grit or gravel.”
Only after the stage of sound has been passed is there evidence of actual movement. Pieces of furniture seem to shift of their own accord. Doors are flung open or violently closed. The drawers of cupboards also open and close of their own volition. Plates are smashed. Light bulbs explode or flicker uncontrollably. This activity can then be followed by the witnessing of objects being thrown into the air, apparently of their own accord. The curious thing is that if these objects strike a human being, they generally inflict no injury. However, if they strike inanimate objects, they can cause damage. What strange disorders of the night can prompt these accounts? 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/
Become What You are Capable of Becoming
To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life. There is a degree of regression within the incestuous complex. Here, we can distinguish between very benign forms of “mother fixation,” forms which in fact are so benign that they can hardly be called pathological, and malignant forms of incestuous fixation which we call “incestuous symbiosis.” On the benign level we find a form of mother fixation which is rather frequent. Such men need a woman to comfort them, love them, admire them; they want to be mothered, fed, cared for. If they fail to obtain this kind of love, they tend to feel slightly anxious and depressed. When this mother fixation is of slight intensity it will not impair the man’s sexual or affective potency, or his independence and integrity. It may even be surmised that in most men there remains an element of such fixation and the desire to find something of the mother in a woman. If, however, the intensity of this tie is greater, one usually finds certain conflicts and symptoms of a sexual or emotional nature. There is a second level of incestuous fixation which is much more serious and neurotic. (In speaking of distinct level here, we are only choosing a form of description which is convenient for the purpose of a brief presentation; in reality there are not three distinct levels; there is a continuum which stretches from the most harmless to the most malignant forms of incestuous fixation. The levels described here are typical points in this continuum; in a more fully developed discussion of this topic, each level could be divided into at least several “sub-levels.”) #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
On this level of mother fixation, the person has failed to develop his independence. In its less severe forms it is a fixation which makes it necessary always to have a mothering figure at hand, waiting, making few demands, the person on whom one can depend unconditionally. In its more severe manifestations we might find a man, for instance who chooses a wife who is a stern mother-figure; he feels like a prisoner who has no right to do anything which is not in the service of the wife-mother, and he is constantly afraid of her, lest she might be angry. He will probably rebel unconsciously, then feel guilty and submit all the more obediently. The rebellion may manifest itself in sexual infidelity, depressive moods, sudden outbursts of anger, psychosomatic symptoms, or general obstructionism. This man may also suffer from serious doubts in his manliness, or from sexual disturbances such as impotence or homosexuality. Different from this picture in which anxiety and rebellion dominate, is another where mother fixation is mixed with a seductive male-narcissistic attitude. Often such men at an early age felt that mother preferred them to father; that they were admired by mother, while the father was held in contempt. They develop a strong narcissism which makes them feel that they are better than father—or rather, better than any other man. This narcissistic conviction makes it unnecessary for them to do much, or anything, to prove their greatness. Their greatness is built on the tie to mother. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Consequently, for such men their whole sense of self-worth is bound up with the relationship to the women who admire them unconditionally and without limits. Their greatest fear is that they may fail to obtain the admiration of a woman they have chosen, since such failure would threaten the basis of their narcissistic self-evaluation. However, while they are afraid of women, this fear is less obvious than in the previous case, because the picture is dominated by their narcissistic-seductive attitude that gives the impression of warm manliness. However, in this, as in any other type of intense mother fixation, it is a crime to feel love, interest, loyalty toward anyone, whether men or women, except the mother figure. One must not even be interested in anybody or anything else, including work, because mother demands exclusive allegiance. Often, if they have even a most harmless interest in anybody, or they develop into the type of “traitor” who cannot be loyal to anybody, because they cannot be disloyal to mother, such men have a guilty conscience. Here are some dreams characteristics of mother fixation. A man dreams that he is alone on the beach. An elderly woman comes and smiles at him. She indicates to him that he may drink her “mother’s milk.” A man dreams that a powerful woman has seized him, hold him over a deep ravine, drops him, and he falls to his death. A woman dreams that she is meeting a man; at that moment a witch appears and the dreamer is deeply frightened. The man takes a gun and kills the witch. She (the dreamer) runs away, being afraid of being discovered, and beckons to the man to follow her. These dreams hardly need explanation. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
In the first one the main element is the wish to be nursed by mother; in the second, if she falls in love with a man, there is a fear of being demolished by an all-powerful mother (the witch) who will destroy her, and only her mother’s death can liberate her. However, what about fixation to father? Indeed, there is no doubt that such fixation exists both among men and women; in the latter case it sometimes is blended with sexual desires. Yet it seems that fixation to father never reaches the depth of fixation to mother-family-blood-Earth. While of course in some particular case father himself can be a mothering figure, normally his function is different from mother’s. It is he who in the first years of life burses the child and gives it that feeling of being protected which is part of the mother-fixated person’s eternal desire. The infant’s life depends on mother—hence she can give life and take away life. The mother figure is at the same time that of the life-giver and that of the life-destroyer, the loved one and the feared one. (In mythology, for instance, the double role of the Indian goddess Kali, and in dreams the symbolization of mother as a tiger, lion, witch, or child-eating sorceress.) The father’s function, on the other hand, is a different one. He represents manmade law and order, social rules and duties, and he is the one who punishes or rewards. His love is conditional, and can be won by doing what is required. For this reason, the person bound to father can more easily hope to gain his love by doing father’s will; but the euphoric feeling of complete and unconditional love, certainty and protection is rarely present in the experience of the father-bound person. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
We also rarely fin in the father-centered person the depth of regression which we find in regards to mother fixation. The deepest level of mother fixation is that of “incestuous symbiosis.” What is meant by “symbiosis”? There are various degrees of symbiosis, but they all have in common one element: the symbiotically attached person is part and parcel of the “host” person to whom one is attached. One cannot live without that person, and if the relationships is threatened, he feels extremely anxious and frightened. (In patients close to schizophrenia the separation may lead to a sudden schizophrenic breakdown.) When I say he cannot live without that person, I do not mean that he is necessarily always physically together with the host person; he may see him or her only rarely, or the host person may even be dead (in this case the symbiosis may take the form of what in some cultures is institutionalized as “ancestor worship”); the bond is essentially one of feeling and fantasy. For the symbiotically attached person it is very difficult, if not impossible, to sense a clear delineation between himself and the host person. He feels himself to be one with the other, a part of her, blended with her. The more extreme the form of symbiosis, the less possible is a clear realization of the separateness of the two persons. This lack of separateness explains also why in the more severe cases it would be misleading to speak of a “dependency” of the symbiotically attached person to his host. “Dependency” presupposes the clear distinction between two persons, one of whom is dependent on the other. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
