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America Love it or Leave it: How Can a Lost Mind be Recovered?
Our life experiences are distracting us and dulling our spiritual view so much so that we are not focusing on that which matters most. I wonder, do we miss opportunities to learn of the Lord and feel His love? Do we miss opportunities to share with others—especially children—that which matters most, the gospel of the Lord, Jesus Christ? We have all seen children and youth standing in the crowds confused and wanting to know what matter most. I can almost hear this child and other children crying out the words so many of us have sung, “Please teach me to walk in the light.” Are we teaching our children to know, feel, and rejoice in the beauty, power, and miracles of the gospel of Jesus Christ? Let us nurture our children concerning Him whom we call the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us teach our children the grand saving principles of the gospel. Children require the ability to knock that having faith in the Saviour and following Him will help them to receive peace in this beautiful World that is experiencing trials and tribulations. As you include your children at your family dinner table, as you involve them in daily prayer and scripture study and in family home evening, you are following the example of the Saviour by loving and teaching them. As you do this, let them know that together your family is striving to keep the commandments and to be worthy to be an eternal family. #RandolphHarris 1 of 26
It may be during the information one-on-one times that the Spirit will prompt us to ask just the right questions or to say just the right thing to help our children know and feel the light of the Lord. If we make the opportunities, the Spirit will guide us. We have wonderful, capable children in our midst. We can help them find peace in this life and in the life to come. After all, you do not want to raise your children to be on the run, to have to dye their hair to evade law enforcement. Some people who do not walk in the foot steps of the Lord end up having to live underground and join the Weathermen Underground tribe. You do not want your children to have to work with dope dealers to raise a quarter of a million dollars to pay manic guerrillas to keep them safe, to pay for hair dye, and fast cars as they drive up Highway 101 to north Oakland. There is the chance that the police and CHP will throw up roadblocks and you will have to stay at a stash pad and wait it out before the coast is clear to drive to Salt Lake City. It is better to raise your children to be American Legion hunting-fishing guys, or a soft Middle American woman, or everyone’s TV girl—a Holy Family. It is best to become a Holy Family of Elegance. When it comes to psychotherapy, words themselves are vague and insecure and our ignorance so great that we tend in desperation to assume meaning where none exists. #RandolphHarris 2 of 26
Let us recognize that the true nature of psychosis is a mystery. (And the nature of the most prevalent convulsive treatment, electroshock, is called a “mystery within a mystery” by the most authoritative book on the subject.) One of our problems, then, is how to deal with a subject consisting of experience which at its worst is indescribable from the inside and incomprehensible from the outside, and this without using words which are themselves confounding. “Psychosis,” for instance, has an authoritative, antiseptic sound, but its real sterility lies mainly in its lack of clear meaning. It simply replaces “madness”—now a literary term, and “insanity”—which represents a dated legal concept. Falling into pseudoscientific conventions of language will not help. At the present stage of knowledge, the questions are well enough represented by asking simply: What does it mean to “lose one’s mind”? How can a “lost mind” be recovered? For that matter, how is the mind developed in the first place? It is our assumption that “mind” develops and exists beyond brain, and following from this, the assumption of social psychological origin of much mental disturbance. It sounds simple, but there is by no means wholehearted agreement in the field on this issue. Current work on molecular structure and the chemistry of schizophrenia, for instance, challenges psychological assumptions. #RandolphHarris 3 of 26
It is possible, of course, that biochemical methos of treatment will develop actual cures for psychotic states, thus outmoding psychotherapy. No less a therapist than Dr. Freud thought so in regard to schizophrenia. Also fashionable are experiments with drugs which induce pseudo-psychotic states, which suggest to some that if such states can be caused by chemical means, they can also be cured by chemical means, and further that the mechanism of disturbance is fundamentally biochemical. Undeniably there is always a biochemical basis for behaviour of the human organism. However, this does not rule out psychological influence, in either the sickening or the healing process. It is certain that anxiety can cause diarrhea. Chemical mechanism? Surely. And a virus or a laxative might cause the same apparent result, but that would not alter the fact that anxiety, a psychological state, can and does cause diarrhea (as surely as a nonchemical state may cause someone ten feet away to blush). Nor would it mean, more obviously but no more truly, that even though the eventual chemistry, mechanism, and result are the same, two different causes (laxative and anxiety) are therefore the same. Nor would it mean than an antidote for diarrhea is a specific treatment for either anxiety or a virus, or that a specific for one is of any use for the other. #RandolphHarris 4 of 26
Similarly, a chemically induced psychotic state may not be a true psychosis even though it has the same appearance in terms of hallucinations and like effects. A chemical antidote for the pseudo-psychosis is not necessarily effective for a true psychosis, even though a chemical mechanism exists in either case. Psychological influence is not eradicated by the artificial imitation of its effects. Even though “tranquilizers” will tranquilize, so will a blow on the head, and neither one is equivalent to, or can deny the existence of, “peace of mind.” That which we call a “psychosis” is not a disease. It is a learned behaviour, exaggerated to a point of no return, id est, where control is lost and the exaggerated behaviour “takes on a life of its own” temporarily. Because this exaggeration is so overwhelming, so much beyond our ordinary capacity to assimilate, it appears to us that we are no longer dealing with, for instance, ordinary suspicion, but something quite different—“paranoia.” Then it appears that psychosis is not of the same order, not on the same continuum, as “normal” or “neurotic” behaviour. However, as psychotic behaviour becomes more common it is seen as a form of maladjustment similar in kind ot lesser degrees of maladjustment, though so much greater in quantity that it seems different in quality too. #RandolphHarris 5 of 26
There is one sense, unfortunately, in which it is different. A boulder balanced on the edge of a precipice can be pressed ounce by measured ounce toward rolling off. Each ounce is just like the last, but when the quantity of pressure totals to the “breaking point,” the quality of the consequences changes radically. No longer will the relief or counterpressure of one ounce recover the balance. Even if the boulder is not smashed in the fall, an enormous effort is required to restore it to its original position. It is because of this effort (which so few can make, and so many need) that it is necessary to prevent the “psychotic situation” in life. The “psychotic situation” is a precondition to the psychotic state, which may or may not follow. In our society, there is an overwhelming emphasis on thinking. In school, we were taught almost entirely to think rather than to feel. We were told to “use our heads,” to think through problems, to study hard and be sensible. This approach is supposed to lead to success in the World. The trouble is, while thinking is unquestionably important, it is of limited value. Thinking, you see, is entirely concerned with the past and the future. We cannot think about the present moment; we can only feel it. The present, a microscopic dot on the line from past to future, does not lend itself to thinking—for the simple fact that thinking takes time. The moment we think, even if we think about “now,” it is already in the past. Thinking can help us learn from the past and plan for the future, but it cannot help us experience the now. #RandolphHarris 6 of 26
Thinking results in action. First we think, then we do. We are a society of thinkers and doers. However, we are also a society of manipulators because all this emphasis on the mind has taught us to be cunning and calculating. When we use our heads only, we become manipulators—functioning with only part of our human capacity. So thoroughly are we oriented to doing, we shy from theories that tell us there is nothing we can do about a situation. The truth is, in some situations, there is absolutely nothing we can do. Sometimes no actions can be taken to help a person be confident. One must be confident, be secure, be powerful—and to do that, one must discover his core being. A system based on thinking is limited because it is based on concepts and theories borrowed from others, generally others’ books. It is borrowed knowledge—and borrowed knowledge does not overcome ignorance; it hides ignorance. Borrowed knowledge is “knowing without knowing.” The more of it we amass, the more darkness and ignorance we keep in our inner cores. We can develop our logic, but logic alone leads only to conclusions, never to the truth. Because the truth needs no proof. It does, however, need the heart. This is where experience comes in. Knowledge of the truth comes from our experience of it, from a feeling which originates deep down in our cores. It is totally individual, intensely personal, and entirely subjective. #RandolphHarris 7 of 26
You cannot know what love is by reading about it. You must experience it. You cannot take a course in love—or confidence, or any other value for that matter. Books and course are things of the mind. Values are things of the heart as well as the mind, and they come from within. However, people spend so much time in school and not everyone believes in God, nor do they go to church. Therefore, it might be conducive to offer a psychology class on how to love. People spend so much time learning how to think and how to hate. If we taught people how to express platonic love in college, it might generate better human beings that are able to deal with stressful situations and will be less critical of others’ perceived faults. Some people view themselves as weak and powerless because they have never experienced their own personal power. All of the doing is merely activity at the circumference of one’s true self. In the focusing process, one can break through the circumference and find something else. In surrendering to helplessness, one may discover a capable self in one’s core. The “something” that one finds is the real I. And finding it, one knows, intuitively, that one had and still has power. Note that, in this experience, one does not actually do anything. A man may not know what to do. However, that is not important. #RandolphHarris 8 of 26
When the right thing to do comes alone, he will do it, based on his new, intuitive knowledge that he can do it. Not borrowed knowledge, from books or lectures or friends, but intuitive knowledge from within. Some people will thus have an instantaneous experience of mastery. When control is so perfect that he can never again raise his voice in anger, he needs turn attention to only one other passion—the spiritual. Such a chaste aloofness will help with mental, spiritual, and emotional clarity. When desires die without regrets, he begins to taste real peace. When cravings slough off naturally, like a serpent’s skin, he finds tranquil happiness. If not all of it, the man who can win his way to freedom from anger and finally liberate the mind from passion may need much of his lifetime for the work; but what he gains is of inestimable value. For this brings him closer to awareness of the Overself. As aspiration for the Overself grows stronger, other desires grow weaker. If you are ever to emerge from the darkness, you must possess an insatiable longing for light. He arrives at purity by a cultivated discipline of the mind rather than by a forcible atrophy of the senses. If he can find it and heed it, the thread-like intuition which will lead him out of animality into serenity will be his best guide. It is not possible for these finer elements to become, little by little, paramount in his outlook, consciousness, and conduct without a corresponding decline in the coarser ones. #RandolphHarris 9 of 26
He will gradually become the ruler of his physical appetites and then the master of his bodily desires. Indeed, as all his longings for the Overself slowly gather themselves together into a great dedicated life, there is an equally great shift-over from the terrestrial part of his being to the truly human, allied with an opening-up of the angelic or divine part. The fruits of extravagances involving pleasures of the flesh, the harvest of promiscuity of pleasures of the flesh, the gleanings of irresponsibility with pleasures of the flesh, and the gratifications of license involving pleasures of the flesh must be subjected to the hard discipline of reason. Those who will not do so must sooner or later pay the price in fears, anxieties, irritations, regrets, disillusionments, shames, and despairs. So long as a man identifies himself with the physical body, so long will he perforce have to identify himself with its desires and passions. Only when he transfers this self-identification to the infinite mental being can he completely detach himself from them. When they are still in subjection to passion, of what use is it for men to talk of freeing themselves from subjection to egoism? The student of philosophy will try to comprehend the sensations got from sensual pleasures impartially and impersonally. Man knows instinctively what will give him momentary emotional satisfaction; he must wrestle with reason to know what will give him deep enduring happiness. #RandolphHarris 10 of 26
When different pleasures compete for suffrage or when duty competes with desire, reason must arbitrate. Desire carried to an undue extent becomes a passion disturbing to the equilibrium of life and character. When a man finds that despite all his efforts to improve himself and reform his character, he still remains the same, it is an indication that new methods must be tried. The scourging of the flesh may be needed by, and may help, those who find their overheated passions and lusts get out of hand. However, it will not end those troubles of man, even though it may tame them for a time. Something more must be added, or must replace them—first, knowledge; second, work on the process of attention. The instinctual animal urge plus the ambitious drive for power and the personal desire for property keep men from spiritual aspiration. If he is filled with selfish interest alone, seeking the fulfilment of personal ambitions irrespective of any higher considerations; if terrestrial passion drives him and greed dominates him, he blocks his own way. Purification from such attachments must be the first endeavour. Pleasures which corrupt character are undesirable; but those which uplift character (like the finest works of Aaliyah, Beethoven and Handel) are desirable. There is a level of tension below which the person can think rationally and act effectively. #RandolphHarris 11 of 26
When tension increases above this point, efficiency breaks down, and irrational thinking and expressive behaviour takes the place of rational thinking and effective action. This point on the tension continuum is called the frustration threshold. It varies from person to person, and within the same person at different times. A mother wants her house to be clean and orderly. In the forenoon, her three-year-old daughter Annie might spill a glass of milk, leave her Barbie dolls in disarray, and scatter magazines all over the newly cleaned living room. The mother’s reaction at the time is one of mild anger, followed by efficient attempts to set things straight. At five-thirty in the afternoon, the child repeats her efforts at messing up the house. This time, the mother “explores”—she sends the child to her room, screams, and is unable to prepare supper until she has vented her tension. Optimum physical health produces a high frustration threshold. A sick or exhausted person has less energy to cope with tension and is more easily frustrated than one who is fit. People who manage to survive the extremely corrupt Sacramento City—a so-called death camp—have pointed out that a strong commitment to life and a sense of mission to fulfill were definite factors in survival. Individuals with such a sense of mission were less readily frustrated by the deprivations, stresses, and pressure of extremely hostile environments. #RandolphHarris 12 of 26
When Zorba, the Greek, was unable to express his grief following the death of his beloved son, he danced a Cretan dance until he dropped from exhaustion. On another occasion, when he felt he had at last found the solution to a problem of brining logs down a mountainside, again he danced. Finally, when the plan to bring logs down the mountain failed, and his boss’s investment was dismally lost, the boss asked Zorba to show him how to dance, and the two men danced and laughed like madmen. When someone has access to such means of self-expression, as in dance, violent exercise, painting, or song, that person can release the inevitable frustration of life without recourse to mindless, destructive outlets of tension. As Reich pointed out, sexual orgasm also provides a natural means for the dissipation of tension. In fact, prolonged privation of pleasures of the flesh is a common cause of frustration. It is however, a mistake to think that other frustrations, such as material misunderstandings, are all relieved by pleasures of the flesh. Nothing is more revealing in this respect than the famous lampoon, read b y Dolmance in the Philosophie du Boudoir, which has the curious title: People of France, one more if you want to be republicans. Pierre Klossowski is right in attaching so much importance to it, for this lampoon demonstrates to the revolutionaries that their republic is founded on the murder of the King—who was King by divine right—and that by guillotining God on 21 January 1793, they deprived themselves forever of the right to outlaw crime or to censure malevolent instincts. #RandolphHarris 13 of 26
The monarchy supported the concept of a God who, in conjunction with itself, created all laws. As for the Republic, it stands alone, and morality was supposed to exist without benefits of the Commandments. It is doubtful, however, that Sade, as Klossowki maintains, had a profound sense of sacrilege and that an almost religious horror led him to the conclusions that he expresses. It is much more likely that he came to these conclusions first and afterwards perceived the correct arguments to justify the absolute moral license that he wanted the government of his time to sanction. Logic founded on passions reconclusions before the premises. To be convinced of this we only have to appraise the admirable sequence of sophisms by which Sade, in this passage, justifies calumny, theft, and murder and demands that they be tolerated under the new dispensation. It is then, however, that his thoughts are most profound. He rejects, with exceptional perspicacity for his times, the presumptuous alliance of freedom with virtue. Freedom, particularly when it is a prisoner’s dream, cannot endure limitations. It must sanction crime or it is no longer freedom. On this essential point Sade never varies. This man who never preached anything but contradictions only achieves coherence—and of a most complete kind—when he talks of capital punishment. #RandolphHarris 14 of 26
An addict of refined ways of execution, a theoretician of sexual crime, he was never able to tolerate legal crime. “My imprisonment by the State, with the guillotine under my very eyes, was far more horrible to me than all the Bastilles imaginable.” From this feeling of horror, he drew the strength to be moderate, publicly, during the Terror, and to intervene generously on behalf of his mother-in-law, despite the fact that she had had him imprisoned. A few years later Nodier summed up, perhaps without knowing it, the position obstinately defended by Sade: “To kill a man in a paroxysm of passion is understandable. To have him killed by someone else after a calm and serious meditation and on the pretext of duty honorably discharged is incomprehensible.” Here we find the germ of an idea which again will be developed by Sade: he who kills must pay with his own life. Sade is more moral, we see, than our contemporaries. However, his hatred for the death penalty is at first no more than a hatred for men who are sufficiently convinced of their own virtue to dare to inflict capital punishment, when they themselves are criminals. You cannot simultaneously choose crime for yourself and punishment for others. You must open the prison gates or give an impossible proof of your own innocence. Even if only once, from the moment you accept murder, you must allow it universally. #RandolphHarris 15 of 26
Permissions are the chief therapeutic instrument of the script analyst because they offer the only chance for an outsider to free the patient from the curses laid on him by his parents. The therapist gives permission to the patient’s Child by saying either “It is all right to do it,” or “You do not have to do it.” Both say to the Parent “Let him alone.” Thus, there are positive and negative permissions. In a positive permission, or license, “Let him alone!” means “Let him do it!” This cuts off the injunction. In a negative permission, or external release, it means “Stop pushing him into it!” This cuts off the provocation. Some permissions can be regarded either way. This is particularly true of antiscripts. Thus, when the Prince kissed Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, he was offering her both a license to wake up and a release from the witch’s curse. One of the most important permissions is a license to stop acting stupid and start thinking. Many patients of advanced years have not had a single independent thought since early childhood, and have quite forgotten how it feels to think, or even what thinking means. With properly timed permission, however, they are able to come through, and are more than delighted when they say out loud at the age of sixty-five or seventy what may be the first intelligent observation of their adult lives. #RandolphHarris 16 of 26
Often it is necessary to undo the work of previous therapists in order to give a patient permission to think. Some of them have spent years in mental hospitals or clinics where the slightest attempt on their part to think independently came up against powerful resistance from the staff. There they were taught that thinking is really a sin called “intellectualzing,” to which they must confess promptly and promise never to indulge in again. Many addictions and obsessions are based on parental come-ones. “Do not stop taking drugs (or you may stop coming home to ask for money)” says the mother of the heroin addict. “Do not stop thinking about pleasures of the flesh,” says the parent of a lecher or a nymphomaniac. And the whole concept of permissions as a therapeutic instrument was started by a gambler who said: “I do not need someone to tell me to stop gambling, I need someone to give me permission to stop, because somebody in my head says I cannot.” A permission, then, allows Jeder to be flexible, instead of responding with fixed patterns frozen by slogans and controls. This has nothing to do with “permissive up brining,” since that is full of imperatives, too. The most important permissions are to love and to change and to do things well. #RandolphHarris 17 of 26
A person with permission is just as easy to spot as one who is all tied up. “He sure has permission to think,” “She sure has permission to be beautiful,” and “They sure have permission to enjoy themselves,” are Martian expressions of admiration. (One of the frontiers of script analysis is the further study of permissions, primarily through observation of eye movements in very young children. Thus, in some situations the child glances sideways at his parents to see if he has “permission” to do something; in other cases, he seems to be “at liberty” to follow his own inclinations without consulting them. Such observations, carefully evaluated, may result in a significant distinction between “permissions” and “liberties.”) The term Genetic Counseling indicates that a genetic consumer consciousness is dawning. The emphasis is on genetic disorder, not upon genetic endowment, but this is to be expected. A new technology always appeals to hive-security first as a way of dealing with danger. Awareness of genetic disorder precedes awareness of genetic excellence, just as psychiatry precedes self-actualized psychology. Pathology precedes potential. When the experts in a hive begin treating “broken-down personalities” they have recognized the existence of “personality.” The next step is for healthy individuals to take charge of their own “selfs.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 26
New technology always appeals to hive-security first. The Ad Hoc Committee on Genetic Counseling of the American Society of Human Genetics described genetic counseling as a “communication process which deals with the human problems associated with the occurrence, or the risk of occurrence, of a genetic disorder in the family.” This one-day workshop is primarily for health professionals who want to learn how to do genetic counseling or who want to strengthen their skills in this field. Hidden in this course description are valuable neurogenic clues, evolutionary evidence, which is easily overlooked by hive observers because it reveals much about the neurogenetic stage of the give culture—and of the planet. Genetic counseling appeared a generation after personality counseling. When an advanced, post-political culture offers courses in “Job Counseling,” “Personality Counseling” or “Martial Counseling,” Evolutionary Agents know that a move towards self-actualization is occurring—a free-mobile-individually oriented society is emerging. The military defense groups are willing to train those who are willing to be trained and have a good temperament and they simply do not bother training those who lack discipline. Being part of the United States of America’s armed forced is an honour and a privilege. It is ridiculous for an organization to even attempt to train some hundred thousand men in the State’s twilight of decline when, only a few years before, the State disgracefully abandoned one hundred and seventy million. #RandolphHarris 19 of 26