In the case of symbiotic relationship the symbiotically attached person may sometimes feel superior, sometimes inferior, sometimes equal to the host person—but always they are inseparable. Actually, this symbiotic unity can best be exemplified by mentioning the unity of the mother with the fetus. Fetus and mother are two, and yet they are one. It happens also, and not too rarely, that both persons involved are symbiotically attached, each to the other. In this case one is dealing with a folie a deux, which makes the two unaware of their folie because their shared system constitutes reality for them. In the extremely regressive forms of symbiosis the unconscious desire is actually that of returning to the womb. Often this wish is expressed in symbolic form as the wish (or fear) of being drowned in the ocean, or the fear of being swallowed by the Earth; it is a desire to lose completely one’s individuality, to become one again with nature. It follows that his deep regressive desire conflicts with the will to live. To be in the womb is to be removed from life. The tie to mother, both the wish for her love and the fear of her destructiveness, is much stronger and more elementary the Dr. Freud’s “Oedipus tie,” which he thought was based on sexual desires. There is a problem, however, which lies in the discrepancy between our conscious perception and the unconscious reality. If a man remembers or imagines sexual desires toward his mother, he meets with the difficulty of resistance, yet since the nature of sexual desire is known to him, it is only the object of his desire of which his consciousness does not want to be aware. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
It is quite different with the symbiotic fixation we are discussing here, the wish of being loved like an infant, losing all one’s independence, being a suckling again, or even being in mother’s womb; all these are desires which are by no means covered by the words “love,” “dependence,” or even “sexual fixation.” All these words are pallid in comparison with the power of the experience behind them. The same holds true of the “fear of mother.” We all know what it means to be afraid of a person. He may acold us, humiliate us, punish us. We have gone through this experience and faced it with more or less courage. However, if we were to be pushed into a cage where a lion expected us, or if we were thrown into a pit filled with snakes, we do not know how we would feel? Can we express the terror which would strike us, seeing ourselves sentenced to trembling impotence? Yet it is precisely this kind of experience which constitutes the “fear” of mother. The words we use here make it very difficult to reach the unconscious experience, and hence people often speak of their dependence, or fear, without really knowing what they are talking about. The language which is adequate to describe the real experience is that of dreams or symbols in mythology and religion. If I dream that I am drowning in the ocean (accompanied by a feeling of mixed dread and bliss) of if I dream that I am trying to escape from a lion that is about to swallow me, then indeed, I dream in a language which corresponds to what I really experience. Our everyday language corresponds, of course, to the experiences which we permit ourselves to be aware of. If we want to penetrate to our inner reality, we must try to forget customary language and think in the forgotten language of symbolism. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
In regards to our case study on Clare, the fighting spirit involved in this trend appeared quite early in life. Indeed, it preceded the development of other trends. At this period of the analysis early memories occurred to her of opposition, rebellion, belligerent demands, all sorts of mischief. As we know, she lost this fight for her place in the sun because the odds against her were too great. Then, after a series of unhappy experiences, this spirit re-emerged when she was about eleven, in the form of a fierce ambition at school. Now, however, it was loaded with repressed hostility: it had absorbed the piled-up vindictiveness for the unfair deal she had received and for her downtrodden dignity. It had now acquired two of the elements mentioned above: though being on top she would reestablish her sunken self-confidence, and by defeating the others she would avenge her injuries. This grammar-school ambition, with all its compulsive and destructive elements, was nevertheless realistic in comparison with later developments, for it entailed efforts to surpass others through greater actual achievements. During high school she was still successful in being unquestionably the first. However, in college, where she met greater competition, she rather suddenly dropped her ambition altogether, instead of making the greater efforts that the situation would have required if she stilled wanted to be first. There were three main reasons why she could not muster the courage to make these greater efforts. One was that because of her compulsive modesty she had to fight against constant doubts as to her intelligence. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Another was the actual impairment in the free use of her intelligence through the repression of her critical faculties. Finally, she could not take the risk of failure because the need to excel the others was too compulsive. The abandonment of her manifest ambition did not, however, dimmish the impulse to triumph over others Clare had to find a compromise solution, and this, in contrast to the frank ambition at school, was devious in character. In substance it was that she would triumph over the others without doing anything to bring about that triumph. She tried to achieve this impossible feat in three ways, all of which were deeply unconscious. One was to register whatever good luck she had in life as a triumph over others. This ranged from a conscious triumph at good weather on an excursion to an unconscious triumph over some “enemy” falling ill or dying. Conversely, she felt bad luck not simply as bad luck but as a disgraceful defeat. This attitude served to enhance her dread of life because it meant a reliance on factors that are beyond control. The second way was to shift the need for triumph to love relationships. To have a husband or lover was a triumph; to be alone was a shameful defeat. And the third way of achieving triumph without effort was the demand that husband or lover, like the masterful man in the fantasy, should make her great without her doing anything, possibly by merely giving her the chance to indulge vicariously in his success. These attitudes created insoluble conflicts in her personal relationships and considerably reinforced the need for a “partner,” since he was to take over these all-important functions. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
The consequences of this trend were worked through by recognizing the influence they had on her attitude toward life in general, toward work, toward others, and toward herself. The outstanding result of this examination was a diminution of her inhibitions toward work. We then tackled the interrelations of this trend with the two others. There were, on the one hand, irreconcilable conflicts and on the other hand, mutual reinforcements, evidence of how inextricably she was caught in her neurotic structure. Conflicts existed between the compulsion to assume a humble place and to triumph over others, between ambition to excel and parasitic dependency, the two drives necessarily clashing and either arousing anxiety or paralyzing each other. This paralyzing effect proved to be one of the deepest sources of the fatigue as well as of the inhibitions toward work. No less important, however, were the ways in which the trends reinforced one another. To be modest and to put herself into a humble place became all the more necessary as it served also as a cloak for the need for triumph. The partner, as already mentioned, became an all the more vital necessity as he had also to satisfy in a devious way the need for triumph. Moreover, the feelings of humiliation generated by the need to live beneath her emotional and mental capacities and by her dependency on the partner kept evoking new feelings of vindictiveness, and thus perpetuated and reinforced the need for triumph. The analytical work consisted in disrupting step by step the vicious circles operating. The fact that her compulsive modesty had already given way to some measure of self-assertion was of great help because this progress automatically lessened also the need for triumph. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Similarly, the partial solution of the dependency problem, having made her stronger and having removed many feelings of humiliation, made the need for triumph less stringent. Thus when Clare finally approached the issue of vindictiveness, which was deeply shocking to her, she could tackle with increased inner strength an already diminished problem. To have tackled it at the beginning would not have been feasible. In the first place we would not have understood it, and in the second place she could not have stood it. The result of this last period was a general liberation of energies. Clare retrieved her lost ambition on a much sounder basis. It was now less compulsive and less destructive; its emphasis shifted from an interest in success to an interest in the subject matter. Her relationships with people, already improved after the second period, now lost the tenseness created by the former mixture of a false humility and a defensive haughtiness. From experience, this report illustrates the typical course of an analysis, or, the ideal course of an analysis. The fact that there were three main divisions in Clare’s analysis is only incidental; there may just as well be two or five. It is characteristic, however, that in each division the analysis passed through three steps: recognition of a neurotic trend; discovery of its causes, manifestations, and consequences; and discovery of its interrelations with other parts of the personality, especially with other neurotic trends. These steps must be taken for each neurotic trend involved. Clare recognized many important implications of her morbid dependency before she recognized the fact of being dependent and the powerful urge driving her into a dependent relationship. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