The proud members of the Sacramento Fire Department are committed to providing the highest quality and highest level of courteous and responsive services to the residents, businesses, and visitors of Sacramento. They ensure Sacramento City can respond to, recover from, and mitigate against any hazard that affects their city, the region, the state and beyond. “I like ladder work. It’s probably the most dangerous jobs in firefighting, and the real purpose of it is to go in and look for anyone trapped in a fire. You’re more or less on your own, you’re not with the rest of the men, and you don’t have the benefit of the hose line. I was assigned the SCBA (self-contained breathing apparatus) that day. We got the call to a fire in a three-story dwelling. We are second in. Another engine and ladder company was ahead of us. When I got off the truck, I was all prepared to go in the building. It was a strange fire, actually—a kerosene heater, which was overfilled. It has been knocked over, and the kerosene went between the floor and the wall down into the basement from the first floor and was ignited by the hot water heater. So the fire ran up the walls to the upper floors, and the flames were coming out the third-floor windows when I got there. As I say, I had my air pack on. I went around to the back alley before the other guys. #RandolphHarris 20 of 26
“The first company was still trying to get the ladders up in this narrow alley. I went up some steps to the kitchen door and kicked it open. A couple of guys were already in there on the floor. They didn’t have packs, so they were taking a beating from the smoke. One of their ladder guys also had a pack, so his chief put him on a hose, and he said to me, ‘Go down to the basement with this guy and give him a hand with the tip.’ Engine or ladder man, it didn’t matter to him. He saw we both had packs, and it was pretty smoky. I helped this guy drag the line, and we both went down to the basement from the kitchen very quickly, because it was like a chimney. It was getting real hot, and the fire flashed over us. He hit it with water and knocked it down. There was a small window next to the steps, and he was trying to fog the smoke out the window. The heat was coming toward us the whole time. Then apparently somebody saw how bad it was getting and called, ‘Everybody out of the basement.’ There were only the two of us there. I didn’t hear it. The guy on the tip supposedly did and told me he was leaving. Again, I didn’t hear him. He closed down the hose, and all of a sudden he was gone. I learned later that he went out the window. He had to take the pack off to fit through the window, it was so narrow. I didn’t know he had left. #RandolphHarris 21 of 26
“So the water was stopped, and I was lone in the basement. I couldn’t go back up the steps to the kitchen, because when he shut down the water the fire had flashed over again and set fire to the stairs. You see, the water wasn’t really putting the fire out, but it was keeping the heat away from us. Now it was getting very hot. It was very dark, it was smoky, I couldn’t see. I was down on my stomach on the basement floor, looking for the back door I knew was there, but I couldn’t see it. I was probably only ten feet from it the whole time. I became a little disoriented, but I didn’t panic. I had been in basement fires before, and I knew you shouldn’t panic. I thought, ‘Now, how did I get into this situation. I don’t have any water. I don’t have anyone with me.’ I could see that the fire had engulfed the kitchen steps and I couldn’t make it up there. I knew there was a back door there somewhere, but the people had been remodeling the basement, and I had to feel my way through a lot of debris. There was paneling against one wall, and I thought that might have been the door. I slid on it like a slide and fell to the floor. I say there for a second, and said, ‘I gotta compose myself, or I’m going to be in trouble here in a minute.’ I thought to myself, I’ve been through a lot in my life. I probably should have been dead eight times over. ‘Well,’ I said to myself, ‘I haven’t come this far to die in this person’s basement. This can’t happen to me. I’m going to survive. I’m not going to die in this guy’s basement because he was overfilling his kerosene heater.’ I got mad then. I remember. I said, ‘Dammit, I’m not staying here. I’ve got to get out.’ #RandolphHarris 22 of 26
“So what I had to do was raise my mask and holler for help. If I hadn’t done that, they wouldn’t have found me, because they didn’t know I was in there. This guy didn’t tell them I was still down there, and my lieutenant hadn’t ordered me to go down there; he thought I was on one of the upper floors. It was the chief of the other company who had sent me down there. They heard my hollering, and they were saying, ‘Come this way. This way.’ I would put my mask back on and walk toward their voices. I couldn’t see anything, so I was going by their voice. But they couldn’t hear me with my mask on. They didn’t know where the hell I was. It was getting harder and harder. It was very hot down there. I burned my ears, and I still had my helmet on. I knew if I didn’t get to that door soon, I wouldn’t make it, so I just kept going. I pushed things out of the way, and finally, after what seemed like an eternity, I had my hand stretched out like a blind man, and somebody grabbed my hand, and they pulled me out. One of my boots came off, and my helmet fell off. They never found my helmet, it had melted away, and the only thing left of my boot was the sole. There are points that I don’t recall. I didn’t actually black out, but I think it was my mind acting it out for me. I don’t recall exactly how I got to that back door. I was just glad to feel someone’s hand. I was kissing the floor, and the gentleman who grabbed my hand was in the doorway. He couldn’t advance any further. In fact, he was on the ground, and somebody had hold of his legs. #RandolphHarris 23 of 26
“I didn’t realize I was saved until I was in the rescue squad actually. I was on my way to the hospital, and I was holding the oxygen mask over my face, and I started crying. It finally hit me that I had almost died. I don’t normally cry. I believed I was going to be all right. I knew I was hurt, but I also knew I was going to make it. The first night in the hospital was hell. I had a tube going down my mouth into my lungs. It has a ballon-type thing at the end of it to keep the air passages open. Everything in there was swelling, and I would have chocked otherwise. And they were pulling a lot of things out of my lungs and throat, big pieces of black stuff. I didn’t know I had taken that much smoke, I had thought it was mostly heat. They gave me morphine, but I was conscious when they were putting that thing down my throat. It makes you gag. They refused to give me more morphine, saying they had given me enough already. When I wanted to say something I had to write it down, because I couldn’t speak. So the first night I was going in and out of consciousness. I kept writing down, ‘If you don’t take this tube out of my throat, I’m going to pull it out myself.’ I was a terrible patient that first night. I was in intensive care, and the orderlies, nurses, and doctors were at the desk fifteen feet from me, drinking soda. My mouth was so dry, I wanted some water, and they wouldn’t give it to me. They’d say, ‘Okay, we’ll get you something,’ thinking I’d go to sleep and forget. I would wake up an hour later, and nothing would be there. #RandolphHarris 24 of 26
“My father was there within an hour. He’s a fireman, too, and he heard the call come on the fire radio. He knew, before he was told, that I was in trouble. He heard the call for the rescue squad, and he said, ‘I knew it was you.’ The commissioner came, and so did a couple of guys I work with and my wife and my mother. Everyone showed a lot of concern, and everyone was as nice as could be. It meant a lot to me. Because it was nice to see familiar faces. The next day I was more relaxed. I didn’t fight the tube, I just tried to make the best of it. Then I felt lucky. I felt glad to be alive. I was released from the hospital a week later, and after a few days at home, I was mad. Angry that I got hurt when I shouldn’t have been hurt, that my whole life had changed. I don’t like changes. I’m used to going to work, and now I had to stay home. I wanted to get out of the house and couldn’t. I was miserable as hell, I was climbing the walls. I took a lot of it out on my wife. She had had a back operation less than a year earlier and was bedridden. Then she had had a premature baby, and my son was in intensive care for two months. He had just gotten out of the hospital and weighed only 21/2 pounds (1.14 kilograms). So she was dealing with her back, and the baby was home on a monitor and she was worrying about him breathing, then I came home and she worried about me breathing. So her back was forgotten for a time, and now it’s in terrible shape. #RandolphHarris 25 of 26
“I was miserable even to the kids. I was jumpy all the time. I was physically hurt, and I was still spitting up things. My ears were burned, and the doctors told me I would need glasses, because my corneas were burned. I became depressed, and I was mad. The only ones to take it out on were my wife and kids. I feel bad for them now, but they understood. My wife was great. She had a lot of patience with me.” The Sacramento Fire Department strives to build a safer and more resilient Sacramento. Firefighters and EMT put their lives on the line every day, several times a day to provide the highest quality and highest level of courteous and responsive service possible. In an effort to keep the country cohesive, please raise your children to love America, to be patriotic, to love God and Jesus Christ and buy American cars and other American goods and services. Also, please respect law and order, and treat others with kindness and respect. To ensure that you have a bright future, please take your education seriously, and be sure to actually read your books. And remember to “Just Say ‘No’ to Drugs.” Even marijuana can be deadly. 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. O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountains majesties above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed His grace on three, and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea! O beautiful for pilgrim feet, whose stern, impassioned stress, a thoroughfare for freedom beat across the wilderness! America! America! God mend thine every flow, confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law! O beautiful for patriot dream that sees beyond the years, Thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears! America! America! God shed His grace on thee, and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea! God never gave us express allowance, only He gave us reason, charity, nature and good example to bear us out. #RandolphHarris 26 of 26
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Does it Feel that Way to You?
Through life, some people have as a dominant value their strength. A man’s physical strength is sometimes obvious. However, he also may use his intelligence as an asset to do what his physical strength cannot do. After an injury, a man may no longer be able to come out on top by using his physical force, when this happens, he must use his acumen successfully. Due to addictions that sometimes occur when a person is disabled or because of physical constraints, some men find that they are no longer able to manage their money, and they have no where to turn. He may perceive that inability as a weakness, and rather than admit the weakness and deal with it, he might decide to avoid it, pretending that it is not there. Thus, his money situation will simply get worse. Viewing strength and weakness as a duality, a man might believe that his only choice is to have one or the other—not both. In his mind, to admit weakness is tantamount to giving up his physical prowess. And from a man’s point of view, strength is what has kept him alive. He is therefore a slave to brute force. He cannot abandon it. He is “stuck” on it. It takes courage to move from strength to weakness and back again. It takes a brand of courage some men do not have. Many men are “stuck” on strength because of their inability (or at least unwillingness) to experience weakness by going through and getting in touch his inner core, his being. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
A man who is not able to use his physical strength to support himself or his family may see himself as a spaceship without a pilot—in a sense, empty. He does not see himself as having a core, or essence. In his mind, he is not a complete human being. He is no more than a shell he carries himself around in. That is why some men who become disabled have the constant, gnawing feeling that “something is missing.” Since men with physical limitations see themselves, and therefore others, as “things,” their lives can become an endless round of manipulation, using his own “strengths” and others’ “weaknesses” to constantly come out on top. This, then, is how some men become manipulators. And their styles of manipulation may be quite simple. He merely overpowers people in getting what he wants. As boys growing up in less affluent neighbourhoods, some of them overpower people with their superior body strength. However, as men in business and in marriage, they overpower people with what they believe to be their superior intelligence. A man becomes a walking embodiment of his own attachment to strength. What a man is looking for, though he does not have words for it, is a balance between the values of strength and weakness—a state of emotional mastery, where he can be in touch with his own core, his real self. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Whereas a man, the manipulator, is saying, “I am out here, all alone, and I have to be strong to survive,” a man who is a master would say, “I am a man, and I am tough and strong. I have strength and I have weakness. Even thought I am strong sometimes and weak other times, the real me always survives/ It is OK for me to be weak; it is OK for me to need people. I am not my strength, nor am I, my weakness. I am something more. I am me, and that is enough.” This is the essence of a man’s journey. It is a journey which might very well resemble your own. The strength/weakness polarity is a common one, especially among men. How does it apply to where you are, in your World? Well, your life is like a stream. And if you are a manipulator, the twigs and rocks are the values to which you cling so desperately. If you are like most people, security is what prompts you to keep clinging. The polarity in life is that it consists of clinging to your security—your dubious, unwanted yet comfortable situation, and taking a chance by opening up your innermost self, making yourself vulnerable, risking insecurity. In choosing to take a risk, you go to your core, you find your being, you become what others will call “Messiah.” You become a master. However, those who cling to their comfort zones tend to become manipulators. They are “stuck” on their exaggerated values. Though unwilling to risk letting go themselves, they nevertheless condemned the “Messiah” creature for his willingness. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
A man who lets of what does not strengthen him is not necessarily smarter, stronger or better than any of the other men. What separates him from the rest is his willingness to risk. In risking, he goes into his core, finds courage, and through it becomes truly free. This is something that manipulators—and indeed all of us—have yet to learn fully. When you truly learn to take strength, you take the first step on your journey from manipulation to mastery. This allows a man to experience the loss of his physical strength and survive it. He is able to see that there is still a whole, completely person left, a person who can be weak and still exist. Men will also find that weakness—which they avoid and deny their whole life—also has power to it. Men learn their weakness has the power to make them more “real” and brings people closer to them. For many men, weakness opens the door to power of loving, the power which comes from letting others be strong. Weakness enables us to relax, stop competing, let go and regain our strength for another time. When a man learns to have an encounter with weakness, sometimes people will offer to help him get his finances straightened out. However, it is difficult for most men to admit to others that they are in financial trouble and that they cannot handle it themselves. It is an admission of weakness. Yet it is something that a man is able to do when he confronts his weakness in Church and/or therapy. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
A real man can survive weakness. However, this weakness still may cause a man to withdrawal from his friends and loved ones because he still cannot face himself. For many, his strength is still too important to him and discovering more weakness would be too uncomfortable. Yet once his journey has begun, and once begun can never be turned back. For a brief moment, some men are able to give up strength, retreat to their inner core and find something there. It is something he will never be able to “unexperience.” And it will assist him in his journey many times in the future. However, other men continue to grow. Man’s true intelligence is feeble while it remains imprisoned in egoism and narcotized by sensuality. He must liberate it by the philosophic discipline before it can become strong. So many of our feelings and so many of our thoughts have until now been dictated by the body. Is it not time to think and feel also as the true self would have us do? The terrestrial heritage has given him instincts, appetites, impulses, and desires; the human holds out higher possibilities to be worked for and realized. One message of the Sphinx is to balance the human mind with the brutish terrestrial being in us. This is not the same as the ascetics’ message, which is to exterminate the terrestrial being altogether. He who has not overcome his passions finds himself compelled to act against the clearest warnings of his reason. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
What really moves a man to act is his feeling; that is why the passion which are strong feelings, need more deliberate effort of the will to bring them under restraint. An action which is spontaneous and not a calculated one—that can be safe only for the enlightened man. For others it may be mere impulse or mere passion. The point is not that natural impulses of the body are wrong—how could that be?—but that men have made them wrong. Originally the satisfaction of the pleasure-instinct was in harmony with higher will as a lesser part of a greater function. However, now human will have reversed its role and exaggerated it to first place. The result is disharmony and disease. On one thing all men in all lands are agreed, that it is immeasurably more preferable to be released from anxieties than to suffer them. Yet, these same men throw themselves into situations or bring about events which will rivet the chains of anxiety upon them. How is it that such a contradiction exists everywhere? What causes them to do this? It is the strength of their desires, the power of their ambitions, the tendencies inherited from past births. This being the cause of the trouble, the remedy for it becomes plain. The more a man frees himself from desires, that is, the more he masters himself, the more is he freed from numerous anxieties. And even if he too is subject to the painful tests and unpleasant ordeals which inescapably affect human existences, he does not consider them to be misfortunes but as devices to draw out his latent qualities. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
The way out from tyrannical desires may have to be staged. First becomes a witness—indifferent and dispassionate—every time there is a surrender. This way is taking a new direction, starting to disidentify from the desire. On the one hand, he must tear himself away from his Earthly passions. On the other hand, he must give himself up to his sacred aspirations. The eagerness of desire betrays him into romantic self-deceptions and leads him into wounding frustrations. The ego lures his hopes constantly onward only to lacerate them in the end. Whilst we are still limited by the body and its inescapable needs, it is an impossible task to extirpate desire and negative self-interest. Philosophy adds that it is also an undesirable one. Only, put desire and self-interest down in their proper place, it says, do not permit them to obstruct higher and spiritual needs. It is not that they have to abandon joy but to purify it. If the joy which comes from debased pleasures is thereby lost, the joy which comes from ennobled thoughts and refined feelings is gained. When Earthly desires are extinguished, calm befalls a man. He must needs declare open war on his own passions, for he now sees that he cannot have them and peace too. Like all war this one will witness both victories and defeats, hardships and sufferings. However, out of these battles with himself he may progress, learning discrimination and gaining willpower. If uncontrolled, he realizes that he has to break his passions, or they will break him. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
In this work of purification, the need for mortal intellectual and emotional honesty will have to be stressed. It is satisfied by discriminating examination of thoughts, feelings, and motives, with constant self-distrust as a guide in the work. The more he trains himself to recognize and reject the impulses that come from his lower nature, the more will clarity of comprehension become his. The brute creature that he is most be kept at bay; his freedom as a man must be gained by degrees. Personally, I knew about my wife’s World to understand something of how life was to her. I even knew the terror of it because once, before we were married, I got swept into her agony, his suicidal chaos, and all the World became morbid to me in a most frightening, unmitigated and unmitigable way—everything was going haywire and out of control. I wanted to kill myself. I said so. She spoke to me as though I were a peasant who thought she new the passions of a kind. She thrust me out. In two shakes I thought, “Whew! I will never get into that again.” In thrusting me out, she got out of it herself (when she became the King?” but to be in it at all was too dangerous for me. Of course, I have wondered through the years since her suicide whether there was anything I could have done to help her. Everything I read or heard of psychotherapy I thought of in relation to my wife, questioning, and always I got the same answer: “With her, it would not have worked.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
This made me wonder whether I was white-washing my own failure. However, if so, why could I not ever be satisfied? Why did I not let it drop? Did I know that I was guilty, deep down in some sub-non-unconscious way? (When I mistrust me, there is no end to it, because then what I live with is mistrust.) If I were guilty, why could I not feel that?—instead of living with the knowing that I had tried very hard, I had loved her very much, and I had stayed too long. I received a latter from a man who stayed too long with his wife, in which he said “I have tentatively concluded (for me) that more time and more suffering than make sense are required to get on top of the mores and our personal motivations and unenlightened advice, to work through to the point where you can know yourself free of guilt for the life you can’t save.” It was only last spring, nearly twenty years after my wife’s suicide, that I understood something that I might have done. My relief expressed itself in a sign (letting go). I felt better about it. Not good, but better, and better is a kind of good. And then I knew—by feeling it clearly within myself—that the “bad” that I had been feeling was not guilt but sad. My “better” feeling was because it was not solidly inevitable that people like my wife must suffer so much all their lives and wipe out other people along the way. I do not know that I could have helped. However, I could have been more in touch with my thoughts and feelings (acceptance of myself) and more acceptant of his distress, sharing it her. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Instead of both of us trying to shove out her distress and replace it with a happiness which was phoney, I could have let her agony be, and then there might have been the beginning of change. Where to everything else I had said, “No, it would not have worked. She would not have let it,” when I thought of this in relation to my wife, I remembered the times when I might have got through to her. Even if I had not, I would have been more me and that would have been better for all of us. The most beautiful times that I remember with my wife are the many hours that we spent together saying only a few words now and then, like a touch on the shoulder or a hand touching hand. Our chairs were yards apart, but we were together. At such times she was in touch with the wordless resonance, the love that was in her and in me, and let it live awhile. However, then I would be sure that I, eighteen years younger, must be unhappy, must want to be “doing something,” and then I lost my awareness of all that was going on in myself and between us, and the sensing with all my senses that I had been enjoying, and I thought that I had to reassure her. She never did entirely take my word for it, and I never asked her, “Does it feel that way to you?” My wife was exceptionally good at explaining astronomy, anthropology, medicine, English literature and history, Greek and Latin poetry, and probably some other things which I have forgotten. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