With man’s gradual increments of knowledge of the regularities of his World—of lunar cycles, the seasons, the migration of birds, and other periodic phenomena, he was able to develop an awareness of his environment as “natural.” Though his World remained harsh, threatening, and in measure unpredictable, man was slowly able to free himself from fear of the supernatural. As part of this freedom, he came slowly to recognize that his own bodily ills were an expression of natural forces. In this context, mental and emotional disturbances could be seen as eruptions from within the sick person rather than the violent visitations of an evil force. The priest gradually surrendered to the physician. However, for the time, the scourgings and other violences which had evolved in the struggle to cleanse man of “foreign powers” were continued when the naturalistic understanding of disordered behaviour was under way. In the spirit of the new understanding of deranged behaviour as natural phenomena, the same physically violent treatments could be administered in an atmosphere of humane acceptance of the victim and sympathy for him. Again, we see the start of a paradox which has marked much of the history of psychiatry—faulty theory or neglect of theory, coupled with humane motive, permits the efficiency of symptom reduction to justify violence to the individual—from the minimal assault of incarceration to the extreme of brain mutilation. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
There have been three great stages of enlightenment in the history of man’s struggles with mental illness. The first of these came when derangements of the mind were seen as natural phenomena, not as expressions of supernatural assaults. The second came with the recognition that a humane approach, gentle care coupled with physical hygiene in a calm and sympathetic environment, brought amelioration of symptoms. The third enlightenment, most recent and still only partially realized in consistent and large-scale application, came with the gradual appreciation of the indissoluble bonding of the mental and emotional life of the individual with his physical functioning, and brought the first real understanding of the psychological origins of physiological disorders. The healing touch was replaced with the healing word, physical symptoms were seen to respond to nonphysical treatment, and the potency of thought both to produce and to alleviate distress was revealed. The power of suggestion was appreciated and effectively utilized long before there was any understanding of the psychological laws governing it; even today, as crystallized in the specific phenomena of hypnosis, we are without a generally accepted unifying theory. From knowledge of the power of words to relieve painful physical and mental disorders, there came finally in the discoveries of Dr. Freud a recognition of the potency of ideas and their associated emotions to give rise to malfunction and failure. In our accumulated wisdom, we now recognize that gross pathological disruption or destruction of the brain can produce disorders of behaviour, and that similar disorders can be instigated by stress, frustration, and emotional trauma in the absence of any observable alteration of the gross structure or function of the central nervous system. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
On the side of therapy, we recognize that a painful, recurrent symptom can be relieved by ingestion of a drug, but may be also with equal effectiveness diminished or removed as a result of conversation with a perceptive counselor. It seems relatively easier to explain those disorders in which we can point to a physical agent as cause, and it seems relatively more efficient to use a physical treatment for a symptom which is responsive to it. Because of these apparent utilities and their associated practical efficiencies, we continue to labour with a dualistic approach to mental illness. We fail to establish and maintain an integrated view of man as a unified organism who functions holistically in adapting to the ocean stimuli in which he is immersed. It is possible to wrestle against the powers of darkness only by the spirit. This is a spiritual warfare, and can only be understood by the spiritual man—that is, a man who lives by and is governed by his spirit. Evil spirits attack, wrestle with, and resist the believer. Therefore he must fight them, wrestle with them, and resist them. This wrestling is not by means of soul or body, but by means of the spirit; for the lesser cannot wrestle with the higher. Body wrestles with body in the physical realm; in the intellectual realm, soul with soul; and in the spiritual, spirit with spirit. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
However, the powers of darkness attack the three-fold nature of man, and through body or soul seek to reach the spirit of man. If the fight is a mental one, the will should be used in decisive action, quietly and steadily. If it is a spirit fight, all the forces of the spirit should be brought to join the mind. If the spirit is pressed down and unable to resist, however, then there should be a steady mental fight—when the mind, as it were, stretches out its hand to lift up the spirit. The objective of evil spirits is to get the spirit down, and thus render the believer powerless to take aggressive action against them. Or they may seek to push the spirit beyond its due poise and measure, into an effervescence which carries the believer beyond the control of his volition and mind, and hence off guard against the subtle foe—incapable of exercising proper balance of speech, action, thought, and discrimination—so that under cover they may gain some advantage for themselves. And remember, a great victory means a great danger, because when the believer is occupied with it, the ultimate negative is scheming how to rob him of it. The hour of victory therefore calls for soberness of mind, and watching unto prayer—for a little over-elation may mean its loss and a long, sore fight back to full victory. When the spirit triumphs in the wrestling and gains the victory, there breaks out, as it were, a stream from the spirit—an overflow of triumph and resistance against the invisible, but very real, foe. However, sometimes in the conflict the enemy succeeds in blocking the spirit through their attack on body or soul. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
The spirit needs soul and body for expression; hence the enemy’s attacks to close the spirit up, so as to render the man unable actively to resist. When this takes place, the believer thinks that he is “reserved,” because he feels “shut up.” He has “no voice to refuse.” In audible prayer “the words seem empty”; he “feels no effect,” and they seem mere “mockery.” However, the fact is that the spirit is closing up as a result of the wrestling enemy gripping, holding and binding it. The believer must now insist on expressing himself vocally, until the spirit breaks through into liberty. This is the word of testimony” which Revelation 12.11 mentions as part of the tactic for overcoming the dragon. The wrestling believer stands on the ground of the blood of the Lamb, which includes all that the finished work of Calvary means in victory over conduct disorder and psychopathological offenders; he gives the word of his testimony in affirming his attitude to conduct disorder and psychopathological offenders, and the sure, certain victory thought Christ; and he lives in the Calvary spirit, with his life surrendered to the will of God, even unto death. The lordship of Christ is supreme, and the World must be subjected to it. Consequently, nature is suspect, culture is sinful, and one must be guided by the Spirit those presence is guaranteed only by puritanical moral conduct. The Christ-against-culture people tend to band together in a rigidly exclusive community to shun the World. They are exemplified in history by Tertullian, Sr. Benedict, the Mennonites, and Tolstoy. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