However, in the person sense, my wife explained nothing. Perhaps she was so out of touch with herself that she could not. There were times and ways in which I understood (or heard) her no better than she did herself, and that was because at those times I did not hear me too. The human needs varied stimulation, not just to avoid boredom but actually to preserve the ability to perceive and to act adequately. When a person is radically deprived of the customary variety of sights, sounds, smells, conversation, and so on—as happens in solitary confinement—he or she begins to feel strange and may show signs of deteriorating as a person. “Sensory deprivation” experiments show that when volunteer subjects are placed in a special room that is soundless, with their vision closed off by special goggles, and immersed in warm water kept at body temperature (to reduce the experience of tactile stimulation), some begin to hallucinate and go through other psychoticlike experiences. I have been in such an isolation chamber, and I found it tranquil and conducive to meditation. Variety in “stimulus input,” then, may be regarded as a basic need, even though deprivation as extreme as that produced in the laboratory seldom occurs in everyday life. The “evil twin” of varied experience is boredom—a form of dispiriting in style of life. Travel, risk-taking, excitement, and simply trying something new in the way of clothes, reading, vacations, or challenges are the antitheses of boredom—varying one’s experience of life. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Even moonrises and sunsets can get monotonous for the jaded tastes of the daily skywatcher. The healthy personality is also nurtured by meaningful variety. Excitement has often been thought of as a need for the young only. We now recognize that it is part of the fullest of lives in all generations. The excitement experience is one of the most difficult to create. Not all excitements involve risk-taking, and excitements are quite individually determined. One person may be thrilled by the firs parachute jump—another is equally excited about the first sighting of the sandhill crane. The Correspondence Principle requires that every new theory contain a limiting transition to the old theory it replaces. Insofar as the old theory has fitted some sound experiments, the new theory must concur. If Planck’s constant h tends towards zero, the quantum equations become just the classical ones. If the speed of light approaches infinity, Einstein’s kinematic and dynamical equations go over to Newton’s, and so on over a large number of examples from contemporary physics. As we apply the Correspondence Principle to sociobiology and exo-psychology, we expect that each new Einsteinian, relativistic theory of human behaviour and neurogenetic evolution will include a translation back to the old theory it replaced. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Darwinians are clearly in violation when they fanatically summarily reject the Monotheistic Creation theories of the Judeo-Christian Bible. Newer theories of evolution must provide new insights into the validity of the older theories—specifying the historical neurotechnical factors which limited the earlier metaphours. Any new theory of neurogenetics must relate to and lovingly demonstrate why the previous philosophic theory was “right” for its time arid its gene-pool—knowing that those to come will affectionately do the same for our theories. Historically speaking, the first coherent offensive is that of Sade, who musters into one vast war machine the arguments of the freethinkers up to Father Meslier and Voltaire. His negation is also, of course, the most extreme. From rebellion Sade can only deduce an absolute negative. Twenty-seven years in prison do not, in fact, produce a very conciliatory form of intelligence. Such a long period of confinement produces either weaklings or killers and sometimes a combination of both. If the mind is strong enough to construct in a prison cell a moral philosophy that is not one of submission, it will generally be one of domination. Every ethic based on solitude implies the exercise of power. In this respect Sade is the archetype, for in so far as society treated him atrociously, he responded in an atrocious manner. The writer, despite a few happy phrases and the thoughtless praises of our contemporaries, is secondary. He is admired today, with so much ingenuity, for reasons which have nothing to do with literature. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
He is exalted as the philosopher in chains and the first theoretician of absolute rebellion. He might as well have been. In prison, dreams have no limits and reality is no curb. Intelligence in chains loses in lucidity what it gains in intensity. The only logic known to Sade was the logic of his feelings. He did not create a philosophy, but pursued a monstrous dream of revenge. Only the dream turned out to be prophetic. His desperate demand for freedom led Sade into the kingdom of servitude; his inordinate thirst for a form of life he could never attain was assuaged in the successive frenzies of a dream of universal destruction. In this way, at least, Sade is our contemporary. The militaristic history of Germany has many imagines of a strong silent sentry soldier on guard, watching, protecting, which made the Germans feel secure and strong. The content of the American news media was once honourable, but most of the enterprises are managed in a way that has made it impossible for them to function as a business. The first duty of TV news media has become that of the propagandists, to win over people who can subsequently be taken into the organization. And they train men and women to carry on their propaganda. The second duty of the TV news media has become to disrupt the existing order of things in America and thus make room for the penetration of the new teaching of sin, lawlessness, and corruption. The organizers of the propaganda department (the TV News media) have been fighting for the purpose of securing power, so that their doctrine of sin and corruption may finally triumph. After propaganda has converted the entire population over to an idea, only a handful of men are needed to finish the job. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Great theorists are rarely great organizers. The greatness of a theorist lies in his ability to understand and establish correct, abstract laws, while the organizer must primarily be an expert in understanding the human mind. The script controls are inserted and take effect early in life, while the counterscript slogans only become meaningful later. Added difficulty are scripts that tell it like it is: people really do act clumsy, as the child well knows; while the counterscript is usually square as far as his experience is concerned: he may or may not have seen someone attain happiness by working hard, being a good person, saving money, or being on time, not eating starches, avoiding public toilets, taking laxatives, and not masturbating. The problem we are having in America currently is that American people are being ignored and public works projects that have been in desperate need of completion are being ignored to add things like new bike lanes that people do not use anyway. Also, democrats are teaching Americans to expect everything for free, to feel entitled, to ignore the law, to rebel and be destructive and that breaking the law and discrimination is acceptable. The way you live your life determines your ultimate destiny. If you are harmonious, you may pass by unnoticed on the inside of the pages, but if you are in conflict, you may bring surprises and make headlines. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Thus, Hard-Working Church Deacon may end up President of Council, Retires After Thirty Years, or Jailed For Embezzlement, and Devoted Housewife comes out Mother of the Year, Celebrates Golden Anniversary, or Leaps From Roof of Building. In fact, it seems as though there are two kinds of people in the World: real people and plastic people, as the Flower Children used to say. The real people make their own decisions, while the plastic people are run by fortune cookies. The Fortune Cookie Theory of human living says that each child gets to pull two cookies from the family bowl: one square and one jagged. The square one is a slogan, such as “Work hard!” or “Stick with it!” while the jagged one is a scripty joker, such as “Forget your homework,” “Act clumsy,” or “Drop dead.” Between the two, unless he throws them away, his lifestyle and his final destiny are written. The conflict which we have sought to avoid is upon us. It is a comfortable, self-indulgent cop-out to look for conventional economic-political solutions. This is a war for survival. There is no choice left but to defend life against the genocidal machine. There are no neutrals in genetic warfare. Do not be deceived. It is a classic stratagem of genocide to camouflage their wars as law-and-order police actions, but democrats are telling illegal aliens how to evade ICE. Remember the Sioux and the pogroms and the African slaves and the indignation over airline hijackings and 9/11! If you fail to see that we are the victims of genocidal way you will not understand the rage of the oppressed, the fierceness of the Weathermen, and the pervasive resentment of the young. We cannot allow our government to become a lethal instrument. Remember the buffalo, the Iroquois, and the deer in the Sacramento Valley! #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The members of the Sacramento Fire Department are professionals dedicated to providing services that are innovative and progressive, ensuring the safest environment for their community. “I’m going through EMT right now. I was an ECA, that’s emergency care attendant. With that I could run first aid for the fire department. There are widespread deaths from vehicle accidents in the Sacramento area. We have a lot of busy intersections, and we also have people who go out and party, and they get on the roads and bring death with them. I have handled a lot of situations. We had a baby born on one run. It was pretty exciting, even though I’ve done it with my wife. We were called out to a house, and a lady was having good contractions. She was in the third stage of delivery. So, in the ambulance, I assisted a paramedic and we delivered the child. We set him up on the mother’s stomach so that the two of them could be pretty comfortable together, for the hospital was maybe seven miles away.” “We responded to a fire at an apartment. On arriving at the scene, we saw black smoke billowing into the sky from the nineth floor, and tenants were out on the balconies waving for help. Our company, Engine X, entered the lobby just as Rescue Y brought down a lady who was pretty charred. This was the first time that the seriousness of the fire dawned on us. We went to the fifth floor and took a lone up to the nineth. There we searched and found about five occupants whom we helped to exit the fire. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
“It appeared to be a racing fire, which engulfed the elevator and much of the nineth floor. The carpets and wall coverings were involved. A flash fire raced down the corridor. There was a lot of heat and smoke. They had a lot of plastics, and the smoke was black and thick, like flowing oil. If you held your hand in front of your face, you couldn’t see it, the smoke was that bad. The exit lights couldn’t be seen. We could hear people talking, and we could hear people screaming. People were trying to find their way out. They were helpless. We led some of them back into their rooms and out onto their balconies. Others we led to the fire escape that came down through the entire building. Some of them were in wheelchairs and could not walk. Then, as our air pipes were running low, we came across a man in one of the rooms. He was wedged under a vanity or dresser of some type. He appeared to be dead, so Lieutenant X took his self-contained and gave the guy some air. We saw his lips move a little, so we knew he was alive. Our next thought was to rescue him. The exit we wanted to take him to was about seventy-five feet away. When we tried to remove him from under the vanity, it was quite a tug. We realized that he had been burned through his clothing, and his skin was stuck to the carpet. We managed to pull the guy up and drag him down the floor. He was a large individual, weighing about 300 pounds. We started the three-man carry and got him down the hallway about fifty feet from the exit, when we ran out of air. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
“Our oxygen supplies ran out simultaneously because we had all entered the building at the same time. It was his only chance, now or never. I helped carry the guy maybe twenty feet from the exit. I knew the smoke was filled with PVC, and I knew it was toxic. So what I did was hold my breath while we were carrying him, until I couldn’t hold it anymore. I told Lieutenant X and Y that I had to leave. I dove out of the exit, but not before I did breathe in some of it, and I went through the coughing and the spit and that stuff. Lieutenant X and Y succeeded in carrying the guy the rest of the way out. A relief crew was there to resuscitate him. X and Y were taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation. Since then, Y has retired from the department for respiratory problems, and Lieutenant X is still on the job. So it affected one firefighter enough to end his career. I didn’t take nearly as much smoke as they did, but it had some effects on me. I have sore throats and a skin problem, but all in all, I don’t think it had too much of a lasting effect. The victim’s name was O.G. That’s all I know, we called him The O.G. What his real name was, I have no idea. I never got to talk to him, but he sent us some letters, saying that he was grateful for what we had done. I think he was a veteran, and, as far as I know, he is alive and well. If you weren’t spiritual before, this job would probably make you that way. It has made me appreciate life, believe me. If you asked if I would do it again, I would tell you yes. I know I would do not again. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
“After that, going on fires, it isn’t the fire I worry about, it’s finding somebody in that same position again. I think that bothers me more than anything else. Because that stuck with me for a long time. To see an individual I rescued, see him that close to death, it really bothered me for a long time. one time I went on a call to that building there was a big guy. We all knew he had been dead for at least twelve hours. His body was cold, but there were about ten of us. A few of us guys spent nearly an hour trying to resuscitate the body. There was a little boy and a distraught woman there and I guess we wanted to give them hope. We all knew he was dead. That building is like a warzone. A lot of people end up dead, there are a lot of suspicious fires, a lot of crime and an extremely large number of emergency calls. I worry about the people who live there. Something is wrong. The building constantly wreaks of drugs and foul odors and is filthy.” Because of the Sacramento Fire Department, Sacramento City has been blessed with a great and noble heritage that offers a pathway to salvation. The dedicated EMTs, Fire Fighters, CHP and Police risk their lives to protect that community and keep people safe. The people of Sacramento do not underestimate the worth of emergency services. The Sacramento Fire Department has a firm adherence to a code of moral and ethical standards: Honesty, Trust, and Accountability. You can help save lives by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. It is also very important to raise your children to love America and to be patriotic. By having pride in America, and purchasing American made cars and other goods and services, we can make America a creditor nation again and ensure that this sacred land will be enjoy by your family for generations to come. Teaching children to love God and Jesus Christ will also preserve our American heritage and allow us to make sure our children are set on a path that will lead them to success and help them reserve a seat in Heaven. The Ten Commandments in the Christian Bible are a good guideline of how everyone should live. Furthermore, by respecting law and order, we will ensure the tranquility of this great nation and make sure that we are setting an exemplary example for other nations to follow. And by treating others with dignity, respect, and compassion, this will ensure that we are following the golden rule, “Do on to others as you would have them do on to you,” reports Luke 6.31. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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The Ring of Fear
Many young people try drugs to fill voids in their lives, but this decision always leads to broken hearts and bodies. Whether they feel a need for friends, or peace, or happiness, or love, these teens always find drugs to be an unfulfilling substitute for what they really need. Turning to the Lord and to our families, instead of to other sources, will truly fill our needs. Abusing drugs can never do that. Another reason people do drugs is because states like California legalized recreational use of marijuana, and as it goes, the excuse is “weed is okay, everyone does it,” but if that were true, the federal government would not consider marijuana an illegal substance. It is absolutely important to teach your children to obey all laws, as best you can. So, marijuana should not be a substance that is considered acceptable in your home. Nevertheless, youth also turned to marijuana because adults they admire use it. If you use drugs, as an adult, you should never use them in front of children or other impressionable people because it could lead to them becoming addicted to marijuana and making some unsavory choices in life. Marijuana could also land your child behind bars or cause them to have an accident that could cost someone their life. Continue to nurture your connections with trusted peers and trusted adults. This is critical. Develop the self-awareness to recognize the connection between being tempted and feeling a need for acceptance. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
No aspirant is asked to remain emotionally neutral regarding his personal hopes and fears. He is asked to strive for impartiality in his decisions, to recognize that it is wrong action which secures his own enjoyment at the cost of other people’s suffering or his own gain at the cost of their rights. He is to try at all times to see directly into his own personal situation without being misled by emotions, blinded by passions, or confused by suggestions; that is, he is to see it just as it really is. This practice is intended to help disentangle him from his ego. When you feel that need, it is important to fill it in healthy, gospel-centered ways. Stay close to your family and the Church. The same human characteristic of emotion which enslaves and even harms him when it is attached to Earthly things alone, exalts and liberates him when it is disciplined and purified by philosophy. Just as inordinate fear evoked by sudden catastrophe could drive someone quite insane, so clam resignation evoked by sudden bereavement could bring a glimpse of full spiritual sanity. He who keeps a silent tongue in his head when the air is filled with anger is on the way to holding down his own wrath. However, he who keeps a silent mind will conquer it more quickly and easily. There is the caution which comes from timidity and the caution which comes from experience. They are not the same. He must keep a part of himself in such reserve that no event and no person can ever touch it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
In the case of an ordinary man, the emotional reaction to a situation is all he is conscious of during the situation itself. If at all, the intellectual or intuitional judgment of it comes some time afterwards. However, in the disciple’s case, his self-training should be directed toward a side-by-side working of the two at one and the same time. The silent, taciturn, reserved man makes fewer friends but guards his present and future better. To be cautions in speech and writing today—whether private or public—is to save trouble tomorrow. A single indiscretion may mar a lifetime’s honourable reputation. The same act which is wrong when done in anger and on impulse may become right when done in calmness, after due reflection. Such an act might be, for instance, the protection of other persons against an unjust invasion of their rights or a violent aggression against their bodies. At a certain stage of one’s evolutionary development, personal emotions form the greatest obstacle of all. It is extremely difficult and painful to stand aside from one’s emotional nature at a time when it wants most to be insistent—but, if he does, that is the very time the quickest progress can be made. One should try, so far as possible, to avoid anxiety about his problems, whether they are of a Worldly or spiritual nature. It is necessary to develop a calm, hopeful attitude toward the future. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Anything that may be written or thought at a time when one is plunged in pain or grief must be evaluated again after enough time has elapsed to allow the upheaval of emotions to subside, lessening the hurt. Only then can a calm, philosophical appraisal of the entire situation be satisfactory achieved. Inner strength of a remarkable nature can be shown in the manner in which one responds to disappointment. One could so easily become wildly hysterical at the breakdown of his hopes. We are forced into admiration for the way in which another may take the breakdown of his dreams. Nothing should ever be done in a great hurry or in a sudden outburst of enthusiasm. He should sleep on his decisions and discuss them with older people who have themselves demonstrated by their own success that their judgments are worthwhile. Mastery resides at the core. The life of a master is lived at the core and through the core. To help in our understanding of how this happens, it might be useful for us to borrow a concept from philosophy. In the early 1800’s, the German philosopher Georg Hegel developed the idea of thesis-antithesis-synthesis. Basically, this idea (often called Hegel’s Dialectic) holds that when one force (the thesis) comes into contact with its opposite force (the antithesis), the result is a third force (synthesis) which is unlike the first two. A common way of imagining this is to picture driving down a road (thesis), then reaching a stop sign (antithesis), and making a sharp left and going up hill (synthesis). #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
Thesis and antithesis are “synthesized” into a new, entirely different thing. For example, when the colour yellow is mixed in equal proportions with the colour blue, they produce green. Thesis (yellow) meeting antithesis (blue) produces synthesis (green), which is neither yellow nor blue, yet contains both. The colour green is a new “thing” which has resulted from the combination of the two old “things.” In the journey to mastery, this process takes place within us. It involves our thoughts, our feelings, and combinations of thoughts and feelings, which are called “values.” The word “value,” may have a broader meaning than you would normally attach to it. It consists of an intellectual element and an emotional element, a thought and a feeling. When a thought and a feeling come together, they synthesize into a “value”: Picture the thought as the starting point on the road, the feeling as a stop sign further down the road, and the value as the destination after reaching the stop sign and making a sharp left uphill. Through the entire realm of experience consists of countless thoughts, feelings, emotions and values in infinite variety, to simplify matters, we can say there are eight basic values: Strength, weakness, anger, love, criticalness, support, control, dependency. To imaging this graphically, picture a daisy flower with eight petals and each value being a petal. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
Therefore, strength and weakness, anger and love, criticalness and support, control and dependency are all values, that is, emotionally laden ideas about life. This might conflict with traditional notions about feelings. Having considered anger, for example, a pure feeling or emotion, you might find it hard to think of anger as a “value.” Yet that is what it is. When you were a children and first displayed anger as a pure emotion, you might have been told it was not nice to be angry, that it made people feel uncomfortable and you ought to “hold your temper.” Thus, a value judgment became attached to the feeling of anger. From that time on, whenever anger came up, you felt it and also mentally shut it off because your anger was a “bad” feeling to have. Anger became something in addition to the feeling; it became a value. Values are more than simple feelings in that they consist of intellect and feeling. Theya re ideas charged with the power of feeling. They are similar to attitudes. Viewed in this way, values eliminate the apparent conflict between the thinking and feeling sides of your nature. In experiencing your values, you use your mind and your heart simultaneously. You are being human. When one value—anger, love, strength, weakness, criticalness, support, control or dependency—is exaggerated and used to the exclusion or minimization of every other, manipulation is a result. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
If, for example, you relied consistently upon your strength, you would almost become your strength. You would constantly be showing the World a mask of strength, while denying your weakness. In so doing, you render yourself incapable of using your weakness in situations that demand it. You become like an eight-cylinder engine of a BMW 740iL, constantly trying to run on only one cylinder. Like that engine, you can chug along, but only with great effort and at the expense of smooth, effortless operation. To be fully expressive and totally alive, to run on all your cylinders, to be a real BMW 740iL, a master, to be the Ultimate Driving Machine you must experience all of your values and be a fully functioning 4.4-liter M62B44 V8 engine. And this experience requires the process of synthesis. For example, when strength and weakness are experienced at the same time, they synthesize into courage, like this: strength is a starting point down the road, weakness is the stop sign down the road, and courage is obeying the law and making a sharp left up a hill and reaching the point of courage. Each time a synthesis occurs, it occurs at the core. So, just imagine once you arrive at the point of courage up the hill, there is a radius at the courage point which contains the core and you will notice that the road to courage and strength start to run parallel, but in more of the form of an angle. Much like an isosceles triangle without a bottom. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