The movement of withdrawal and renunciation is a necessary element in every Christian life, even though it be followed by an equally necessary movement of responsible engagement in cultural tasks. When this is lacking, Christian faith quickly degenerates into a utilitarian device for the attainment of personal prosperity or public peace. And some imagined idol called by his name takes the place of Jesus as the Christ, the Lord. An immediate awareness of God does not depend upon any one necessary intermediary, from the negative side which protests the demonic exaltation of any being over the ground of being. The Protestant principle in this negative sense stands against culture whenever a cultural form usurps for itself the dignity of ultimacy. Thus, the Cross, the symbol of the Protestant principle, never judges culture as such, but only its demonic distortions. What is truth? Inertia; the hypothesis that produces satisfaction; the least expenditure of mental strength, et cetera. First proposition. The easier mode of thought triumphs over the harder; as dogma; simplex sigillum veri. Dico: the idea that clarity demonstrates something about the truth is perfectly childish. Second proposition. The doctrine of being, of thing, of hard and fast unities, is a hundred times easier than the doctrine of becoming, of development. Third proposition. Logic was intended as facilitation: as a means of expression—not as truth…later it came to function as truth. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
One cannot think what is not; we are at the other end and say, “Whatever can be thought must surely be a fiction.” There are many kinds of eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes—and consequently there are many kinds of “truths,” and consequently there is no truth. 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 ethics of social conservation or progress. We interpret culture through Christ and Christ through culture, and establish this harmony by selecting the best elements of civilization and matching them with the eternally true, rational principles exemplified in Christianity. The conflict in the World is not between man and God, but between nature and the human spirit, and Jesus as the Christ is the spearhead of the struggle to master and nature and incorporate it within culture. The merit of the Christ-of-culture type s that as a perennial movement the acculturation of Christ is both inevitable and profoundly significant in the extension of his reign. It stives to make Christianity all things to all men to gain them for Christ. Consider and see that the Lord is good; happy is the man that takes refuge in Him. 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. Happy is the man unto whom the Lord counts not iniquity, and in whose spirit, there is no guile. Happy is the man that has made the Lord his trust, and had not turned unto the arrogant. Part of being a good Christian is possessing charity. Please help the Sacramento Fire Department save lives by donating to their organization for they are not receiving all of their resources. Any donation could make a difference. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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It is Well to Remember that the Revealing God is Also the Concealing God for One!
Visibility, significance, recognition! All that I had ever wanted when I took to the architectural design studio, all that I had ever wanted as a boy heading to Paris with a head full of dreams, all I had ever wanted I now had right here with my brothers and sisters! I had all that I have ever hoped for, and I had it here and now in this place and amongst my own people. The old human story simply did not matter. I had this, I had this moment, I had this recognition, and this visibility and this significance. And how could I ask for anything more? How could I look from right t left, at immortals who had witnessed all the epochs of recorded history, and want more than this? How could I gaze at immortals who had been drawn to this very spot by something more immense than they had ever witnessed, and long for more than the recognition they were now giving me? The victory of our own tribe to embrace one another, and let go of the hatred that had divided us for centuries, was my victory. After the house has schooled its tenants, there is still much uncertainty about the proper way to behave in this new and unique environment. What the house does not do, the neighbors finish off. By their example they indicate the code to be followed. Hence, if one person has a refrigerator, next-door thinks she should have one; if A has a BMW M5, B wants one too. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
“If,” says Mrs. Abbot, “you make your garden one way, they will knock theirs to pieces to make theirs like it. It is the same with the curtains—if you put up new curtains, they have new curtains in a couple of months. And if someone buys a new Persian rug they have to hang it on the line so you can see it.” The struggles for possessions is one in which comparisons with other people are constantly made. Some of those who have achieved a more complete respectability look down on the others; those with less money resent the more successful and keep as far away from them as they can. “The whole answer—the whole trouble is, many men cannot earn enough. They have to hide in the closet or behind the curtains. They have got a certain amount of pride.” Resentment may also produce an aggressive spirit. “This place is all right for middle-class people, people with a bit of money. It is no good for less affluent people—I think they have all got money troubles, that is why they are so spiteful to each other.” We have been arguing that, the possession of a new house having sharpened the desire for other material goods, the striving for them becomes a competitive affair. The house is a major part of the explanation. However, there is more to it than that. In Bethnal Green people, as we said earlier, commonly belong to a close network of personal relationship. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
These people know intimately dozens of other local people living near at hand, their school-friends, their work-mates, their pub-friends, and above all their relatives. They know them well because they have known them over a long period of time. Common family residence since childhood is the matrix of friendship. In this situation, Bethnal Greeners are not, as we see it, concerned to any marked extent with what is usually thought of as “status.” It is true, of course, that people have different incomes, different kinds of jobs, different kinds of houses—in this respect there is much less uniformity than at Greenleigh—even different standards of education. However, these attributes are not so important in evaluating others. It is personal characteristics which matter. The first thing they think of about William is not that he has a “fridge” and a BMW M5 sports sedan. They see him as a bad-tempered, or a real good sport, or the man with a way with women, or one of the best boxers of the Repton Club, or the person who got married to Ava last year. In a community of long-standing, status, in so far as it is determined by job and income and education, is more or less irrelevant to a person’s worth. He is judged instead, if he is judged at all, more in the round, as person with the usual mixture of all kinds of qualities, some good, some bad, many indefinable. He is more of a life-portrait than a figure on a scale. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
People in Bethnal Green are less concerned with “getting on.” Naturally they want to have more money and a better education for their children. The borough belongs to the same society as the estate, one in which standards and aspirations are moving upward together. However, the urge is less compulsive. They stand well with plenty of other people whether or not they have net curtains and fine pram. Their credit with others does not depend so much on their “success” as on the subtleties of behavior in their many face-to-face relationships. They have the security of belonging to a series of small and overlapping groups, and from their fellows they get the respect they need. How different is Greenleigh we have already seen. Where nearly everyone is a stranger, there is no means of uncovering personality. People cannot be judged by their personal characteristics: a person can certainly see that his or her neighbor works in one’s back garden in one’s short sleeves and one’s wife goes down to the shops in a blue coat, with two canvas bags: but that is not much of a guide to character. Judgment must therefore rest on the trappings of the being rather than on the being oneself. If people have nothing else to go by, they judge from one’s appearance, one’s house, or even one’s Minimotor. One is evaluated accordingly. Once the accepted standards are few, and mostly to do with wealth, they become the standards by which “status” is judged. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
In Bethnal Green it is not easy to give a man a single status, because he has so many; he has, in addition to the status of citizen, a low status as a scholar, high as a darts-player, low as a bargainer, and high as a story-teller. In Greenleigh, he has something much more nearly approaching one status because something much more nearly approaching one criterion is used his possessions. Or rather we should say that the family has one status. The small group which lives inside the same house hangs together, and where people are known as “from No. 22” or “37,” their identity being traced to the house which is the fixed entity, each one of them affect the credit of the other. The children, in particular, must be well dressed so that neighbors, and even more school friends and teachers, will think well of them, and of the parents. “We always see that the children look smart. At these new schools, you like them to go to school respectable. We like to keep them up to the standard out here.” The status is that of the family of marriage much more sharply than it is in Bethnal Green. In Bethnal Green the number of relatives who influence a person’s standing is much larger, and they are varied in their attributes. From a prominent local personality, a street-trader, say, a councilor, or a publican, a person can borrow prestige; but through another relative one may be associated with less enviable reputation. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
One connection confers high status, another lone. It is therefore all the more difficult to give a person a single rating. On the other hand, the comparative isolation of the family at Greenleigh encourages the kind of simplified judgment of which we have been speaking. People at Greenleigh want to get on in the light of these simple standards, and they are liable to be more anxious about it just because they no loner belong to small local groups. Their relationships are window-to-window, not face-to-face. Their need for respect is just as strong as it ever was, but instead of being able to find satisfaction in actual living relationships, through the personal respect that accompanies almost any kind of respect is just as strong as it ever was, but instead of being able to find satisfaction in actual living relationships, through the personal respect that accompanies almost any steady human interaction, they have to turn the other kind of respect which is awarded, by some strange sort of common understanding, for the quantity and quality of possessions with which the person surrounds oneself. Those are the rules of the game and they are, under strong pressure from the neighbors, almost universally observed. Indeed, one of the most striking things about Greenleigh is the great influence the neighbors have, all the greater because they are anonymous. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Though people stay in their houses, they do in a sense belong to a strong compelling group. They do not now their judge personally but her influence is continuously felt. One might even suggest, to generalize, that the less the personal respect received in small group relations, the greater is the striving for the kind of impersonal respect embodied in a status judgment. The lonely man, fearing he is looked down on, becomes the acquisitive man; possession the balm to anxiety; anxiety the spur to unfriendliness. We took as out starting point people’s remarks—so frequent and vehement as to demand discussion—about the unfriendliness of their fellow residents. We have suggested two main explanation. Negatively, people are without the old relatives. Positively, they have a new house. In a life now house-centered instead of kinship centered, competition for status takes the form of a struggle for material acquisition. In the absence of small groups which join one family to another, in the absence of strong personal associations which extend from one household to another, people think that they are judged, and judge others, by the material standards which are the outward and visible mark of respectability. One may work toward enlightenment and inner freedom, to the aspiration which draws one most. Whatever helps consciousness come nearer to high moods is a useful spiritual path to someone. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
One should take any approach which appeals to one, if it is morally worthy, and try to use what one can of it. Several different methods of spiritual development have been offered to humanity. Some have more merit than others and some are more effective than others. However, so much depends on the particular needs and status of each person, that the value of a method cannot be generalized with fairness. It is misleading to pick out any one way to the Overself and label it the best, or worse still, the only way. It is unfair to compare the merits of different ways. For the truth is that firstly each has a contribution to make, and finally each individual aspirant has one’s own special way. The claims that these simpler paths like devotion or repeating a declaration can lead to the goal, are neither true nor untrue. For they lead to the philosophic path which, in its own turn, leads directly to the goal. Is there a single teacher, prophet, messenger, or stain who has been universally acclaimed and universally followed? For that to be, all humankind would need the same outer background and inner status. Great or small there are certain differences between all persons. They cannot pursue the same ways, therefore we should let others take a different view in religion from ourselves. They very widely that it is an adventure for society if there exists as greater a diversity of approaches as possible—they are thus better able to suit particular needs. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Why should anyone be afraid of diversity in religious views, of variety in religious practices? Let heresies multiply! Let the sects flourish! For out of all this free competition, the seeker has a better chance to find truth. The modern seeker is fortunate in this: that one has a wealth of teachings to choose from—or by which to be bewildered. We must not only acknowledge the differences between beings but respect them. Consequently we must accept the fact of variations in responsive capacity and not demand that all should think alike, believe alike, behave alike. What is too much for one individual is too little for another. No universally applicable prescription can be given to suit everyone alike. All these paths should converge towards one another, as all must merge in the central point in the end. However different personal reactions will necessarily be with every individual seeker, there will still remain certain experiences, requirements, and conditions—and these are the most important ones—along one’s oath which must be the same for every other seeker too. Each being’s approach must inevitably be individualistic yet each will also share in common all the essential which constitute the Quest. Whether a being is a Zionist or a Zennist, whether one seeks the Christian Salvation or the Japanese Satori, the fundamental approach is more or less the same. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
There is no cut and dried system or method which can be guaranteed to work successfully in every case. However, there are suggestions, hints, ideas which have been culled from the personal experiences of a widely varied, World-spread number of masters and aspirants. Since each being’s pat is peculiarly an individual one, no book can guide all one’s steps. A book may help one through some situations, inform one about the general course of inner development, and warn one against the probable mistake and chief pitfalls. Each being has to strive for this higher consciousness in one’s own way. Each path to it is unique. However, at the same time one may profitably avail oneself of the general instruction contained in writing like the present one. Let us now consider the innocence of the “enemy,” a typical young member of the Ohio National Guard, roughly around the age of 22. I am helped in this by a letter I received from a college girl whose brother was exactly in that position: I shall quote from this letter: “My younger brother Michael was afraid to answer the telephone in those says for fear it would be his National Guard Headquarters calling him for riot duty on one of the nearby campuses. Michael says that the rest of his group was afraid of a phone call as he. He was not at all sure the student protestors were wrong, and even if they were, the presence of the National Guard was no answer. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