Similarly, anger and love synthesize into assertiveness. Criticalness and support become appreciation of differences. Control and dependency become interdependence. To reach the core, to achieve the synthesis, you must be willing to experience all of your values. Yet this can be a terribly frightening prospect. Most of us stick to one value because somewhere in our development we found that it worked for us, it helped us to get what we wanted. We have become comfortable with it and extremely uncomfortable with some or all of the others. If, to further highlight this illustration, as a child, you had a father who melted when you treated him lovingly, who gave you things when you fawned over him adorningly, you may have hit upon the notion that the way to succeed in life by being lovable. You placed an exaggerated value on love. If you were surrounded by people who cowered and gave in when you got angry, you may have decided that anger gets you what you want, and thus you put an exaggerated value on anger. Every value which you, as a human being, are capable of feeling and expressing, can serve you. However, if you come to rely on one value to the exclusion of others, if you begin to call upon that value in every situation—whether it is appropriate or not—you have formed a pattern of manipulation. It is a pattern which can—and already may have severely damaged your relationships with yourself and others. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
Yet in spite of the harm these patterns cause, you stick with them. They are comfortable and safe. They are easy to justify by claiming, “Well, that is just the way I am.” However, I disagree with your claim. You as a manipulator, might act that way, but it is not the way you really are. It is not who you are. Who you are is a great deal more than one or two comfortable values. You are more than an engine that is able to operate on only one or two cylinders. Who you are, deep in your core, is a fully expressive, totally alive human being—a master. A master of yourself and your relationships, not a slave of your manipulations. There is a concept called the “ring of fear”; all of us are fearful of expressing our polarities. Thus, fear becomes a barrier. However, it can be penetrated. The first step involves admitting you are afraid to express the fear, because the very act of expressing it is frightening in itself. This usually causes the other person to invite you to express it anyway. Once you express the fear, the way is open for you to experience the polar value. Picture the daisy, each of its eight petals represents a value either positive or negative: anger, control, strength, support, love, dependency, weakness, criticalness. Now, all of these petals are attached to the pistil of the daisy and around the outer ovary of the pistil is fear, at the center of the pistil is the core. The pistil is the ring of fear, and in the center of the ring of fear is the core. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Though the ring of fear initially acts as a barrier, keeping us from experiencing the values on the other side, this effect is temporary. Once we have penetrated the barrier, we can experience the opposite value and arrive at the synthesis or “integrated value” in the core. This is called a transforming experience, or an Experience of Mastery. After such an experience, imagine the daisy with the eight petals, and the pistil of the daisy representing courage. Now, from the petal of strength there is a road that goes through the pistil of the daisy at about a 15 degree decline across to the petal of weakness, then at a 15-degree angle goes back to the pistil of the daisy at a 15-degree angle which is the point of courage. In the experience of mastery, you live from your core and through your core. You express rhythmically between polar opposite values. You become truly alive, not passive or indifferent. Rather than remain a slave to one exaggerated value, you become a channel for the free and natural expression of all of them. You make contact with the real person in others and you discover that unique individual who is the real you. The emotional hurts which meant so much and felt so deep when you were spiritually juvenile, will come to signify less and less as you become spiritually adult. For you see increasingly that they made you unhappy only because you allowed them to do so, only because, from two possible attitudes, you chose the little ego’s with its negative and petty emotionalism as against the higher mind’s positive and universal rationality. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Real-life injunctions do not take effect by magic, but depend upon the physiological properties of the human mind. It is not enough to say once, “Do not eat those apples!” or “Do not open the chest!” Any Martian knows that an injunction given in that way is really a challenge. For an injunction to be locked in solidly in the mind of a child, it must be repeated frequently and transgressions must be punished, although there are exceptional cases, as with battered children, where a single shattering experience may engrave an injunction for life. The injunction is the most important part of the script apparatus, and varies in intensity. Hence, injunctions can be classified in the same way as games, into first, second, and third degrees. There is a tendency for each type to produce its own kind of person: winner, nonwinner, or loser. (These terms will be explained in more detail later. A nonwinner is someone who neither wins nor loses, but just manages to come out even.) First-degree injunctions (socially acceptable and mild) are straight directives reinforced by approval or discouragement. (“You have been nice and quiet.” “Do not be too ambitions.”) With these it is still possible to grow a winner. Second degree (devious and tough) are crooked directives crookedly enforced by a kind of blackmail of seductive smiles and threatening frowns, which is the best way to raise a nonwinner (“Do not tell your father.” “Keep your mouth shut.”) Third-degree (very rough and harsh) are unreasonable stoppers enforced by fear. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Words become screams, facial expression become nightmarish distortions, and physical chastisement becomes viciousness. (“I will knock your goddam teeth in and turn your pockets inside out.”) This is one of the surest ways to produce a loser. The injunction, like a payoff, is complicated by the fact that most children have two parents. Thus, one may say “Do not act smart!” and the other “Do not make me knock you out! Stop acting stupid.” Such contradictory injunctions put the child in a difficult position. However, most people who marry have compatible injunctions, such as “Do not act smart!” and “Keep quiet or I will knock your goddam brains out!” which make a sad combination. Stoppers are implanted at such a tender age that the parents look like magical figures to the little boy or girl. The part of the mother who gives out injunctions (her Controlling Parent or Child) is called colloquially “the fairy godmother” is she is benevolent, or “the witch mother” is she is not. In some cases, “mother’s crazy Child” seems the most suitable label. Similarly, the Controlling Father is called “the jolly green giant,” “the ugly troll,” or “father’s crazy Child,” whichever is appropriate. There will be times when he, who built on philosophic coolness through the years, who thought himself proof against tears, will yield to them all too readily and all too helplessly. Even when everyone else seethes with violent emotion and bitter prejudice, he should keep a cool, philosophical perspective. Even when everyone else submerges his own in a fashionable party or a popular group, he should preserve his independence. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
It is most comfortable for us to understand human robot-hood by looking at others. Thus, we notice that in “primitive” tribes young children perform baby-care. Older girls help with agriculture while older boys guard the flocks. After puberty, temporal caste assignments change dramatically. In all societies adolescent males pass through a warrior stage. In civilized societies technology and complex labour divisions have diminished the survival value of child-castes. Thus, the elaborate culture of organized play and extended education to prepare youngsters for warrior and post-warrior status. In Lucretius’ epic poem, Epicurus himself becomes the proud rebel he never actually was. “When in the eyes of all mankind humanity was leading an abject existence on Earth, cursed beneath the weight of a religion whose hideous aspect peered down from the heights of the celestial regions, the first to dare, a Greek, a man raised his mortal eyes and challenged the gods…In this way religion, in its turn, was overthrown and trampled underfoot, and this victory elevates us to the Heavens.” Here we can sense the difference between this new type of blasphemy and the ancient malediction. The Greek heroes could aspire to become gods, but simultaneously with the gods who already existed. At that time, it was simply a matter of promotion. Lucretius’ hero, on the other hand, embarks on a revolution. By repudiating the unworthy and criminal gods, he takes their place himself. He sallies forth from the armed camp and opens the first attack on divinity in the name of human suffering. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
In the ancient World, murder is both inexplicable and inexpiable. Already with Lucretius, murder by man is only an answer to murder by the gods. It is not pure coincidence that Lucretius’ poem ends with a prodigious image of the sanctuaries of the gods swollen with the accusing corpses of plague victims. This new language is incomprehensible without the concept of a personal god, which is slowly beginning to form in the minds of Lucretius’ and Epicurus’ contemporaries. Only a personal god can be asked by the rebel for a personal accounting. When the personal god begins his reign, rebellion assumes its most resolutely ferocious aspect and pronounces a definitive no. With Cain, the first act of rebellion coincides with the first crime. The history of rebellion, as we are experiencing it today, has far more to do with the children of Cain than with the disciples of Prometheus. In this sense it is the God of the Old Testament who is primarily responsible for mobilizing the forces of rebellion. Inversely, one must submit to the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob when, like Pascal, one has run the full course of intellectual rebellion. The mind most prone to doubt always aspires to the greatest degree of Jansenism. A schizoid friend and his wife are in constant difficulties. She approaches things intellectually, while he gets tired of words, tired of the misunderstandings that come about through words, tired of the very sound of words going on and on (no silences, no pauses). Sometimes he says that he is giving them up, to live with music for a while. His wife said to me, in complete puzzlement, “How can you communicate without words?” However, her husband’s words do not communicate to her easily. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Even in very simple things, she had to struggle. When he referred to a jazz musician as a “skin and bones drunk” she was baffled. She tussled with it, working it out in her head, and then she said, “Oh, I see. You mean that he is thin and gets drunk. You see, I didn’t understand the modifier.” She teaches English, which can be a limitation. When I was working as a university press editor, I mentioned to a most lovable English professor that a five-line sentence in his manuscript did not say anything. He read it and agreed, but then went over it phrase by phrase, clause by clause, adjective by adjective, and showed me that the sentence was absolutely correct, so therefore it should remain. It seems to me that most psychologists must do something like this with people: they do not seem to read people very well. I do not even know what a modifier if. I think that my friend’s husband probably does not know either, but he has a great respect for the education that he has not had, that his wife has. That is how mixed up we get—all of us, in one way or another. Actually we get mixed up in so many ways that I do not see any way out of it but to go by our own experience, and to limit ourselves to that. I do better when I know that if I have not had the experience, I cannot know anything about it, and can neither approve nor condemn. If interested, I can only explore and inquire. “No one may condemn another until he has walked in his moccasins for ten days.” And then, of course, I will not. This sound passive, and “passive” is a bad word in our society (another tabu). However, to experience “passive” is to know being very much alive, and it is the source from which my right actions spring. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
To think about anything without experience is nothing. To be close to another person physically and emotionally, to be held tightly, to share one’s deepest self-secrets—all of these represent a basic need largely ignored by most behavioural scientists. This tender need seems to be uniquely human in its manifestation. Obviously related to the needs of pleasures of the flesh, intimacy yet has a meaning of its own that includes the physical union, but that can be expressed and can be experienced in the psychological realm alone. Its opposite is true loneliness—just being in the presence of others is insufficient. The need is for a real closeness that affirms the existence of the person. One’s existence as an individual is not only highlighted, like a back-lit photograph, in separation from others, but is also manifested in the phenomenon of intimate closeness. Deprivation of challenge is experienced as boredom, or as emptiness in existence. The need for challenge manifests itself most keenly when a person has made a “successful adjustment” to life, when he or she has been able to fulfill the material needs, and cannot then find anything to do. Without challenging goals, people eat or drink to excess or pass the time getting high on marijuana. The mission of the Sacramento Fire Department is to prevent the loss of life and property in the community due to fire, medical emergencies, and other natural or man-made disasters and catastrophes. This is accomplished through direct mitigation during these types of occurrences and through community wide prevention efforts. The Sacramento Fire Department will assume command of such incidents and will staff and maintain the force with professional, highly trained personnel. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
The Sacramento Fire Department is prepared competently with cognitive, psychomotor, and affective skill levels to handle any challenge. “It was Christmas Day, Christmas before last. I had worked nighttime, eleven to seven, and I had just come home from work. I was having some coffee with my mother, and the radio alarm came in, saying, ‘Reported structure fire, occupants trapped.’ I drove to the firehouse, only a couple of miles up the road, and since there was no traffic that early in the morning I was the first one there. I saw the column of black smoke only a few blocks from the station, and I knew it was a bad one. The radio said the police were already there. I got geared up while Assistant Chief X and driver Y arrived. So we hopped on the engine and drove to the scene. We saw good-sized flames shooting up in the air toward the street. People told us they had seen people at this bedroom window, but they weren’t there anymore. The window was on the second floor, above the garage. There was a ladder there, and the chief told me to go ahead and use it to get to the window. I climbed up, but fire was coming through the garage door, so I had to jump back down. He went to get an inch-and-a-half to knock that down, and I got another inch-and-a half to try to make the doorway. Well, I couldn’t do that, but he had his fire knocked down, so he said, ‘Come on, get back up there. Let’s try it.’ #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
“I got up there, the window was already broken by the heat, and I hopped through. The window was so small that, after the fire, the guys said, ‘I don’t know how you fit through there.’ It was divided into panes by metal strips that you couldn’t break unless you had the right tool. So I jumped through there and landed on a bed. And the room was totally black—black like you never experience, not even when you put tape over your mask for training. I got low to the floor, staying close to the wall, trying to go over in my mind everything I was trained to do in this situation. My job was to go in, look for victims, and rescue, if possible. I crawled along the wall, felt under the bed with my left hand while keeping my right hand on the wall. I came to the foot of the bed, and I felt something on the floor, real spongy, kind of moist, like Playdough or Silly Putty. I picked it up, and it was kind of heavy, but I didn’t know what it was. I dropped it, and you could hear it thump. Then I picked it up again, and I could feel that it was a person. I had picked up the arm. The bedroom doorway was near there, and she had tried to get out the doorway, but she had dropped right there. I tried to pick her up—talk about dead weight, that was really dead weight. She only weighed about 120 pounds, but she felt like a ton. I couldn’t throw her over my shoulder for a fireman’s carry, so I had to bear-hug her with all my strength and carry her back toward the window. And she was slipping away from me. I got another grip, using all my strength, and carried her toward the window, where the bed was. I started to hyperventilate from the excitement and exertion, and I had to take a break. So I set her down on the bed. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
“I was breathing so heavily that my mask couldn’t keep up with me until I could regain my composure and slow my breathing down. I said to myself, ‘Okay, this is what you’re supposed to do. Come on, you can do it.’ The whole house was involved. The fire had started in the basement and traveled through the whole house. The only rooms not burning at the time were two bedrooms, the one I had entered and the one beside it. So I regained my composure, got her in a bear hug again, and put her out the window. At first I thought I had thrown her out and she had fallen to the ground. That was all I needed! The smoke was billowing out the window, I couldn’t see two feet in front of me. And I thought, ‘Oh, my God, there’s nobody here to help me.’ I was yelling, and I lifted my face mask to yell louder. My body was so demanding of oxygen that I accidentally took in some hot air and gasses. The woman had been sort of hanging out the window, then all of a sudden she wasn’t there. The truck company had arrived and put up their own ladder, but they couldn’t see much better than I could. They just happened to reach out and feel the woman’s arms, and they just took her without me even knowing it. So then she wasn’t there, and I thought to myself, Well, it’s time to get out. I climbed over the windowsill onto the ladder I had used to get up there. I started to step down, and there was a rung missing. I hadn’t seen the fire department ladder, so I was on the wrong ladder. I lost my balance and fell backwards about fifteen feet, landing on the air bottle on my back. They thought I had spinal injuries. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
“They dragged me up on the sidewalk, cut the air pack straps, put on a cervical collar, and strapped me on a backboard. I started coming to, and they said my eyes were all glassy and rolled back. Then I started to cough severely, brining up black mucus. Just one or two breaths of gas and hot air was enough to do that. I kept asking about the woman, is she okay, is she okay? They said they were doing CPR on her in the next house. They put me in the first ambulance, because they were afraid I had a broken back. They put her in the next one. I was in a daze. I remember the lights flashing over my head as they wheeled me down the hall at the hospital. Then the doctor and a group of nurses worked on me, getting my clothes off, examining me, drawing blood, hooking up IVs, putting oxygen on me. It was a mass of work being done on me all at once. It was really confusing. I was in the hospital for two days. I had a minor shoulder bruise from landing cockeyed, but basically it was for smoke inhalation. I still had no fear, I still didn’t worry about how bad a situation I had been in. The only time I came to that realization was when a fire chief with about twenty-five years in the service said it was the worst fire he had ever seen, and he couldn’t believe that I had gone in there. I was happy to hear that the woman was still alive, though she had to go the UCD burn center. But I felt kind of guilty because there were two other people in the house who did perish, he daughter and her husband. I hadn’t known they were in there. The woman is now living out of town with the rest of her family. She never came to the firehouse, but I did meet her son, and he thanked me. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
“I heard that the woman was shock-blind for a while. She was in so much shock that she was blind. She later got her sight back. I guess God had a plan for me, and I did what he wanted me to do. I feel closer to him. I have no fear of dying if that’s how God wants me to go. What I do fear is the day when I’m faced with a really bad fire and I say to myself, hey, that’s even too bad for you, there’s no way you can go in there. Am I going to go in there and maybe die, or catch myself before I react? I’ll be testing myself. I kept replaying the fire. The guys at the firehouse kept wanting me to tell the story again, what was it like inside. It was like everybody’s dream, and they wanted to be part of it. I mean, it’s the dream of every fireman to make a successful rescue, to save some human life. And I was lucky enough to have done that.” The leadership of the Sacramento Fire Department are good stewards of taxpayer’s funds. They strive to be fiscally responsible with City funding and make prudent financial decisions. The Sacramento Fire Department is a well-trained and educated workforce and those qualities are essential to an effective fire department. They provide their firefighters and professionals with knowledge support and opportunities to improve their physical health, wellness and fitness in order to enhance job performance and an overall healthy personal lifestyle. Great people can liberate great feelings in others or lift them toward acceptance of true ideas. You can help the Sacramento Fire Department in their mission of saving lives and the community by donating. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
Few people know what love really means because with nearly all it is filtered through the screens of bodily and selfish considerations. In its pure native state, it is the first attribute of the divine soul and consequently it is one of the most important qualities which the seeker has to cultivate. Remember parents, please teach your children to love American, to be proud to be American and to be patriotic. It is also important to buy American made cars and other goods and services produced by Americans, like beef, poultry, produce, steel and more. This will ensure that we save American manufacturing jobs, American farms, and the American auto industry. It is also important to teach your children the importance of respecting law and order and showing dignity and concern towards their elders. Also, education is by far one of the best gifts American children have been blessed with and will be an asset in their lives. I bear you my witness of the divinity of the Saviour of the World and of His redemptive love and power to heal, strengthen, and lift us when we are earnestly striving to come unto Him. Conversely, there is no way we can move with the crowd and also toward Jesus. The Saviour has defeated death, disease, and sin and has provided a way for our ultimate perfection if we will follow Him with all of our hearts. “We believe in being subjects to kings, presidents, rulers, magistrates, in obeying, honouring, and sustaining the law,” reports the Articles of Faith. Respect is an expression of our sense of universal brotherhood or sisterhood—a testimony of our membership in the human family. It acknowledges our common humanity and shows our reverence for children of God. The gospel teaches us that we are to hold the same esteem for others that we would hold for ourselves. Acting disrespectfully suggests we do not esteem the other person as ourselves. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
The Winchester Mystery House
The house known as The Winchester Mystery House has become a museum of the most twisted and macabre kind. It is a monument to its own infamous past. On display inside were once wax figures of its victims. However, some people do not believe The Winchester Mystery House even exists. They are convinced that it is a huge hoax, an elaborate tourist trap. While 160 of the 500 to 600 rooms remain, through some are off limits, The Winchester Mystery House is very real. Will you dare to enter the house at night, when the tourists have gone? When are the ghosts and demons rumoured to come out?
About two decades ago, I got my hands on this really ancient diary that was written in 1899 by Sarah L. Winchester. I found the diary under mysterious circumstances in one of the rooms of The Winchester Mystery House. Nobody knows I have it. Sarah Winchester is the woman who built this labyrinth, and she goes into all kinds of details about how the hauntings manifested, and what they are like, and everything. I mean everything. The diary also goes into the first murder and let me tell you, this is sure not the stuff they tell you on tour!
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
The Needle or the Gun?