“If my brother had been called for riot duty, and if some irresponsible officer had provided him with a loaded gun, and if the confrontation had become strained, he may have shot a student…I think that both Allison Krause and the Guardsman who shot her were playing roles that did not belong to either of them.” Let us assume, with my correspondent, that Michael is mobilized and arrives on the Kent State campus. He picks up the fact that the students at Kent State had woefully neglected any real communication with the townspeople—indeed, had gone out of their way to irritate them. On Saturday nights, according to a dispatch in the New York Times, students would sit on the downtown sidewalk, making the townspeople walk around them to the accompaniment of obscenities, totally unaware, although it is hard to believe, of the degree of hatred this was engendering in the people of the town of Kent. Over a period of two days Michael sees one building burnt down, he gets only three hours sleep the night before, the students yell obscene jokes at him and pelt him with rocks as he is marched with his battalion through the taunting crowds. Shall we condemn Michael, our hypothetical young guardsman, as murderer? #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
If we do that—because he was the one who squeezed the trigger—and fold up our briefcases and go home, we are preventing ourselves from understanding a large segment of reality, and we are capitulating exactly at the point where we should press on the hardest. Michael’s sister, my correspondent, goes on to point out where she thinks the culprit is: “I think the country has evolved into a kind of massive unreality and fear…It is a kind of out-of-touchness which robes people of most of their alternative except survival.” There is no denying that this massive “unreality and fear” exists. In our day we tend to live out the state of mind that Camus predicted in his early novel, The Stranger, in which Meursault, the anti-hero, exists in a general state of semiconsciousness. He makes love to a girl as though both were half-asleep, and he finally shoots an Arab in the Sun on the desert in a condition of semiawareness that leaves us, as no doubt it left him, wondering whether he really shot the Arab or not. He is tried for murder. His crime is actually the murder of himself. What my correspondent calls this “massive unreality” and “out-of-touchness” makes every being a stranger to other beings as well as oneself. And the fact that it is the sickness of contemporary beings, who surrenders one’s consciousness in the face of the continual assaults on one’s senses, like surf in a perpetually stormy ocean, does not make our problem any easier. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
However, you and I also make up this country which has become so filled with “massive unreality and fear.” When we think of the “country” or the “society” as at fault, we tend to posit the country as an anonymous “it” which does things to us, the people in it. It is then, in part, a convenient peg on which to hang our own projections. Thus we evade the issue on its deeper levels. I am not discounting the importance of social psychology, the study of the way groups takes on roles and use them for their various purposes of security. I am also aware of the effect of electrotechnics on the individual, of the mass impersonality of technology, and of the experience each of us undergoes as the sport of innumerable pressures operating on us in “a World we never made.” However, our society, our country, has this power because we as individuals capitulate to it; we give over our own power, as I have tried to point out earlier, and we then are offended because we are powerless. To that extent, we victimize ourselves. Our survival depends on whether human consciousness can be asserted, and with sufficient strength, to stand against the stultifying pressures of technological progress. If the country has evolved into a state of “massive unreality and fear,” it must be you and I who experience this unreality and fear. And so we must push on in our endeavor to understand the psychological uses of innocence and murder. #Randolphharris 13 of 23
The striving for power serves in the first place as a protection against helplessness, which as we have seen is one of the basic elements in anxiety. The neurotic is so averse to any remote appearance of helplessness or weakness in oneself that one sill shun situations which the normal person considers entirely commonplace, such as any acceptance of guidance, advice, or help, any kind of dependence on persons or circumstances, any giving in to or agreeing with others. This protest against helplessness does not arise in all its intensity at once, but increases gradually; the more the neurotic feels factually handicapped by one’s inhibitions, the less one is factually able to asset oneself. The weaker one factually becomes the more anxiously one has to avoid anything that has a faint resemblance to weakness. In the second place, the neurotic striving for power serves as a protection against the danger of feeling or being regarded as insignificant. The neurotic develops a rigid and irrational ideal of strength which makes one believe one should be able to master any situation, no matter how difficult, and should master it right away. This ideal becomes linked with pride, and as a consequence the neurotic considers weakness not only as a danger but also as a disgrace. One classifies people as either “strong” or “weak,” admiring the former and despising the latter. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
One goes to extremes also in what one considers to be weakness. One has more or less contempt for all persons who agree with one or give in to one’s wishes, who have inhibitions or do not control their emotions so closely that they always show an impassive face. One despises the same qualities in oneself as well. One feels humiliated if one has to recognize the existence of anxiety or an inhibition in oneself, and thus despises oneself for having a neurosis and is anxious to keep this fact a secret. One also despises oneself for not being able to cope with it alone. The particular forms that such a striving for power will take depend upon what lack of power is most feared or despised. I shall mention a few expressions of this striving that are especially frequent. For one, the neurotic will desire to have control over others as well as over oneself. One wants nothing to happen that one has not initiated or approved of. This quest for control may take the attenuated form of consciously permitting the other to have full freedom, but insisting on knowing about everything one does, and feeling irritated if anything is kept a secret. Tendencies to control maybe repressed to such a degree that not only the person oneself, but even those about one, may be convinced of one’s greater generosity in allowing freedom to the other. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
If a person represses one’s desire for control so completely one may, however, become depressed or have severe headaches or stomach upsets every time the other has an appointment with other friends or unexpectedly comes home late. Not knowing the cause of the disturbances one may accredit them to weather conditions, to an error in diet or similar irrelevant conditions. Much of what appears as curiosity is determined by a secret wish to control the situation. Also persons of this type are inclined to want to be right all the tie, and are irritated at being proved wrong, even if only in an insignificant detail. They have to know everything better than anyone else, an attitude which may at times be embarrassingly conspicuous. Persons who are otherwise serious and dependable, when confronted with a question to which they do not know the answer, may pretend to know, or may invent something, even if ignorance in this particular instance would not discredit them. Sometimes the emphasis is on the need to know in advance what will happen, to anticipate and predict every possibility. This attitude may go with a distaste for any situation involving uncontrollable factors. No risk should be taken. The emphasis on self-control shows in an aversion to being carried away by any feelings. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
If he falls into love with her, the attraction which a neurotic woman feels for a man may suddenly turn into contempt. Patients of this type find it hard to allow themselves much drift in free associations, because that would mean losing control and letting themselves be carried away into unknow territory. I am going to talk with you tonight about something that is very close to my own thoughts—this something I have been thinking about for years in my own hear, and in the period when I spent two years in bed with tuberculosis up in the Adirondack mountains before there were any drugs for this disease—all of these things come together in these ideas I have been sharing with you tonight. They came, particularly, when I was interviewing, in New York City, student candidates to be trained in analytic institutions. I was on the committee for two groups, and so I interviewed for these two different groups. What I asked myself was, “What makes a good psychotherapist? What is there in a particular person that would tell us that here is somebody that can genuinely help other people in the fairly long training of the psychoanalyst?” It was quite clear to me that it was not adjustment—adjustment that we talked of so fondly when I was Ph.D. student, and so ignorantly. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