Many people are seeking love, but sometimes it is infiltrated by hate. We all have our desperate needs. We need freedom from spiritual confusion and Worldly darkness. We need to know for ourselves. One of the great truths of the Restoration is that the Heavens are open—that we too can receive light and knowledge from on high. However, we must be wary of a spiritual trap. Some people believe that with the right dope and good pictures in their heads that they do not need anything more. The prisons are filled with heroin vibrations. Junkies involved in the ancient cult devotion to Mother Opium, and the graves are full of people devoted to Father Fentanyl. Some go to prison with certain naïve, liberal hypothetical prejudices against self-defense. Insulated from the threat of violence, starvation, disease, brute force, they are nonviolent, seeped in middle class serenity not shared by the majority of the World population. Now, they have to figure out what they will do when armed violence threatens their life and their freedom. The needle or the gun? Often, individuals enter prison with a fear of Lady H. (heroin). Logically, they know that no one has the right to put anything in their bodies. However, they maintain a moral superiority about drug users. This is not good because often times when we judge people, we will learn why they suffer the way they do. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
“Judge not, lest ye be judged,” reports Matthew 7.1. Your brain controls everything your body does from breathing to calculus. It is as high-tech as it gets. The various parts of your brain work in a miraculous combination to run your entire body. However, drug abuse can seriously alter how your brain and body work. Harmful narcotics change the way you think and feel by posing as unhealthy substitutes for chemicals that help your brain run normally. These mind-altering drugs can cause addictions that are not easily overcome. And even one-time use can be harmful. After just trying heroin once, every cell in your body whispers her name. One-time drug abuse can be harmful, and even lethal. Continued recreational use of drugs causes brain damage and increasingly compromises your ability to make decisions. Habit-forming drugs not only affect your body, but as you surrender your body and will to them, they will also destroy the other command center of your body—your spirit. Choosing to disobey the Word of Wisdom will lead you away from the Lord. Trying drugs “just once” can physically harm you in some cases. However, “just once” will always harm you spiritually. Narcotic addiction serves the design of eternal death, for it disrupts the channel to the holy spirit of truth. Addiction has the capacity to disconnect the human will and nullify moral agency. It can rob one of the power to decide. Agency is too fundamental a doctrine to be life in such jeopardy. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Stay away from all drugs that are not prescribed by your doctor. Drugs that are not meant for you, can absolutely destroy you. They will take away your powers of reason. They will enslave you in a vicious and terrible way. They will destroy your mind and your body. They will build within you such cravings that you will do anything to satisfy them. The same goes for abusing prescription drugs or any other addictive substance, including alcohol and tobacco. Each of us has had times in our lives when we have made poor choices. We are all in desperate need of the redemptive power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Each of us must repent of any rebellion. “For I the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance.” He cannot because he knows what it takes to become like Him. Many of us have allowed weakness to develop in our character. Through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we, like the Ammonites, can build spiritual fortifications between ourselves and any past mistakes that Worldly people attempt to exploit. The spiritual protections built around the Ammonite fathers blessed and strengthened themselves, their families, their country, and future generations. The same can be true with us. So how do we build these eternal fortifications. The first step must be sincere, thorough, and complete repentance. Through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, each of us can become clean and the burden of our rebellion will be lifted. Remember, repentance is not punishment. It is hope-filled path to a more glorious future. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
The ancients, even though they believed in destiny, believed primarily in nature, in which they participated wholeheartedly. To rebel against nature amounted to rebelling against oneself. It was butting one’s head against a wall. Therefore, the only coherent act of rebellion was to commit suicide (not recommended). Destiny, for the Greeks, was a blind force to which one submitted, just as one submitted to the forces of nature. The acme of excess to the Greek mind was to beat the sea with rods—an act of insanity worthy only of barbarians. Of course, the Greeks described excess, since it exists, but they gave it its proper place and, by doing so, also defined its limits. Achilles’ defiance after the death of Patroclus, the imprecations of the Greek tragic heroes cursing their fate, do not imply complete condemnation. (Edipus knows that he is not innocent. He is guilty in spite of himself; he is also part of destiny. He complains, but he says nothing irreparable. Antigone rebels, but she does so in the name of tradition, in order that her brothers may find rest in the tomb and that the appropriate rites may be observed. In her case, rebellion is, in one sense, reactionary. The Greek mind has two aspects and in its meditations almost always re-echoes, as counterpoint to its most tragic melodies, the eternal words of Edipus, who, blind and desperate, recognizes that all is for the best. Affirmation counterbalances negation. Even when Plato anticipates, with Callicles, the most common type of Nietzschean, even when the latter exclaims: “But when a man appears who has the necessary character…he will escape, he will trample on our formulas, our magic spells, our incantations, and the laws, which are all, without exception, contrary to nature. Our slave has rebelled and has shown himself to be the master”—even then, though he rejects law, he speaks in name of nature. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
So long as anyone lives in a state of uncontrolled emotion, and especially of ungoverned desire, so long does he remain unready for entry into the higher consciousness. For he is unable to bring his mind into that unruffled balance state which is necessary to reflect like a mirror the truth and peace of that consciousness. When anyone is carried away by an emotion, in most cases it happens before he knows it. This is why some sort of training in self-awareness, self-observation, and self-control becomes a requisite. If the day itself is reviewed at night, all of these can be practiced during the day at odd times more easily and effectively. The emotional agitations will certainly come to an end when he finds his real inner peace, for he cannot have the two together. To have the peace he has to give up the agitations. There will be no relief from this continual oscillation between opposite moods until he reaches the sixth degree. His capacity to recover quickly from, and react positively to, the unexpected shocks of life will be one of the benefits of this cultivation of calmness. When uncontrolled, emotion may be very destructive to oneself and to others, but controlled it becomes constructive and beneficial to all. If they uselessly seek to achieve moral perfection, they may hopefully seek to achieve inner peace. The man who holds to this discipline of the emotions will not be easily embarrassed when friends desert him or enemies attack. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
Where the hands of another man may may tremble, his heart bleed, and his eyes fill with tears, the philosopher will know peace. The impression which other persons make on him are to be separated from the emotional and personal feelings they arouse in him. How else is he to know the truth about them? The practice of calmness frees a man from the fretful, nervous tension so many carry around with them; he brings a pleasant air of repose with him. This coolness where other men might see them with passion or emotion, this detachment from events and persons, things and places, is exacerbating to those who misunderstand it. Why was it required of candidates for entry into the Pythagorean School of Wisdom that they be of a “contented disposition”? Why does the ancient Christian Scripture forbid the teaching of the deepest knowledge to one “who is not tranquil in the mind”? The practice of calmness means that no emotions are squandered, no negative thoughts entertained. Walter Hilton, the medieval English religious mystic, remarked on the fact that the advanced Christian is no longer bubbling with religious devotion or weeping with religious fear, since emotional feelings are subject to changes, hence unstable, for he “is now wholly at peace, and there is little outward indication of fervour.” The pathological resentment in their hearts contributes toward the ideological resistance in their heads to truth. He who values inner peace will resist being swept away by strong negative emotions, will try to keep in command when the pressure of fear, anxiety, wrath, or hate threatens this peace. As we win control of our feelings, they become less a source of negative thoughts and more of upholding ones. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
We use the term “emotionalist” in the same derogatory sense that we use “intellectualist.” Only an unflinching devotion to truth and an unyielding exercise of reason can see through these insincerities of sentimentality. Intelligent generosity is philosophical. Sentimental generosity is not. So long as he mistakes his own longings for actualities, so long will disappointment wait for him in the end. If we let it stay in the mind long enough and feed it often enough, a worry can easily become an obsession. Human power in controlling the emotions consists solely in the Understanding, it follows that no one rejoices in blessedness because he has controlled his lusts, but contrariwise his power of controlling his lusts arises from the blessedness itself. The passage from jealousy to hatred is not a long one. The negative, discordant, and disruptive emotions require treatment by psychological means just as much as the physical body may require treatment by medical, surgical, herbal, naturopathic, magnetic, or manipulative means. The first step is to deny every form of outward expression to those emotions which are definitely harmful to his spiritual progress: to resentments, wraths, envies, and hates. If he let them envelop him in a haze of excitement or of emotion, how can he discover the truth that some of his strongest desire arise out of imagined needs? #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
If the value of a calm stability in our emotional life could be sufficiently known and appreciated, we would have less unhappiness, less tragedy, and less inefficiency. In moments of usual calm, he may recognize the truth of these statements, but never in moments of personal agitation, whether it be painful or pleasurable agitation. He must learn to master his baser emotions and to free himself from emotional frailties which, while not objectionable in common everyday life, may weakened his capacity to comprehend the truth. The free indulgence of undesirable personal emotions leads to neuroticism. Those who most need the excellent discipline of checking such emotions by the power of will and eventually extinguishing them by the activity of reason, are unfortunately those who are least ready to submit to it. If he asks himself whether when dying he would like to remember that he had reacted to it in a negative way, when he could have reacted optimistically, he may put each irritating situation of his life in a truer perspective. Since a kind of order reigned in Nature, it should be made by men to reign among themselves. They ought to live in an orderly manner and thus they could live in civilized harmony. This requires them to control emotions and not allow themselves to be swept hither and thither. The individual who is touch and irritable should be lest his traits flare up into open anger, still more least anger grow by degrees into intense hate and aggressive spite. These neurotics seeking comfort, who invade mysticism to its determent, display their self-willed, petty egotism by resenting the discipline of their emotions, and thus contribute to their own further suffering. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
Th man who is constantly petulant and consistently pessimistic obstructs the inflow of higher forces. Structural caste, or alpha reality, involves the genetic division into specialized functions—such as worker hum-ant, warrior hum-ant, drone hum-ant, and builder hum-ant-that characterize hive organisms like social insects and civilized hum-ants. Structural caste in insects is easily identified by visible morphological-ana-tomical-differences. In humans’ neurological differences are more important in determining the behaviour of each caste. Obviously, highly complex neurological differences characterize insect hives. It may well be that individual insects have more illusions of individuality than we credit them. The nervous systems of juvenile worker-ants are imprinted with specific culture cues. Each corridor of each ant hill has its highly characteristic odors, textures and humidities that identify the inhabitants. We are reflex-chauvinists when we naively deny that ant hill cultures—100 million years in building—offer their caste members any less sense of individual and hive uniqueness than is offered the average hum-ant. Structural caste is genetic-anatomical templating that produces involuntary-robot behaviours. For example, a drone bee looks different from worker bees and queen bees. Structural caste differences characterize homo sapiens. Male and female—is one structural caste difference. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
Big, muscled, hyper-adrenalized aggressive are a separate caste—the warriors, the Amazons. Danity, fragile, nurturant minister—types are another caste. Chestmasters like Bobby Fisher, FBI top-cops like J. Edgar Hoover, feisty politicians like Bella Abzug and sultry singers like Aaliyah Haughton and actresses like Marilyn Monroe are caste-exemplars. The caste distinctions are blatantly visible. It is interesting to note that politically repressive countries forbid talk about genetic caste-differences. Discussion of genetic types is taboo among modern humans. For example, Marxism held that society determined behaviour. Caste theories, to a socialist, reek of elitist racism. Although politically incorrect, these differences exist nonetheless and were taken for granted by earlier societies. In western democracies, the Intellectual-Scientists-Caste denies caste differences because of the hive commitment to equality, the revulsion against Nazi, Arab and Zionist genetic fanaticism makes caste discussions verboten among liberals—and most scientists are liberals. By contrast uneducated, lower-class people readily accept the reality of racial and caste-differences. Country bumpkins and illiterate farmers are aware of the effects of breeding and thus are far more ethnologically sophisticated than liberal Nobel Prize laureates. Common sense suggests that there are a limited number of basic genetic castes that characterize the human species, and that new caste differences will emerge as homo sapiens continue its accelerated differentiated evolution. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
Transactional analysts did not start out with the idea that human life plans are constructed like myths and fairy tales. They simply observed that childhood decisions, rather than grown-up planning, seemed to determine the individual’s ultimate destiny. No matter what people thought or said they were doing with their lives, they seemed driven by some inner compulsion to strive for a final payoff that was often different from what they put down in their autobiographies or employment resumes. Many who said they wanted to make money lost it, while all around them others were growing rich. Some who claimed to be seeking love found hate even in the one who loved them. Parents who declared they did everything to make their children happy ended up with addicts, convicts, and children who suffered mysteriously from death by suicide. Righteous Christian Bible students committed murders and child rapes. These were the contradictions which had existed since the beginning of the human race; they were the ones that operas sang about and that sold newspapers. It gradually became clear that while none of this made Adult sense, it did make sense to the Child part of the personality. That was the part that liked myths and fairy tales, and believed that that was the way the World once was or could be. It was not surprising, therefore, to find that when children planned their lives, they often followed the plot of a favourite story. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
The real surprise was that these plans persisted for twenty, forty, or eighty years, and that in the end they usually prevailed over “common sense.” Working backward from a death by suicide, car crash, delirium tremens, jail sentence, or divorce, and ignoring the “diagnosis” to find out what really happened, soon showed that these outcomes were nearly all planned because the age of six. The plans or scripts had certain elements in common, which formed a “script apparatus.” The same apparatus seemed to be at work in good scripts: creators, leaders, heroes, venerable grandfathers, and people eminent in their professions. This apparatus had to do with how the life time was structured, and turned out to be the same as the apparatus used in fairy tales for that purpose. In such stories, the programming is done by giants and giantesses, ogres and witches, fairy godmothers and grateful beasts, and sulky magicians of either gender. In real life, all these parts are played by the parents. Psychotherapists know more about “bad” scripts than about “good” ones because they are more dramatic and people spend more time talking about them. Dr. Freud, for example, cites in numerable case histories of losers, and about the only winders in his works are Moses, Leonardo da Vinci, and himself. Only a few winners bother to find out how they got that way, while losers are often very anxious to know so that they can do something about it. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
As we deal with losing scripts, where are knowledge is quite precise, keep in mind that the script apparatus consists of items, translated by the child into Martian imperatives. The parents tell the child how to end his life. “Get lost!” and “Drop dead!” are death decrees. So is “Die rich.” “You’ll end up like your (alcoholic) father,” is a life sentence. Such a command is called the script payoff, or curse. They then give him an unfair negative command that will keep him from lifting the curse: “Do not bother me!” or “Do not act smart!” (=Get lost!) or “Stop complaining!” (=Drop dead!”). This is the script injunction or stopper. Injunctions are given by Controlling Parent or crazy Child ego state. They encourage behaviour that will lead into the payoff: “Have a drink!” or “You are not going to let him get away with that!” This is called the script provocation, or come-on. It comes from a mischievous Child ego state, or demon, in the parent, and is usually accompanied by a “ha ha.” They also give him a prescription for filling in time while waiting for the action. This is in the form of a moral precept. “Work hard!” may mean “Work hard all week so you can get drunk on Saturday night.” “Take care of every penny!” may mean “Take care of every penny so you can lose it all at once.” This is the antiscript slogan, and comes from a nurturing Parent ego state. In addition, they teach him what he has to know in real life to carry out the script: how to mix drinks, how to keep books, how to cheat. This is the pattern or program, a form of Adult instruction. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
The child, on his part, has urges and impulses which fight the whole script apparatus that is laid on him by his parents. “Knock on the door!” (vs. Get lost), “Act smart!” “Take off!” (vs. Work hard), “Spend it all now!” (vs. Save every penny), “Do it wrong.” These are called scripty impulses, or the demon. Tucked away somewhere is a way to life the curse. “You can succeed after you’re forty.” This spellbreaker is called the antiscript or internal release. However, often the only antiscript is death. “You will get your reward in Heaven.” Exactly the same apparatus for structuring time is found in myths and fairy tales. The payoff or curse: “Get lost!” (Hansel and Gretel) or “Drop dead!” (Snow White and Sleeping Beauty). The injunction or stopper: “Do not be too curious!” (Adam and Eve, Pandora). The provocation or come-on: “Prick your finger with a spindle, ha ha.” (Sleeping Beauty). The counterscript slogan: “Work hard until you meet the prince!” (Kari Woodengown), or “Be nice until she says she loves you!” (Beauty and the Beast). The pattern or program: “Be kind to animals and they will help you in time of need.” (Pretty Goldilocks). The impulse or demon: “I will take just one look!” (Bluebeard). The Antiscript or spellbreaker: “You can stop being a frog when she throws you against the wall.” (The Frog Prince), or “You will be free after twelve years of labout.” (Hercules). #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
This is the anatomy of the script apparatus. The curse, the stopper, and the come-on form the script controls, and the other four items can be used to fight them. However, the child lives in a fairy-tale World, beautiful, mediocre, or gruesome, and believes mainly in magic. Thus, he seeks a magic way out, through superstition and fantasies. When that does not work, he falls back on the demon. However, the demon has one peculiarity. When the demon in the child says, “I am going to defy you, ha ha!” the demon in the parent says “That is exactly what I want you to do, ha ha.” Thus, the script provocation and the scripty impulses, the come-on and the demon, work together to bring about the loser’s doom. The parent wins when the child loses, and the child loses by trying to win. Interpretation of experience is another matter. It is easy to go haywire on that, particularly if I insist on one interpretation. When I was sick, my sickness was diagnosed “organic”—the somatic part of psychosomatic—but I did not feel sure about that, so I studied myself. I discovered that while I could decide for either psychic or somatic, as soon as I removed my decision there were both—interacting now as they had through all my life. Next, I asked me if I had brough my sickness upon myself (as some people said). I went into this deeply and found that I could build an equally good case for my sickness having been dealt out to me as a punishment (to make me learn). Or it could be retribution. Or simply cause and effect. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
In a groping, unclear way, I wrote to Aldous Huxley “Perhaps it is all of them and they are all the same thing seen differently.” My difficulty in accepting the truth of my own discovery was purely and simply that I did not know anyone else who saw it as I did. Each person had one view, and that was the way that I was supposed to see it. When I said (experimentally) that my sickness was organic, some people got mad. When I said that it was psychosomatic, others got mad. When I said that it was both, everyone got mad. The effect of everyone being mad at me was to make me feel that I must be “mad” myself. When I tried to express my stumbling beginning knowing that the same experience can be seen in many ways and expressed in different concepts or theories, any of which may be useful to me if I like it and use it wisely, then I was “mad” to other people. “Willam’s smart, but if he thinks he knows more than the experts, he’s crazy.” Which experts? At that time, I didn’t know the ones who would agree with me. I hunted them out, over a period of years, to prove to me that I was not crazy, because when I thought that I was, I became a little crazy—mixed up and everyone else around me was seeing. I am no longer troubled about being “crazy”—for probably the first time in my life—because I know that I can become confused, but also, I can become unconfused. If I let myself to along with it, I can let myself go into confusion with confidence and I will come out all right. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
Many followed the idea that loyalty is more essential than success. This point of view is entirely false. Loyalty in itself is not something that can be seen. It is best expressed through accomplishment. I am no longer afraid that this in itself may be crazy—to let myself go into a kind of madness, to explore it—no matter how many other people may think that it is. Without the fear, there is nothing to be afraid of. I can accept my own experience and know it to be me. It is often difficult to distinguish between a need and a want. Wants are infinite in number, and they change moment by moment. I want an Icon yacht, but I do not need one to survive right now. I may, however, need a yacht to achieve the status that is essential to me. Wants are a person’s interpretation of what he or she needs in order to achieve happiness or wellbeing. Needs are what scientists agree a person requires to sustain life and to foster growth of desirable human potentialities. Incentives, rewards, and reinforcers are what other people believe will move you. A man needs food. His wide knows he really likes rare roast beef. She may reward (or reinforce) his attention to her wishes by cooking it for him. Whoever possess the means of gratifying needs and wants has power to influence action, this makes a person vulnerable to being controlled by others in ways that can undermine personal freedom and dignity. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
A person is vulnerable in this way, however, only when others know what he or she needs or wants—what it takes to “buy” that person. Competence at gratifying one’s basic needs can protect one from being controlled by others. There are situations in which self-concealment may be required in order to elude control. If a person wishes the love of others, on the other hand, they must “open” themselves and disclose their needs and wants to the beloved ones, who can then act in their behalf. It takes trust to accept the love of another. The other must earn this trust by being trustworthy. What do persons need for a healthy personality? What does one need for oneself in order to be free to give to the World as well as take from it? Maslow presents an authoritative analysis of needs. He stated a need can be adjudged basic if: its deprivation breeds illness (mental or physical), gratification of the need prevents illness, identification and gratification of the need restores health in a person who is presently ill, the deprived person prefers gratification of this need over any other, under conditions of free choice. The need is not in a state of tension or privation in healthy persons. A subjective feeling of yearning, lack, or desire prevails when the need is not fulfilled. Gratification of the need feels good; gratification produces a subjective sense of healthy wellbeing. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
There is further implied the idea that when the need is met, the person does not think about it until the next time it arises; he or she is free for other pursuits. While there are may systems of needs, Maslow’s hierarch is perhaps the best known. Without specifying which of the needs are explicitly basic, the system does imply that the lower needs are prepotent, that is, that they must be satisfied before the other, higher needs can be taken care of. Maslow’s list from basic to higher order is as follows: Physiological needs, safety needs, belongingness and love, self-esteem, self-actualization, cognitive and conative, aesthetic needs. Keeping in mind the entire rage of needs, one may get a perspective on the importance of the basic needs. The concept of the basic need is easier to demonstrate with animals than it is with humans. In animals the maternal drive is usually considered to be the most fundamental. Even Maslow’s system for humans has been challenged by some recent research suggesting that the hierarchy of needs is not unassailable as theory. Nevertheless, the system is useful in providing a perspective over the whole need system of the human. Opinions among biologists and psychologists vary about the precise number basic needs in humans. Agreement can be reached on what is required for sheer physical survival, but not on what humans need to fulfill their unfathomed potentialities. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
The City of Sacramento Fire Department proactively and aggressively protects life, property, and the environment with a culture of safety and leadership. They serve all with integrity, respect, and professionalism. “I was working the night shift when an alarm went off. The street side of this old loft building was a lamp store, filled with heavy smoke and high heat. We started to go in for our salvage operation, and one of the firefighters said, ‘There’s no sense going up there because the heat is too high.’ So we backed down. There was nothing for us to do at that point because the fire hadn’t been located yet, just the heavy smoke and high heat. So our officer sent three of us around to the Street side, Pete Pearly, Bob Sampson, and myself. The fire companies came around too, Engine X and Ladder X and one other. One of the battalion chiefs told us to force the door of a store on that side of the loft building, a lingerie store. We did that, and the store was clear. No smoke. We came out and went next door to Wonder Drug. The door was already forced, and there were fire companies in the cellar. Y was one of the lieutenants there. The drugstore was clear. We went down in the cellar to see if there was any salvage operation that we could do. There was nothing. The cellar was clear of smoke. The firemen were pulling ceilings in the back where there was a cinder block partition. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
“We went back upstairs to the drugstore level and started to check it out. We felt the walls, and the wall in the rear was very hot. But there was no smoke. There was a fire in the walls and flooring, but nothing was visible. I learned later that nine successive layers of flooring had been laid there, and that acted as insulation for a time. As we were going out, a chief’s aide was coming in, and we told him what we found. He said, ‘Yeah, we’re brining a line in.’ A couple of guys from X Engine were brining the line in, there was a probie and a guy outside the door feeding the line in. I knew the location of these men as I passed them. We walked out, went next door, and started up the staircase to go above the fire to see fi there was anything we could do, and a fellow from A Truck said, ‘Patrol, get out of there, the heat’s building up, and it sounded like there were cracks.’ We took off down the stairs, and the minute we hit the street, the drugstore just lit up. Heavy flames. A pure white flame. Super heat. Guys were tugging on the line Engine X had taken into the basement. We ran over and tried to help, but we couldn’t pull it. Guys from Ladder X were coming out. Lieutenant Y was burned on the ears and I don’t know where else. Everything happened so fast. Nobody knew what really happened, or who was in there, or if anybody was missing. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
“I tried to tell some chief that I had an idea of where the men were, but in the excitement, he seemed to be devastated. I didn’t realize the building had collapsed. I didn’t hear anything, all I saw was the pure white flame coming out. So firefighter A, B, and I went to the store on the other side of the drugstore, which was a camera store, and we went down in the cellar. I know there was a truck company in the drug store basement, Ladder X, and an engine company, I didn’t know which. I figured, if they’re where I think they are and if they’re alive, we can breach this wall and get to them. There was a wooden partition along that wall, and when we got behind it, we saw that the foundation was built of boulders. We started at it with a pickax, and Chief C heard the sounds. He came down, thinking they were tapping noises from the trapped men alive in the cellar next door. The didn’t see us at first behind the partition, then we showed ourselves and explained what was going on. Then our own officer came down and he had me go up and talk to Commissioner D. I drew maps of the drugstore layout and showed where the men might be. We went to the basement next door again and went over it again with Chief C. I had no pencil or paper, so I drew my map on a cardboard box with a nail. I really didn’t feel that the men were dead at that time. I thought there was hope. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
“Then the chief said, ‘All right, everybody get out of here.’ I started to leave, and he said, ‘No, Patrol, you stay.’ The rescue company came down, I remember it was definitely Rescue X and may another company. I pointed out to them the two places where I though the men might be. They brought down jackhammers, and they had to rig slings with rope from the beams, so that they could wield the heavy jackhammers against the wall. When they opened the hole, that’s where a couple of men were. D from Ladder E, I remember seeing him. And Lieutenant F. They were burned, legs and arms. So we found a couple right off the bat. As the night went on, and the next day, they started to pick them out from upstairs, too. There were twelve who died in this fire, one the largest in the history of the Sacramento Fire Department at one incident. I stayed on the scene for two days, just doing what everyone else was, making a chain, passing debris, until the men were found. I saw a lot of love, a lot of family. There were firemen there from all the districts. It was like one whole family just came together like bees to a hive. They all took their turn on the line. It was a real sad scene. To see six firemen carrying out another dead brother in a wire basket and everybody taking their helmets off as the body passed by was sad. Some of them—grown men—were crying though most of them didn’t know the guy. It didn’t matter, he was their brother. Like being in a battle and seeing one of your comrades go down, you take care of your own. Outsiders don’t realize, even my wife doesn’t understand the comradeship and the closeness. There’s really a family in the fire department. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
“I saw a fireman’s wife outside, crying. Later, after the funerals, she took the time to write me a letter, thanking me. I really think that going through the wall was the quickest way to get to the trapped men. When Chief C wrote me up for a department medal, he stated in his report that I had pinpointed exactly where the men were. That made me feel good. I had felt bad initially when I was not acknowledged by a member of the fire department. Later on, I saw the reason: it was just the excitement and confusion. I think he was in a state of shock himself. The ordeal took its toll on me. I went back to the fire patrol house and stayed there for a whole day, sleeping. At the funeral, the fire patrol was stationed up front, right in the front of Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament. I guess that was kind of an honor. To this day, I couldn’t say if it was a rainy day or foggy or what. It was sad to hear the muffled drums and to see the lines and lines of firefighters who came from all over the country. It was a big shock for everyone to see the apparatus carrying the deceased members. It was quite an experience.” We all have life events that, when we recall them years later, acquire new and important meaning. There is a great benefit in seeing one’s treasures through someone else’s eyes. My concern is that we often take for granted the unique and valuable blessings that we have of membership in the Lord’s Church, and in a state of underappreciation, we are more likely to be complacent about our Church membership and are less valiant contributors to building a community of Saints. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
We are blessed with a great and noble heritage that offers a pathway to truth that veers dramatically from the so-called ways of the World. We need to remind ourselves about the value of our heritage so we do not underestimate its worth. The Sacramento Fire Department has a firm adherence to a code of moral and ethical standards: Honesty, Trust, and Accountability. You can help save lives by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. Also, it is important to raise your children to love America and to be patriotic. By having pride in America, and purchasing American made cars and other goods and services, we can make America a creditor nation again and ensure that this sacred land will be enjoy by your family for generations to come. Teaching children to love God and Jesus Christ will also preserve our American heritage and allow us to make sure our children are set on a path that will lead them to success and help them reserve a seat in Heaven. The Ten Commandments in the Christian Bible are a good guideline of how everyone should live. Furthermore, by respecting law and order, we will ensure the tranquility of this great nation and make sure that we are setting an exemplary example for other nations to follow. And by treating others with dignity, respect, and compassion, this will ensure that we are following the golden rule, “Do on to others as you would have them do on to you,” reports Luke 6.31. By following the golden rule, we will attract more of God’s grace into our lives and others will treat with respect. 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. Earthly longings bid retire, quench the passions’ baneful fire; to the wayward, sin-oppressed, bring thou the divine behest: Thou shalt rest. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
The Winchester Mystery House
The basement is calling! It says to send some snacks…. and your bestie for emotional support! 🔦
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
He is the Emperor of Life Who Determines How Each Person Will Die
Confused values are called into play by incipient rebellion. Scientists have shown that tobacco, marijuana, alcohol, drugs, and too much meat can harm us physically. However, the most important blessings of keeping the Word of Wisdom are spiritual, not physical. Our bodies are temples, and when we abuse our bodies by consuming harmful substances, the Spirit of the Lord is restrained in out lives. “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him, shall destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are,” reports 1 Corinthians 3.16-17. The Spirit will not inhabit a polluted temple. Abusing your temple could land you in jail. Jail is a place where you cannot trust anyone. It is a jungle. You even have to be careful about listening to any piece of advice. Beware! Many of the people are sick! Neurotic, psychotic, psychopathic. It is hard to believe anyone. Only one out of twenty there has his marbles. Sex perverts, child molesters, snitches, robbers, murderers, psychopaths. It is hard to trust anyone. Someone who claims they are you follower could be an old murderer. They keep an eye on you. Everything you do. And no one gets bailed out of state prison. The government cannot let you would. A judge or politician would get in a lot of trouble for that. It is also dangerous to be seen talking to some people. The worst things you can think of are the easiest to conjure in prison and are not only possible, probable, but they are happening right now. There are also no secrets in prison. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
When a loved one is incarcerated, the financial impact on the family can be significant. Loss of income and court and legal fees can lead to a loss of health care, housing, and savings. It is important to address these issues as soon as possible with a trusted adviser. As difficult as it may be, it is helpful to accept the reality that you have experienced changes with lasting effects. As you accept this reality, it will become easier to talk with others. Start by deciding what you will tell people. It may not be appropriate to share every detail. However, being honest about your feelings and your needs will allow others to help. You have the right to draw liberally upon the Saviour’s power to help your family and others you love. The Holy Ghost will be your personal tutor as you seek to understand what the Lord would have you to know and do. As you exercise faith in the Lord and His priesthood power, your ability to draw upon this spiritual treasure that the Lord has made available will increase. Man’s solidarity is founded upon rebellion, and rebellion, in its turn can only find its justification in this solidarity. We have, then, the right to say that any rebellion which claims the right to deny or destroy this solidarity loses simultaneously its right to be called rebellion and becomes in reality an acquiescence in murder. In the same way, this solidarity, except in so far as religion is concerned, comes to life only on the level of rebellion. And so, the real drama of revolutionary thought is announced. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
In order to exist, many must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limit it discovers in itself—a limit where minds meet and, in meeting, begin to exist. Rebellious thought, therefore, cannot dispense with memory: it is a perpetual state of tension. In studying its actions and its results, we shall have to say, each time, whether it remains faithful to its first noble promise or if, through indolence or folly, it forgets its original purpose and plunges into a mire of tyranny or servitude. Meanwhile, that initial progress that the spirit of rebellion provokes in a mind is originally imbued with the absurdity and apparent sterility of the World. In absurdist experience, suffering is individual. However, from the moment when a movement or rebellion begins, suffering is seen as a collective experience. Therefore, the first progressive step for a mind overwhelmed by the strangeness of things is to realize that this feeling of strangeness is shared with all men and that human reality, in its entirety, suffers from the distance which separates it from the rest of the universe. The malady experienced by a single man becomes a mass plague. In our daily trials rebellion plays the same role as does the “cogito” in the realm of thought: it is the first piece of evidence. However, this evidence lures the individual from his solitude. It founds its first value on the whole human race. I rebel—therefore we exist. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Metaphysical rebellion is the movement by which man protests against his condition and against the whole of creation. It is metaphysical because it contests the ends of man and of creation. The slave protests against the condition in which he finds himself within his state of slavery; the metaphysical rebel protest against the condition in which he find himself as man. The rebel slave affirms that there is something in him that will not tolerate the manner in which his master treats him; the metaphysical rebel declares that he is frustrated by the universe. For both of them, it is not only a question of pure and simple negation. In both cases, in fact, we find a value judgment in the name of which the rebel refuses to approve the condition in which he find himself. The slave who opposes his master is not concerned with repudiating his master as human being. He repudiates him as a master. He denies that the has the right to deny him, a slave, on grounds of necessity. The master is discredited to the exact extent that he fails to respond to a demand which he ignored. If men cannot refer to a common value, recognized by all existing in each one, then man is incomprehensible to man. The rebel demands that this value should be clearly recognized in himself because he knows or suspects that, without this principle, crime and disorder would reign throughout the World. An act of rebellion on his part seems like a demand for clarity and unity. The most elementary form of rebellion, paradoxically, expresses an aspiration to order. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
The metaphysical rebel attacks a shattered World in order to demand unity from it. He opposes the principle of justice which he finds in himself to the principle of injustice which he sees being applied in the World. Thus, if he can, all he wants, originally, is to resolve this contradiction and establish the unitarian reign of justice, or if his is driven to extremes, injustice. Meanwhile, he denounces the contradiction. Metaphysical rebellion is a claim, motivated by the concept of a complete unity, against the suffering of life and death and a protest against the human condition both for its incompleteness, thanks to death, and its wastefulness, thanks to evil. If a mass death sentence defines the human condition, then rebellion, in one sense, is its contemporary. At the same time that he rejects his mortality, the rebel refuses to recognize the power that compels him to live in this condition. The metaphysical rebel is therefore not definitely an atheist, as one might think of him, but he is inevitably a blasphemer. Quite simply, he blasphemes primarily in the name of order, denouncing God as the father of death and as the supreme outrage. By the time he is six, our typical human being has left kindergarten (in America at least), and is pushed into the more competitive World of first grade. There he will be on his own to deal with teachers and other boys and girls. Fortunately, by this time, he is no longer a babe, thrust helpless into a World he never made. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
From the little suburb of his home, he venters into the great metropolis of the bustling school with whole sets of social responses ready to offer the various kinds of people around him. His mind is all wired up with his own ways of getting along, or at least of surviving, and his life plan has already been made. This was well known to priests and teachers of the Middle Ages, who said: “Give me a child until he is six, and you can have him thereafter.” A good kindergarten teachers can even predict what the outcome will be, and what kind of life the child will have: happy or unhappy, winning or losing. Thus the comedy or tragedy of each human life is that it is planned by an urchin or pre-school age, who has a very limited knowledge of the World and its ways, and whose heart is filled mainly with stuff put there by his parents. Yet this wonder child is precisely who determines in the long run what will happen to kings and peasants and whores and queens. He has no way to tell the facts from the delusions, and the most everyday events are distorted. He is told that if he had pleasures of the flesh before marriage, he will be punished. And that if he has pleasures of the flesh after marriage, he will not be punished. He believes that the Sun sets, and it takes him ten or forty years to discover that he is running away from the sun; and he confuses his belly with his stomach. He is much too young to be deciding much beyond what he wants for dinner, but he is the Emperor of Life who determines how each person will die. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
The plan he makes for the eternal future is drawn to the family specification. Some of the key ones can often be uncovered very quickly, perhaps in the first interview, by asking: “What did your parents tell you when you were very little?” or “What did your parents tell you about life when you were little?” or “What did your parents say to you when they were angry?” Often the answer will not sound like a directive, but with a little Martian thinking it can be stated in the form.” To further highlight this illustration, many of the training slogans we mentioned in the past are actually parental commands. “Public Performance” is. In effect, a command to show off. The child soon learns that by observing his mother’s pleasure when he does and her disappointment when he fails to do so. Similarly, “Come and See How Cute” means “Put on a good show!” “Hurry Up” and “You Can Just Sit There Till You Do” are negative commands or injunctions: “Do not keep me waiting!” and “Do not talk back!” “Let Him Take His Time,” however, is a license of permission. He understands these differences first from his parents’ reactions, and later, when he has a vocabulary, from their actual words. The child is born free, but he soon learns different. During the first two years, he is programmed mainly by his mother. This program forms the original skeleton, or anlage, of his script, the “primal protocol,” at first concerned with swallowing or being swallowed, and then, when he gets teeth, with tearing or being torn. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
It is being a hammer or being an anvil, as Goethe put it, the most primitive versions of being a winner or being a loser, as seen in Greek Myths and Primal Rituals, where children are devoured and the limbs of the poet lie scattered on the ground. Even in the nursery, it is often already apparent who is in control, the mother or the baby. This may be reversed sooner or later, but echoes of the original situation can still be heard in times of stress or temper. However, very few people can remember anything from this period, which in many ways is the most important, so it has to be reconstructed with the help of the parents, relatives, nursemaids, and pediatricians, conjectures made about dreams, and perhaps the family album. From two to six the ground is firmer, because nearly everyone remembers a few transactions, incidents, or impressions from that phase of script development, which parallels and is closely connected with the progress of the Oedipus complex. In fact, after weaning and toilet training, the directives which are most universal throughout the World and have the most lasting effects are those concerned with sexuality and aggression. The organism and the species survive by means of circuits which have been built in by natural selection. Since nursing, pleasures of the flesh, and fighting require the presence of another person, they are “social” activities. These urges give character or quality to the individual: acquisitiveness, maleness and femaleness and aggressiveness. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Also built in are circuits which tone down such urges. These give rise to the opposite tendencies: renunciation, reticence, and restraint. Those qualities enable people to live together at least part of the time in reasonable tranquility, a dull roar of competition rather than an unmitigated and unremitting bedlam of grabbing, copulation, and fighting. And in some ways which is not clear, excretion becomes mixed up in this system of socialization, and the circuits built in for its control give rise to qualities of orderliness. Parental programming determines how and when the urges are expressed, and how and when the restraints are imposed. It uses the circuits which are already built in, and sets them up in a certain way in order to get certain results or payoffs. As a result of this programing, new qualities emerge, which are compromises between urges and controls. From acquisitiveness and renunciation emerge patience; from maleness or femaleness and reticence emerge masculinity and femininity; from fighting and restraint emerge shrewdness, and from messiness and orderliness come tidiness. All these qualities are taught by the parents and programed during the plastic years between two and six. Physiologically, programing means facilitation, the establishment of a path of lessened resistance. Operationally, it means that a given stimulus will evoke, with a high degree of probability, an already established response. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Phenomenologically, parental programing means that a response is determined by parental directives, sound tracks previously recorded, whose voices can be heard by listening carefully to what goes on inside one’s own head. It is probably the lot of human beings that once they have learned speech, then perceptions of reality are always filtered through, and guided by, their concepts of reality. For example, if you learn to concept gun and then look at a gun, you probably see something entirely different from what a primitive savage might: guns have no place, nor even a word to describe them, in his or her culture. Words limit what a person will actually experience in a concrete situation. Once a concept has been learned, a person will look at a given object long enough to place it in its proper category or to assign an appropriate name to it. The person may then ignore much of what is actually there. We are all familiar with the bigoted person who, once he or she has determined that a person is a Jew or Hispanic, never looks further at the person. The bigot “knows” the properties of all members who fall into those classes. In reality, the bigot fails to observe the enormous amount of variation among members of any class. The ability to break down categories and discern uniqueness is as essential for healthy personality as the ability to classify. However, the ability to see what is there, to transcend labels and classes and apprehend the thing before one’s view, is a means of enriching one’s knowledge of the World and of deepening one’s contact with reality. #RandolpHarris 10 of 20
Fritz Perls would have his patients in Gestalt therapy go through exercises of simply looking at something or somebody, in order to discern the reality beyond the concept. To be able to sense the “raw World” involves the ability to abandon presently held concepts and categories. This ability is possessed by the productive scientists who deliberately ignores the orthodoxies, and looks ever afresh at the raw data that prompted the information of present-day concepts and categories. The artist probably possesses to a marked degree the ability to apprehend the unique, the individual object. The ability to set conventional categories and concepts aside and to look fully at the World with minimal preconceptions seems to be a trait that facilitates scientific discovery, art, human relations, and, more generally, an enrichment of the sensory experiences of living. The capacity to let oneself see or perceive what is there seems to entail the temporary cessation of an active, searching, or critical attitude. Need-directed perception is a highly focused searchlight darting here and there, seeking the objects that will satisfy needs, ignoring everything irrelevant to the need. Being-cognition, as Maslow has called it, refers to a more passive mode of perceiving. It involves letting oneself be reached, touched, or affected by what is there so that the perception is richer. The most efficient way to perceive the intrinsic nature of the World is to be more passive than active, determined as much as possible by the intrinsic organization of that which is perceived and as little as possible by the nature of the perceiver. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