I knew that the well-adjusted person who came in and sat down to be interviewed would not make a good psychotherapist. Adjustment is exactly what a neurosis is; and that is one’s trouble. It is an adjustment to nonbeing in order that some little being maybe preserved. An adjustment always flounders on the question—adjustment to what? Adjustment to a psychotic World, which we certainly live in? Adjustment so societies that are Faustian and insensitive? And then I looked further. We know very little about the effect of punishment on learning, because almost no truly scientific studies have been made of it on human beings. For instance, we do not know how much punishment is best for learning—and we do not know how much difference it makes as to who is giving the punishment, whether an adult learns best from a younger or an older person than oneself—or any things of that sort. Harry Stack Sullivan, who was the only psychiatrist born in America to contribute a new system that was powerful enough to have an influence, not only on psychiatry, but on psychology, sociology, and a number of other professions, was one of my teachers. We all revered him greatly. Dr. Sullivan was an alcoholic, and he was latently homosexual—he once proposed to Clara Thompson when he was drunk and got up very early the next morning to take it back. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
Dr. Sullivan never could get along with any groups with more than two of three people. It dawned on me that mental problems are problems that always had their beginnings, and their cures, in interpersonal relationships. Consider Abe Maslow. He was not a therapist, but one of the great psychologists. Dr. Maslow had a miserable time of it. He came from an immigrant family in the slums; he was alienated from his mother and afraid of his father. In New York, groups often lived in ghettos, and Abe was beaten up by Italian and Irish boys in the vicinity (he was Jewish); he was underweight, and yet, this man, the man who had so many hellish experiences—was the one who introduced the system of peak experiences into psychology. Dr. Freud and Dr. Maslow are two of the most important people in the development of psychology. I want to propose a theory to you, and this is the theory of the wounded healer. I want to propose that we heal other people by virtue of our own wounds. Psychologists who become psychotherapist, psychiatrists, too, as far as that goes, are people who had, as babies and children, to be therapists for their own families. This is pretty well established by various studies. And I propose to carry that idea further and to propose that it is the insight that comes to us by virtue of our own struggle with our problems that lead us to develop empathy and creativity with human beings—and compassion. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
There was a study made in England, at the University of Cambridge, of geniuses—great writers, great artists, and so on—and of the forty-seven that this woman took as her sample, eighteen had been hospitalized—in a mental hospital—or had been treated with lithium, or had electric shock. These were people that you know. Handel—his music came out of great suffering. Byron—you would think he did everything but suffer, but he was a manic depressive. Anne Sexton, who, I believe, later committed suicide, was a manic-depressive. Virginia Woolf, who I know committed suicide, was also troubled by depression. Robert Lowell, the American poet, was manic depressive. Now, what I enlarge that to say that there are positive aspects to all diseases, to all illness, whether it is mental or physical. We may say that some form of struggle is necessary to carry us to the depth out of which creativity comes. Therefore a certain amount of discipline and personal power must be accumulated to prevent physical, mental, and spiritual catabolism. One must develop a self-devotion which will instill self-love, self-respect, and beneficial thinking that will empower you to shatter obstacles as the God of your World. If you can work through the test of your own demons and your imaginations own worst fears all else will seem rudimentary and insignificant. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
Just remember, you must be honest with yourself and work hard as hell (pun intended) to become something great. Indeed, we sometimes see obstacles as locked doors which keep us from uniting the various levels of our consciousness. However, awareness just moves around and the filter of perception changes. Operating from a higher state of awareness is not to be mistaken for uniting the isolated levels of consciousness. Consciousness cannot expand until it is first made whole and this is to oppose creation and all its limitations. It is a force which acts as the very key which unlocks the cages of imprisonment so that we can reach liberation by stepping into outer darkness which reunited the isolated frequencies of the light spectrum. Through this we not only better perceive reality but we are also better able to counter create though personal alchemical transmutation and spirituality. Feel your soul absorbing the isolated colors of the light spectrum and reuniting the consciousness which has been torn through creation. Jerome Kagan, a professor up at Harvard, made a long and intensive study of creativity, and what he concluded is that the artist’s main capacity, what he calls “his creative freedom” is not born within him. The creativity is made in the pain of adolescent loneliness, the isolation of physical disability. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
We often expect people who experience the ultimate in horror in their background to be broken people. When we hear of what people have been through, we doubt they will survive. However, some not only survive, they become exceedingly creative and productive human beings. Individuals who have suffered calamitous events in the past can, and do, function later at average levels and may even function at higher-than-average levels. Relevant coping mechanisms may avert the potentially detrimental effects of calamitous experiences, but they may also transform these experiences into growth-producing experiences. Inmates who have had poor, unpampered childhoods adapted best to the concentration camps, whereas most of those who had been reared by permissive, wealthy parents were the first to die. Many of our most valuable people have come from the most calamitous early-childhood situations. Investigations of the childhoods of eminent people expose the fact that they did not receive anything like the kind of child rearing that a person in our culture is led to believe is healthy for children. Now, whether in spite of or because of these conditions, these children not only survived, but reached great heights of achievement, many after having experiences the most deplorable and traumatic childhoods. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
There was a study also done right here in Berkeley of the long-term development of human beings. A group of psychologists followed people through from birth to 30 years of age. They followed 166 men and women through adulthood, and they were shocked by the inaccuracies of their expectations. They were wrong in about 66 percent of the cases, mainly because they had overestimated the damaging effects of early troubles. They had also not foreseen—this sentence is interesting to all of us—they also had not foreseen the negative effect of a smooth and successful childhood, that a degree of stress and challenge seemed to spur psychological strength and competence. The goal here is to allow the essence of God to flow through and operate within each level of our being or consciousness. In this way we can become fully open to gateways to his powers. As we build our faith the Holy Ghost will serve as our foundation. It will align us and our temple with the frequency of the Godhead to be employed and serve to raise your own level of spiritual power. This will further unite physical and spiritual discipline in order to create a dynamic synergy which will assist in tearing the veil between physical and spiritual realms. Powerful changes will begin to take place within you and your life experience as you begin to integrate and merge with these spiritual forces. “And a portion of that Spirit dwelleth in me, which giveth me knowledge, and also power according to my faith and desires which are in God,” reports Alma 18.35. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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His Character is a Tonic, His Future is a Dispute—Unfair an Immortality that Leaves this Neighbor Out!