This kind of detached, Taoist, passive, non-interfering awareness of all the simultaneously existing aspects of the concrete, has much in common with some descriptions of the aesthetic experience and of the mystic experience. The stress is the same. Do we see the real, concrete World, or do we see our own systems of rubrics, motives, expectations and abstractions which we have projected onto the real World? Or, to put it very bluntly, do we see or are we blind? This mode of cognition, however, seems to be possible only at those times when we have adequately fulfilled the basic need. When we are anxious, deprived of pleasures of the flesh, or hungry, it is as if our organs of perceiving and of knowing have been “commandeered” to find the means of gratification. Our consciousness seems most free to play, to be most receptive to new impressions, when the urgency of needs is diminished. If we want to know hitherto unnoticed features of the Word that confronts us, the implication is clear, our chances of doing so are increased when our basic needs are satisfied. The direction of our cognition by needs has adaptive values, because it increases our chances of finding the things that will satisfy our needs and it permits us to avoid dangers in our environment. However, if persons are always perceiving the World under the direction of their needs, they will simply not perceive much that exists. The aesthetic, appreciative contemplation of reality, with no purpose other than the delight of looking at it, or experiencing it, lends a dimension of richness to an existence that is ordinarily characterized by the search for satisfaction. Competence at gratifying one’s needs frees one from time to time of the necessity to be forever struggling and permits one the luxury of aesthetic sensing. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Reflect on the super-wondrous glory of the human brain. The terrestrial human life cycle spins the developing individual through twelve stages. The suckling infant is certainly a very different caste from the serious ten-year-old school child. The rock ‘n’ roll teenager is certainly different caste from the toddering postmenopausal seniors. The human being is a robot, blindly operating within the reality bubble of structural caste and current temporal caste imprint. At each developmental stage the individual imprints the current hive reality for that developmental stage. Infants cannot be concerned with teenage sperm-egg fantasies. They must suck, suck, suck at the cultural cues that they have imprinted—the touch, smell taste, and sound of the mother. Domesticated new-parents at stage eleven suddenly, miraculously forget the barbarian teenage reality in which they have lived just a few months previous. Each human accepts the reality of the current temporal stage hive-imprint, and almost totally represses the memory of previous stages. Hum-ants are directed by involuntary instincts—committed to religious or political passivity, blindly obedient to hive morality—unable to operate as independent individuals. There is, however, a sizable, and enormously influential population of post-social, self-directed persons swarming on the Western Front. About 15 percent of those living in the highly developed civilization of the 21st Century operate at the post-political level of hedonic consumerism, self-consumerism and self-actualization. They are committed to self-responsible philosophies and do not look to theological or political bureaucrats. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
The statistically average American is somewhere between a Neolithic caveman and a superstitious robot from the priest-run, caste-stratified pre-civilized Past. The average I.Q. is 100, meaning that the person can read and write primitively, but is generally incapable of any inventive thought. Given a chance, the average American would operate like Attila the Hun. Our study also found that Japan had the highest I.Q. with an I.Q. score of 106.48, followed closely by Taiwan at 106.47, and Singapore at 105.79. The United States of America ranked 31 with an average I.Q. score of 97. Singapore, Japan, and China, in that order, scored the highest in reading, math, and science tests. I.Q. ranges from 70 to 80 are considered borderline intellectual functioning and anything below 70 indicates intellectual disability. Classifications as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), a reference book on mental health disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA): I.Q. 71 to 84: Borderline intellectual functioning. I.Q. 50-55 to approximately 70: Mild mental retardation. I.Q. 35-40 to 50-55: Moderate retardation. I.Q. 20-25 to 35-40: Severe mental retardation. I.Q. below 20-25: Profound mental retardation. Some ways to improve your average I.Q. scores and move to a higher range include: learning new skills, such as learning music or a sport, regularly playing word and other puzzles and brain games, reading more and acquiring knowledge, learning a new language, training to improve verbal skills, maintaining good health with nutritious food, regular exercise, and adequate sleep. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
The brilliant Men who wrote the American Constitution designed a system of checks and balances to keep the average Neolithic American from grabbing control. The Athenian experience, for example, failed because of Demo-poll—the Tyranny of the Mediocre. Many people say that the most annoying sound in the World is a baby crying. However, that is not true. Babies cry randomly and can be quieted down by feeding them, changing them, or holding them. Yet, those who are awakened by the annoying sound of a leaf blower Monday through Sunday know that it the most annoying sound in the World. It is a violent way to wake up and start the day. It is akin to hearing a chain saw every morning, for several hours, like clockwork day after day. I would think that using a loud leaf blower is not only healthy for the operators’ ears and lungs, wastes a lot of water because they blow around so much dust and get cars dirty, but it is also dangerous because people work hard and are tired and they could snap. In fact, in 2023, an Illinois man, William Martys, age 59, was using a leaf blower in his yard at his Antioch home on 12 April when he was approached by his next-door neighbour, Ettore Lacchei, age 79. The two argued and Mr. Lacchei shot Mr. Martys in the head. With clean energy being such a hot topic, for conservation and security measures, it seems the Environmental Protection Agency would mandate that leaf blowers meet noise decibels requirements. According to the Centers for Disease Control, leaf blowers expose users to noise levels of around 90 decibels. Noises beyond 70 decibels are registered as “disturbance.” Prolonged exposure to anything beyond the level of 85 decibels 85 decibels can result in hearing damage. Even from 50 feet away, the sound of a leaf blower can each 77 to 80 decibels—just under the hearing loss threshold. For residential environments, the limits are set at 55-65 decibels. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Leaf blowers emit more than 60 times the hydrocarbons of a car, as well as large amounts of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Emissions from gas leaf blowers creates high levels of formaldehyde, benzene, fine particulate matter, and smog-forming chemicals. A 2011 study showed that a lead blower emits nearly 300 times the air pollutants as a pickup truck. You can file a complaint with local authorities. People often take prejudice or habit for truth and in that case feel no discomfort, but if they once realize that their truth is nonsense, the game is up. From then onwards it is only by the force that a man can be compelled to do what he considers absurd. A look of exasperation at my unworldly imaginings, my inability to see what is required of people today because it is “necessary” is unbelievable. However, it was the Chief of Police in San Francisco who said, when asked what could be done to decrease the number of suicides, “We gotta slow down.” Why should we arrange a “civilization” which is a torture to many and not very good for anybody? The World we live in does not have to be the way it is. Out of all the possibilities, we chose to make it this way. Those who never did liked it helped to make it by going along with it. What people do not go along with falls apart, so what is, people are going along with. Even a military government loses its power when people do not go along with it. In Hawaii after the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor, we had martial law, and one of the first acts of the military was to make it unlawful to speak against the military. These same people also saw it as unpatriotic to drive Japanese cars. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
You cannot punish everyone. Physically it is not possible and besides, then who is left to work with you? Leaders are non-existent without followers. The number of people who now do not like what we have made seems to include almost everyone. However, we are all split up in groups which do not like this and do not like that, who are fighting each other, not knowing that what we deeply want is something else. It seems to me that this is a common cause of juvenile delinquency and other forms of mental illness. Security of Earthly possessions is hard to find and harder to keep in the quick-changing World of today. So anxieties and worries get multiplied. Because of this, inner security, the close friend of inner peace, becomes proportionately more valuable. If it is to be attained, the first practical requirement is to train oneself in the art of keeping emotionally and mentally calm. This deliberate practice of calmness is a preparation for the deeper state of Mental Quiet, which comes by itself when meditation is sufficiently advanced. It is effort consciously and quickly made to keep a hold on passion and emotions so that the work of getting nearer the realization of ideals is not hindered. Whether, or how much, philosophy removes fear must depend on either his capacity to withdraw part of awareness from the body or on a higher level to remain unmoved in the non-dual identity. Most people are captive, in different degrees, to some kind of fear. It may be caused by their surroundings, by their religious upbringing, by those in authority over them, by their bodily condition, by suggestion received from others or self-made. It is prudent to keep away from temptation—at least until enough beneficial strength has been developed to risk the test. However, if development is not sought and obtained, then untempted and unproven virtue may be merely negative. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Instead of fighting in a political battle for the insight and convictions they have gained, many become totally absorbed in their dream of a cottage settlement. In the end, they find themselves sitting between the chairs. (A reference to a German saying, “Trying to sit on all of the chairs and ending up sitting between them” which actually means torn between conflicting interests, however here is more specifically means torn between two interests and ending up with nothing, or not sitting on a chair at all.) What makes this even worse is the leadership’s way of thinking; they believe their policies will help them avoid any armed conflict. They try to sit on all the chairs at the same time and the result is the proverbial fall between the chairs. If a New Man comes into being—a man who has emerged from the archaic ties of blood and soil, and who feels himself to be the son of man, a citizen of the World whose loyalty is to the human race and to life, rather than to any exclusive part of it; a man who loves his country because he loves mankind, and whose judgment is not warped by tribal loyalties, only then can the One World which is emerging can come into existence. Man’s growth is a process of continuous birth, of continuous awakening. We are usually half-asleep and only sufficiently awake to go about our business; but we are not awake enough to go about living, which is the only takes that matters for a living being. The great leaders of the human race are those who have awakened man from his half-slumber. The great enemies of humanity are those who put it to sleep, and it does not matter whether their sleeping potion is the worship of God or that of the Golden Calf. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
The mission of the Sacramento Fire Department is to: Protect the lives and property of the people of Sacramento and its visitors from fires, natural disasters, accidents, hazardous material incidents, and other causes requiring a rapid and skilled response by land or water. “I did a lot of EMS in the Sacramento Fire Department when I was in college. I became a ski patrolman my freshman year, took advanced first aid. I became a fireman the next summer and began the EMT course in the fall. I originally wanted to become an EMT for ski patrol. I was an EMT by the spring of my sophomore year. I took my EMT 2 training in Sacramento as well as my paramedic training. I remember very well one of the first calls I ever got. It was the first snow of the season, and a couple of kids skipped school and went out riding on a snowmobile. They were crossing a road on this snowmobile, and they got clipped by a Honda Accord. Two kids, twelve and thirteen. We were called to the scene. The snowmobile was there, and one of the kids was lying close to it, but the other kid was fifty or sixty feet down the road. There was a trail of blood all the way down to him, and he was DOA (dead on arrival). The first kind had a pulse. So, we started doing CPR, and at the first chest compression the blood just gushed out. I had seen broken legs, but this was very gruesome. It was a heavy-duty accident. Finally, there was no pulse. We did the best we could. We kept trying to resuscitate him, but couldn’t revive him. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
“I was in the hospital for quite a while, getting our equipment back. I was there when the parents came in, two sets of parents. They had assumed that the kids were in school, they didn’t know that the kids had skipped school to go play with a snowmobile. The response of the parents—I got goosebumps, and I felt tingling in the back of my head. They just collapsed. No one appreciates the word grief until they see how parents respond when they find out their child has died. I remember calling my mother that night just to convey the story to hear and to touch case with that part of myself.” The Sacramento Fire Department’s primary mission is to provide fire protection, emergency medical care, fire prevention, and other critical public safety services to both residents and visitors. You can save lives by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. The Sacramento Fire Department works hard to save lives and property and often risk their own lives. Awaken compassionate thoughts and actions by helping others realize that, like our Saviour, they too have compassion for others. Please make donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to asset them in their fire prevent duty and other programs. To help keep America a God loving, Christian community, please raise your children to love America and to love God and Jesus Christ. In a afford to help America pull through the massive national deficit, please buy American made cars and other American made good and services. Also, please remember to respect law and order and treat your elders with the utmost dignity and kindness possible. And take your education seriously so that you will be successful in life and make your family proud. 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
The Winchester Mystery House
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There is Too Much Love Without an Object
The venerable language of zodiac types is useful to start a dialogue about casting. The twelve signs of the Zodiac are useful labels for basic structural human castes. Philosophers—good ones—are human ethologists. For five thousand years, the shrewdest human ethologists have worked on this twelve-fold typecasting—based on extensive and empirical observation. If we ignore the “astro” part we are left with the “logic” of twelve survival tactics—Pisces, Aries, etcetera. In the future more sophisticated classifications of human types based on neurological differences will replace the crude zodiac classification. There will be some among you, those scientific and intellectual bent, who are offended by use of this “sloppy occult astrological superstitious” technology. Before you fuse out, reread the crude, generalized list of the twelve personality types. Admittedly, astrology is a primitive attempt at introducing the notion of temporal caste, seriality and developmental order. The survival characteristic assigned to each type describes an evolutionary technology and a developmental stage. Pisces is baby and amoeboid. Aquarius is the most elderly, orderly, mature. Sense how this list tries to recapitulate the evolution of the twelve basic neurotechnological functions—both in the species and individuals. When we can replace it by a better personality typology based on the sequential evolution of intelligence, in species and individuals, we can reject this list. For now, however, it is a useful system. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Intellectuals, scholars, academics, salaried scientists and all other categories of verbal bureaucrats unanimously denounce astrology. Such condemnation immediately alerts Evolutionary Agents that an important genetic nerve is being touched. These paper-pedants and their civil-service followers make such solemn, judicial pronouncements: “I do not believe in astrology.” This statement means: “I do not understand seasonal ethology and I automatically reject everything my brain is not wired to receive.” Look, therefore, for the valid reasons why hive philosophers fear astrology and you will find, hidden in the tangle of zodiac ravings, three important items of neurogenetic wisdom. Wisdom of the zodiac: Regular cycles influence neural development. Each of us is born a robot, templated and controlled by rhythms with which we can decipher and harmonize. Each of us is born into a caste, or into a complex of castes. Suspend belief and assume, for the moment, that Zodiac types define structural castes. Each of the twelve terrestrial intelligence-functions plays an important role in the human social molecule. No human gene pool can exist unless it has people and institutions playing out these twelve neurotechnological parts. Each of the twelve terrestrial intelligence-functions plays an important role in the human social molecule. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
It would be possible for us to define the positive aspect of the values implicit in every act of rebellion by comparing them with a completely negative concept like that of resentment as defined by Scheler. Rebellion is, in fact, much more than pursuit of a claim, in the strongest sense of the word. Resentment is very well defined by Scheler as an autointoxication—the evil secretion, in a sealed vessel, of prolonged impotence. Rebellion, on the contrary, breaks the seal and allows the whole being to come into play. It liberates stagnant waters and turns them into a raging torrent. Scheler himself emphasizes the passive aspect of resentment and remarks on the prominent place it occupies in the psychology of women who are dedicated to desire and possession. The fountainhead of rebellion, on the contrary, is the principle of superabundant activity and energy. Scheler is also right in saying that resentment is always highly coloured by envy. However, one envies what one does not have, while the rebel’s aim is to defend what he is. He does not merely claim some good that he does not possess or of which he was deprived. His aim is to claim recognition for something which he has and which has already been recognized by him, in almost every case, as more important than anything of which he could be envious. Rebellion is not realistic. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
According to Scheler, resentment always turns into either unscrupulous ambition or bitterness, depending on whether it is implanted in a strong person or a weak one. However, in both cases it is a question of wanting to be something other than what one is. Resentment is always resentment against oneself. The rebel, on the contrary, from his very first step, refuses to allow anyone to touch what he is. He is fighting for the integrity of one part of his being. He does not try, primarily, to conquer, but simply to impose. Finally, it would seem that resentment takes delight, in advance, in the pain that it would like the object of its envy to feel. Nietzsche and Scheler are right in seeing an excellent example of this in the passage where Tertullian informs his readers that one of the greatest sources of happiness among the blessed will be the spectacle of the Roman emperors consumed in the fires of hell. This kind of happiness is also experienced by the decent people who go to watch executions. The rebel, on the contrary, limits himself, as a matter of principle, to refusing to be humiliated without asking that others should be. He will even accept pain provided his integrity is respected. It is therefore hard to understand why Scheler completely identifies the spirit of rebellion with resentment. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
His criticism of the resentment to be found in humanitarianism (which he treats as the non-Christian form of love for mankind) could perhaps be applied to certain indeterminate forms of humanitarian idealism, or to the techniques of terror. However, it rings false in relation to man’s rebellion against his condition—the movement that enlists the individual in the defense of a dignity common to all men. Scheler wants to demonstrate that humanitarian feelings are always accompanied by a hatred of the World. Humanity is loved in general in order to avoid having to love anybody in particular. This is correct, in some cases, and it is easier to understand Scheler when we realize that for him humanitarianism is represented by Bentham and Rousseau. However, man’s love for man can be born of other things than a mathematical calculation of the resultant rewards or a theoretical confidence in human nature. In face of the utilitarians, and of Emile’s preceptor, there is, for example, the kind of logic, embodies by Dostoievsky in Ivan Karamazov, which progresses from an act of rebellion to metaphysical insurrection. Scheler is aware of this and sums up the concept in the following manner: “There is not enough love in the World to squander it on anything but human beings.” Even if this proposition were true, the appalling despair that it implies would merit anything but contempt. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
In fact, it misunderstands the tortured character of Karamazov’s rebellion. Ivan’s drama, on the contrary, arises from the fact that there is too much love without an object. This love finding no outlet and God being denied, it is then decided to lavish it on human beings as a generous act of complicity. Nevertheless, in the act of rebellion as we have envisaged it up to now, an abstract ideal is not chosen through lack of feeling and in pursuit of a sterile demand. We insist that the part of man which cannot be reduced to mere ideas should be taken into consideration—the passionate side of his nature that serves no other purpose than to be part of the act of living. Does this imply that no rebellion is motivated by resentment? No, and we know it only too well in this age of malice. However, we must consider the idea of rebellion in its widest sense on pain of betraying it; and in its widest sense rebellion goes far beyond resentment. When Heathcliff, in Wuthering Heights, says that he puts his love above God and would willingly go to hell in order to be reunited with the woman he loves, he is prompted not only by youth and humiliation but by the consuming experience of a whole lifetime. The same emotion causes Eckart, in a surprising fit of heresy, to say that he prefers hell with Jesus to Heave without Him. This is the very essence of love. Contrary to Scheler, it would therefore be impossible to overemphasize the passionate affirmation that underlies the act of rebellion and distinguishes it from resentment. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Rebellion, though apparently negative, since it creates nothing, is profoundly positive in that it reveals the part of man which must always be defended. People can go too far with rebellion, however, and end up in prison. Sometimes the prison dope supply becomes irregular and during periods of neurological famine, waves of nervousness overcome inmates. As they are waiting for the verdict of the California Supreme Court, waiting for the call to the sergeant’s office to receive the telegram. They wait for the Counselor’s interview and learn all about he or she as they can. Back in the day, “San Quentin Sally,” was famous for hard custody-oriented maximum-security recommendations. She was cynical and suspicious of being conned. She respected convicts who told the truth. However, the details of her domestic problems, her martial history, her previous employment, her emotional characteristics, and her neurotic symptomatology were no secret to some. Also, sometimes prison guards that are hard on prisoners have issues. You see, one prison guard in particular had a teenaged daughter. He knew she smoked pot and low-rides with a kid who dealt dope. In his mind, he could see the nipples of his daughter Hilary trembling under the hypnotic passes of dope pushers, her thin white legs contorted in yoga positions, offering her flower for the demon drug. His daughter Hilary, with fingers of limp hair bedraggled with cannabis smoke and the expression of total rapture on her innocent face. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Man, he could see her pusher in his mod suit with satin cuffs propped up among the pillows on a fur coated bed resting ermine boots on the antique coffee table, running the palm of his evil hands across the hard sharp nipples of Hilary’s breasts. He saw her kneeling unzipping his pants. And you wonder why he hates inmates? He is not the only one. They say inmates do not deserve equal treatment. Can you dig that? Equal treatment. After breakfast, a sturdy executive elite con named Conrad, the sergeant’s clerk, comes over to the inmate’s table. “Were you expecting some sort of Court action?” “Yes, it should be here today.” “Well, I just heard on the radio that they shot you down. The California Appeals Court denied your appeal, you and Scott Peterson. I’m sorry about it.” “It is up to Justice Walker now,” he said. The inmate spent the day inside of gloom. His legal life now depended upon Justin R. Walker, naturalist, rebel, friend of youth, solace of the persecuted, outspoken libertarian, hope of the friendless, the husband of a woman, father of a child, protector of wild flowers and clear streams. And he is young. It all depends on his wife. During the next few days, the inmate reclined in the monastic peace of single cell reading newspaper stories about pending impeachment of President Biden and assassination attempts against former president Trump. His case was to come before Walker at a crucial time in his life. Freeing the inmate on bail would bring down on his head more angry outcries. It is a soap opera. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