I was never going to leave. I would never abandon either of you. However, now that we are gathered together, I think we can move on. There are other matters on my mind. Last night we talked about a certain quest. I made a promise. And I mean to keep it. However, I was to clarify certain things…about the quest and what we hope to gain from it. To acquire, to own, and to make a profit are the sacred and unalienable rights of the individual in the age of information. What the sources of property are does not matter; nor does possession impose any obligations on the property owners. The principle is: “Where and how my property was acquired or what I do it is nobody’s business but my own; as long as I do not violate the law, my right is unrestricted and absolute. This kind of property may be called private property (from Latin privare, “to deprive of”), because the person or persons who own it are its sole masters, with full power to deprive others of its use or enjoyment. While private ownership is supposed to be a natural and universal category, it is in fact an exception rather than the rule if we consider the whole of human history (including prehistory), and particularly the cultures outside Europe in which economy was not life’s main concern. In an industrial society these are: the wish to acquire property, to keep it, and to increase it, to make a profit, and those who own property are admired and envied as superior beings. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Prior to the end of the First World War, everything one owned was cherished, taken care of, and used to the very limits of its unity, and in modern times people are starting to become a society that likes to hang on to things, keep the same care for six years or more, live in the same house for thirty years or more, and keep the same career for a lifetime. People are also becoming more sincere. They do not polish their egos all the time in order to be a desirable object on the market. They do not protect their image by constantly lying, with or without knowing it; they do not expend their energy in repressing truth, as some used to. And frequently, they impress their elders by their honesty—for their elders secretly admire people who can see or tell the truth. Among them are politically and religiously oriented groups of all shadings, but also many without any particular ideology or doctrine who may say of themselves that they are just searching. While they may not have found themselves, or a goal that gives guidance to the practice of life, they are searching to be themselves instead of having and consuming. Today, millions of people in America and Europe try to find contact with tradition and with teachers who can show them the way. Quite a large number of groups and individuals are moving in the direction of being, and they represent a new trend transcending the having orientation of the majority, and they are historically significant. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
It will not be the first time in history that a minority indicates the course that historical development will take. The existence of this minority gives hope for the general change in attitude from having to being. This hope is all the more real since some of the factors that made it possible for these new attitudes to emerge are historical changes that can hardly be revered: the breakdown of patriarchal supremacy over women and of parents’ domination of the young. The life pilgrimage of the human being requires developing the capacity to love outwardly and creating independently. This is no simple job to be initiated by a sudden resolution and performed in one great burst of freedom, nor is it accomplished by one big blow-up against one’s parent. Actually in real life it is a matter of long, uphill growth to new levels of integration—growth meaning not automatic process but re-education, finding new insights, making self-conscious decisions, and throughout being willing to face occasional or frequent bitter struggles. A person in psychotherapy often must work through one’s patterns for months to discover how much one has been tied without knowing it, and to see time and again that this enchainment underlies one’s inability to love, to wok, or to marry. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
One then finds that the struggle to become a person in one’s own right often brings considerable anxiety and occasionally some actual terror. It is not surprising that those who are fighting to break such chains go through terrific emotional upsets and conflicts, and sometimes experience temporary madness. The conflict is in essence that of moving out from a protected, familiar place into new independence, from support to temporary isolation, while at the same time one feels one’s own anxiety and powerlessness. The struggle takes a severe (that is, neurotic) form when the individual has been unable to grow at previous stages in one’s development; thus neurotic conflicts have grown, and the eventual break is more traumatic and radical. The child must face and adjust to, by hook or crook, the World one is born into. However gradually in anyone’s development the authoritarian problem becomes internalized: the growing person takes over the rules and plants them in oneself; and one tends to act all one’s life as though one still were fighting the original forces which would enslave the individual. However, it now has become in internal conflict. Fortunately, there is a happy moral in this point: since the person has taken over the suppressive forces and keeps them going in oneself, one also has in oneself the power to get over them. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
For adults, then, who are engaged in rediscovering themselves, the battle is centrally an internal one. The struggle to become a person takes place within the person oneself. None of us can avoid taking a stand against exploitative persons or external forces in the environment, to be sure, but the crucial psychological battle we must wage is that against our own dependent needs, and our anxiety and guilt feelings which will arise as we move toward freedom. The basic conflict, in fine, is between that part of the person which seeks growth, expansion and health against the part which longs to remain on an immature level, tied still to the psychological umbilical cord and receiving the pseudo-protection and pampering of the parent in exchange for independence. Intentionality is shown in the act itself. By my act I reveal myself, rather than by looking at myself. The imputation that is correlated with intentionality is not a speculative matter, but an act which, because it always involves responding, is responsible. Since the apostle Paul was attacked because of his doctrine that faith in divine forgiveness and not human action makes mortals acceptable to God, the question of faith in relation to love and action has been asked and answered in many ways. The question and answer mean something quite different if faith is understood as the belief in things without evidence or if faith is understood as the state of being ultimately concerned. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
In the first case, it is natural to deny any direct dependence of love and action on faith; in the second case, love and action are implied in faith and cannot be separated from it. In spite of all distortions in the interpretation of faith, the latter is the classical doctrine however inadequately it was expressed. One is ultimately concerned only about something to which one essentially belongs and from which one is existentially separated. There is no faith, we have seen, in the quiet vision of God. However, there is infinite concern about the possibility of reaching such quiet vision. It presupposed the reunion of the separated; the drive toward the reunion of the separated is love. The concern of faith is identical with the desire of love: reunion with that to which one belongs and from which one is estranged. In the great commandment of the Old Testament, confirmed by Jesus, the object of ultimate concern, and the object of unconditional love, is God. From this is derived the love of what is God’s, represented by both the neighbor and oneself. Therefore, it is the fear of God and the love of Christ which, in the whole Biblical literature, determines the behavior toward other human beings. The consciousness of ultimate identity in the One makes identification with all beings possible and necessary. This is not the Biblical concept of love, which is person-centered, but it is love in the sense of the desire for reunion with that which one belongs. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
In both types of faith, love and action are not commended as something external to faith (as it would be if faith were less than ultimate concern) but are elements of the concern itself. The separation of faith and love is always the consequence of a deterioration of religion. Is there a such thing as love without faith? There is certainly love without the acceptance of doctrines; history has shown that the most terrible crimes against love have been committed in the name of fanatically defended doctrines. Faith as a set of passionately accepted and defended doctrines does not produce acts of love. However, faith as the state of being ultimately concerned implies love, namely, the desire and urge toward the reunion of the separated. The question, however, remains whether or not love is possible without faith. Can a mortal love who has no ultimate concern? This is the right form of the question. The answer, of course, is that there is no human being without an ultimate concern and, in this sense, without faith. Love is present, even if hidden, in a human being; for every human being is longing for union with the content of one’s ultimate concern. As in faith, emotion is connected with the experience of love. However, this does not make love itself an emotion. Love is the power in the ground of everything that is, driving it beyond itself toward reunion with the other one and ultimately with the ground itself from which it is separated. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Randolph Harris II International Institute 