The lawyers assured the inmate that he would be freed by Justice Walker in 5 days. However, he was still working on the escape plan while the trustees gathered around to share the fruits of prison grapevine. The administration is meeting this week to decide where he is going to be transferred. He thinks that he will be out on bail soon so it does not matter really, but was curious about the possibilities? The espionage system reported that Custody was easier on him then Treatment. The psychologist wanted to send him to Quentin to make an example of him. As of Monday morning, he had been in prison for nine weeks. Friday night was the worst time. He visited the next-door neighbour to hit his coffeepot. He tore off three numbers—Saturday, Sunday, Monday. During the morning, they make arrangements for writing each other when he leaves. Late in the afternoon a clerk leaned in the door. “Well, you are going.” He was waving a mimeographed sheet. “Shipping out to CMC West.” The trustees came crowding round. “CMC West is a country club, man, the best prison in the World. They have a golf course. No lockup. It’s three bunk counts a day. There’s a bowling alley. They are all long-term cons just living quietly. There are no young cons there burning sheets. Picnic visits on the yard. Visitors can buy lunch at the visiting room. Fried chicken. You eat like a kind. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
“Some cons love it there so much they hate to leave. When they get paroled, they violate so they can get sent back. You have private radios there. No smog. Near the ocean. You can plant your own garden. Contact visits! Conspiracy of breath. Touch. Change. New scene. I’m thinking about that fence near Highway 1.” The inmate spent the rest of the day collecting his personal gear to ship out. Two ball-point pens, some rubber shower shoes given to him by an old murderer, two packages of rolling tobacco. They travel light. “No gun towers or walls there?” “Just low fence. Minimum security.” Perhaps subverbal interaction is so important with schizophrenics because so much of their experience seems incommunicable to them, seems cut off from other people in its very nature. Often, the content—that what is said—is only a small bit of verbal content, but to the experiencing. In this way one attempts to restore the connection, the interpersonal interaction process within which the normally functioning individual lives and feels. This is not to say that one mysteriously responds to experience without having some verbalization to go on. Rather, one views verbalization differently. Instead of concerning oneself with its content one asks: What larger inward process is this bit of verbalization coming from? One’s answer to this question will be something felt, a conceptually vague but concrete felt meaning which the client feels and thinks, and which the therapist can only imagine. However, the therapist need not know it, guess it, or correctly imagine it. He can point his response at it, no matter how unknow it is to him. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
For example, my client says that he wants to know where, in the hospital, they keep that electronic machine which compels people to return to the hospital. He can prove there is such a machine, he says, because how else can you explain the fact that patients with ground privileges return to the hospital of their own accord? Now, I could, of course, argue with him that no such machine exists, that I would know if it did, that he does not trust me to tell him the truth on that subject, that he is having an unrealistic hallucination, or, closer to his feelings, that he does not like the hospital and cannot understand anyone’s coming to it voluntarily. However, what is his experiencing as he talks of this machine? What is the “pre-conceptual” or “felt” meaning from which this bit of bizarre verbalization comes? I do not know, of course. However, I want to respond to it somehow. So, I say back to him: “You have felt in yourself the effects of this machine you are talking about?” “Of course, I sure have,” he says and goes on to say that the machine makes him feel “not himself.” This phrase I recognize as somehow communicating to me something of the inward experiencing at which I pointed my words. I am using this example to illustrate what I mean by pointing one’s words at the experiencing, the wider inward process about which one does not know very much—except that it is there—and that verbalization arise from it (or in regard to it). #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Actually, I had not quite correctly imagined what he experienced. For my part, I thought he felt compelled inwardly but his next words expressed a slightly unexpected but still understandable aspect of his experiencing. And this is what usually happens. Usually, when one points one’s words at the experiencing rather than the verbal content, one finds that one’s imagination was not accurate, but the very fact of responding to this ever-present experiencing establishes the possibility of communicating concerning the deeper meanings from which the verbalizations arise. This man went on to tell me that his “not feeling like himself” was the result of the fact that his parents moved into the country when he was a schoolboy, and that therefore he had to ride a bus to school through the snow many miles. Again, one might have argued that this alone could not have caused him to feel “not himself.” However, one senses that this bit of memory comes form a whole pageant of memories, and, since it involved “not being himself,” I imagine endless weird, snowy bus rides I sense his feeling cut off from everyone he knew, way out there, snowbound, in the country, those many years all of which he now feels, I suppose. I say something about these bus rides and feeling cut off and we establish a new vehicle of communication. He too now uses the phrase “feeling cut off.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Perhaps I was right—but more importantly, I spoke to that mass of felt meanings and thoughts, that feeling process, which was just then occurring in him as he spoke, not to what he spoke as a bit of verbal communication. And, in this way, although often very stumblingly, one can gradually communicate more meaningfully, despite bizarre or externalized and trivial verbalization. Before this man told me about the electronic compelling machine, we spent six hours together with only trivia and silences. It was necessary for me to respond to him when, as yet, he would share nearly nothing with me. What I was trying to do with him, he wanted to know, and when would I be through? When would he not have to come any more? When could he go home? He had nothing to say. Silence, more silence. Once I interrupted one of these silences in which he had been sitting very quietly, apparently thinking, and said very gently: “You seem to be thinking some important thoughts or feelings. I do not know, of course, but that is what I imagine. I do not want to interrupt but I sure would like it if you felt like sharing those thoughts with me.” He said, very loudly: “What? Who, me? What, thinking what?” It was quite clear that he was startled. Also, he seemed to consider my statement inappropriate, false, and stupid. Yet, if one of us does not make it so, it is necessary to bear such moments, for how else can our interaction come to be warm and close and personal? #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
After a while such expressions of mine, such imaginings, or implications that we both experience important feelings, are no longer met by surprised rejection but often by a silence that is close to assent; and then, later, by an explicit sense on the part of the client that our silent times are subverbally important, deep, and eventful. One client named it when she said: “I’m having quiet therapy for a while.” If we perceive the World accurately and from valid beliefs about it, our changes of behaving effectively are increased. However, we know that unfulfilled needs and strong emotions can so shape our experience that we misinterpret facts, arrive at erroneous conclusions, and, indeed, frequently fail to see and hear what is there. How does a person go about increasing the efficiency of perception and thinking? How does a person carry out reality testing? Indeed, when unreality is often more pleasant in the short run, why would a person seek the truth? Reality testing means applying the rules of logic and scientific inquiry to everyday life. When we engage in reality testing, we are systematically doubting our own initial perceptions and beliefs until we have scrutinized them more carefully and checked them against further evidence. We do this when we have learned that truth, ultimately, is the best servant of our needs and is value in itself. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Some have to learn that rashness is not courage, and only the painful results of their actions may succeed in teaching them this lesson. The personal emotions entangle us in the events of life, whereas the impersonal intuitions enable us to see them from above. Even if the intuitive leading or reasoned reflection opposes his wishes, the imperativeness of following truth and preserving integrity will force him to desert his wishes. Emotion is valuable as a driving power, but doubtful as a means for discovering truth. If unbridled by reason and ungoverned by will, it may even drive a man to foolishness and disaster. The neurotic introduces emotional factors into purely business matter, creates hysterical scenes, and cannot take a single word of constructive criticism or admonitory counsel. Look through the miserable emotions of the ego and go beyond them to the smiling serenity of the Overself. It is not the emotions which are to be kept out but the disturbances which they may give rise. Do not respond to negative or base emotion with the like. The greater the animosity shown you, for instance, the greater is the inward calm with which it should be met. There is vital difference between being merely callous in the presence of other people’s suffering and being philosophically calm. A settled composed disposition will be one of the fruits perseverance in rejecting negative moods and undesirable thoughts as soon as they arise. Self-control is your greatest friend through all the incidents and accidents of life. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Former President Trump’s policies not only interrupted or even started to end the process of making the American economy and workers dependent on other nations. America was once again forming alliances and establishing herself as a sovereign nation, and American was less dependent on other nations economically. It was becoming a stronger country and democratic leaders were facing problems of maintaining their positions in the government. What the democrats feared most was any effort that would make American independent of foreign countries. Such an effort could eventually be disastrous to those in power who want to make the country dependent on international elements. National sentiment was building and the people’s patriotic spirit was nationalized to a fevered pitch, as American was being put first. Man is the product of natural evolution; he is part of nature and yet transcends it, being endowed with reason and self-awareness. Man’s essence is ascertainable. However, this essence is not a substance which characterizes man at all times throughout history. The essence of man consists in the above-mentioned contradiction inherent in his existence, and this contradiction forces him to react in order to find a solution. Man cannot remain neutral and passive toward this existential dichotomy. By the very fact of his being human, he is asked a question by life: how to overcome the split between himself and the World outside of him in order to arrive at the experience of unity and oneness with his fellow man and with nature. Man has to answer this question every moment of his life. Not only—or even primarily—with thoughts and words, but by his mode of being and acting. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
There are a number of limited and ascertainable answers to this question of existence (the history of religion and philosophy is a catalogue of these answers); yet there are basically only two categories of answers. In one, man attempts to find again harmony with nature by repression to a prehuman form of existence, eliminating his specifically human qualities of reason and love. In other, his goal is the full development of his human powers until he reaches a new harmony with his fellow man and with nature. The first answer is bound with failure. It leads to death, destruction, suffering, and never to the full growth of man, never to harmony and strength. The second answer requires the elimination of green and ego-centricity, it demands discipline, will, and respect for those who can show the way. Yet, although this answer which is the more difficult one, it is the only answer which is not doomed to failure. In fact, even before the final goal is reached, the activity and effort expended in approaching it has a unifying and integrating effect which intensifies man’s vital energies. Man’s basic alternative is the choice between life and death. Every act implies this choice. Man is free to make it, but this freedom is a limited one. There are many favourable and unfavourable conditions which incline him—his psychological constitution, the condition of the specific society into which he was born, his family, teachers, and the friends he meets and chooses. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
It is man’s task to enlarge the margin of freedom to strengthen the conditions which are conducive to life as against those which are conducive to death. Life and death, as spoken of here, are not the biological states, but states of being, of relating to the World. Life means constant change, constant birth. Death means cessation of growth, ossification, repetition. The unhappy fate of may is that they do not make the choices. They are neither alive nor dead. Life becomes a burden, an aimless enterprise, and busyness is the means to protect one from the torture of being in the land of shadows. Neither life nor history has an ultimate meaning which in turn imparts meaning to the life of the individual or justifies his suffering. Considering the contradictions and weaknesses which beset man’s existence it is only too natural that he seeks for an “absolute” which gives him the illusion of certainty and relieves him from conflict, doubt and responsibility. Yet, no god, neither in theological, philosophical or historical garments saves, or condemns man. Only man can find a goal for life and the means for the realization of this goal. He cannot find saving ultimate or absolute answer but he can strive for a degree of intensity, depth and clarity of experience which gives him the strength to live without illusions, and to be free. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
The mission of the Sacramento Fire Department is to improve the lives of the people they serve every day. The Sacramento Fire Department is committed to protecting the lives and property of those who live in, work in, and visit Sacramento. Their department operates on a 24/7 basis, so you can rest assured that they are always ready to respond in case of an emergency. “I had been at the hardware store with my wife and daughter, and we were going home, driving through a residential neighborhood. The first thing I noticed was the smell of the smoke. Black smoke was hanging over the street. I saw this lady in the front yard of a one-story frame house, screaming. As I pulled up, I could see the fire pushing out of one window at the front of the house and smoke seeping out of the two side windows. I got out of my car and ran over to the lady. My wife and daughter followed me but didn’t say anything. The lady said her husband was in the house and his name was Jim. I could hear the flames cracking. It was a pretty good fire in the living room and through the window next to the door, not pushing yet. Just bending, like the flames were swaying. I never stopped. I went to the front door, and when I opened it, I immediately had to go on my stomach because of the smoke, I was wearing just Levi pants and a flannel shirt, because it was January. As I crawled through the front door, the heat was not too bad, but I could see the red glow to my right and up over my head. As I went forward through the room, there was some kind of electrical short or something, and the electric wires behind me started jumping and popping. That kind of concerned me. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
“I had my mouth right down on the floor, and it was beginning to be hard to breathe. I started coughing. I was getting in deeper and deeper, and there was a faint light to the left of me, and I took that as a way out. I found out later that it was a room and the light was coming in that way. So I was pushing in, and I was right at the point—this is something that has stayed in the back of my mind—I was right at the point where I had to make a decision: ‘Do I go deeper to the right and see if I can find this man, or do I go to the left and bail out?’ I was coughing, and it was really bad, but I went right anyway. Then I heard the man moan and say, ‘Help me.’ I don’t really know what I was doing, it was like being desperate, but I started crawling toward him, and I kept crawling, and I heard him continue moaning. If I hadn’t heard him calling and moaning, I probably wouldn’t have found him, the smoke was too dense. Nothing was visible. I’d get to a chair and tell it was a chair only by feel, that type of thing. When I go to him, he was lying on the floor. If he had been in a bed or something higher, he might have been dead, I don’t know. He had a little bit of air to breathe down there. He said he couldn’t walk, he couldn’t get up. He was coughing. I knew I couldn’t drag him back the way I came, because of the electrical short and the wires popping. You could still hear them popping. The glow was still over my head, and to the right of me the fire was up the wall and working its way across the ceiling. So I started dragging him straight to the eft to get him away from that glow. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
“One thing I did have, I had a vent. The fire had blown out the front window, and it was venting naturally. That helped me. If I hadn’t had the vent, things probably would have been different. The fire was bending out that window by the front door and was keeping it kind of confined. It was rolling, though. All the other windows were closed, it being wintertime. There was no smoke venting out, but at least the fire was bending towards that open window. So I kept dragging him as far away from the fire as I could, because the smoke was really getting to me. Luckily, then I came across a wall, and then I felt a window. I couldn’t see, but I could feel the outline of the window, and a little bit of light was coming through. I got hold of a stand or a little table. I took a pretty good breath down on the floor and raised up to knock the window out. I threw the thing at the window, but it was light and I didn’t have much force behind it, because all I could think about was getting back down on the floor to get some air. The window didn’t break, the thing just kind of bounced off. God, that was a disappointment. I was choking and things were bad, but I remembered there was a telephone on that stand. So I grabbed the phone and the receiver, all in one hand, and broke the window that way. By then, I could hear the fire engine coming down the street, and I could hear people. I guess the people heard the breaking glass, and they started coming around to where I was at a side window. They started taking out some of the glass which added oxygen. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
“The fire began to break out again, now towards me. I knew I had to get my head outside that window. I got down then, got a couple of good breaths, pulled on this guy with whatever energy the smoke didn’t take from me, and laid him across the window. He was tall but not really heavy, about a hundred sixty pounds, in his mid-fifties. By then, one of the firemen was there, and was I glad to see him. We handed him to a fire fighter outside the window. Then I tumbled myself out. When I came across the window, the glass went through my shoes and into my feet. Both arms were cut and blessing. Except for the smoke inhalation, that was it. My wife said she was very concerned for me, that it seemed like I was in there forever. I don’t know exactly how long I was in there, but I don’t think it was very long. They say it only takes a few minutes to kill you. My daughter was too young to be worried, but my son was very disappointed that he wasn’t there to see it. He had decided to stay home and do his homework. The newspapers played it up pretty big. I ended up with seven awards, I went to a lot of banquets. The public thinks a lot of firemen, they really do. I got more recognition from the public than I did from my own fire department. Sure, I got a pat on the back from the guys I work with, but one of the upper-echelon people just said, ‘Well, what’s the big deal?’ I didn’t say anything, but I guess the only thing that matters is that I know it was a little bit hairy. Not too long after that we went to a fire on Christmas night to a little house over where the middle-class people live. We got there and it was a fire in the bedroom. Christmas night, nobody home. The people had gone visiting, just in the neighborhood, and had left on an electric blanket. It has ignited the room. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
“So, we do our normal procedures. I’m in there searching again, and I find this little dog underneath the bed in one bedroom. The dog had been overcome by smoke. I grabbed the dog and took him out under my arm, put the resuscitator on him and got him breathing. In the meantime the people returned. The dog belonged to a little boy who had gotten him earlier that morning for Christmas. I gave the dog to him, and he was just thrilled. His face just lit up, he was so excited about getting his dog back. I turned around then and walked off. There was never anything said. That was pretty moving to me, just to save that little dog. It really had to do with the dog’s relationship to the little boy and with Christmas.” You people, it is said that we take animal rights so seriously because they cannot call out for help. The Sacramento Fire Department also prioritizes community outreach and education. They offer several programs and opportunities; you can find out more on their website. You can help save lives by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. “Chairty suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things,” reports Moroni 7.45. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which in stand, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We do declare it our purpose to keep intact the original name and initial spirit and purpose of this great country. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
Experience Over Everything
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The Alchemical Magic Spread Swiftly
Our knowledge of human neurogenetics is so primitive that we have only recently realized that structural and temporal castes exist. Sociobiologist and ethologists define their professions as the study of behavioural genetics. However, neurogenetics is a more accurate description because what is inherited is not behaviour but neural templates that determine use of the anatomical-technology. Local hive behaviour cues—languages, customs, artifacts, and the like are not genetically inherited—they are cultural imprints. Only the caste-circuits are inherited not the behaviours, which are acquired in a cultural context. Until ethologists understand the difference between neurogenetic castes and local-social-imprints, their brilliant observations cannot be mapped. This insight is changing our conceptions of human nature and society. It is probable that we are neurologically programmed so that understanding of castes becomes part of species contelligence—consciousness + intelligence—only at the time that space migration occurs. Plan-It Colonies in High Orbit provide the new ecological vacuum in which human castes differences can blossom without the friction and crowded competition that has coloured Earthly racial-class-sexual-caste differences. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
You must realize that we are a genetic-caste-robot to understand your own personal development. John Lilly articulates this beautifully in Programming the Human BioComputer. We are templated by DNA to play a certain role. We are outfitted with a 24-gear brain that is very different from 92 percent of other human brains. Values, according to good authorities, “most often represent a transition from facts to rights, from what is desired to what is desirable (usually through the intermediary of what is generally considered desirable).” The transition from facts to rights is manifest, as we have seen, in rebellion. So is the transition from “this must be” to “this is how I should like things to be,” and even more so, perhaps, the idea of the sublimation of the individual in a henceforth universal good. The sudden appearance of the concept of “All or Nothing” demonstrates that rebellion, contrary to current opinion, and though it springs from everything that is most strictly individualistic in man, questions the very idea of the individual. If the individual, in fact, accepts death and happens to die as a consequence of his act of rebellion, he demonstrates by doing so that he is willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of a common good which he considers more important than his own destiny. If he prefers the risk of death to the negation of the rights that he defends, it is because he considers these rights more important than himself. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Therefore, he is acting in the name of certain values which are still indeterminate but which he feels are common to himself and to all men. We see that the affirmation implicit in every act of rebellion is extended to something that transcends the individual in so far as it withdraws him from his supposed solitude and provides him with a reason to act. However, it is already worth noting that this concept of values as pre-existent to any kind of action contradicts the purely historical philosophies, in which values are acquired (if they are ever acquired) after the action has been completed. Analysis of rebellion leads at least to the suspicion that, contrary to the postulates of contemporary thought, a human nature does exist, as the Greeks believed. If there is nothing permanent in oneself worth preserving, why rebel? It is for the sake of everyone in the World that the slave asserts himself when he comes to the conclusion that a command has infringed on something in him which does not belong to him alone, but which is common ground where all men—even the man who insults and oppresses him—have a natural community. (The community of victims is the same as that which units victim and executioner. However, the executioner does not know this.) Two observations will support this argument. First, we can see that an act of rebellion is not, essentially, an egoistic act. Of course, it can have egoistic motived. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
However, one can rebel equally well against lies as against oppression. Moreover, the rebel—once he has accepted the motives and at the moment of his greatest impetus—preserves nothing in that he risks everything. He demands respect for himself, of course, but only in so far as he identifies himself with a natural community. Then we note that rebellion does not arise only, and necessarily, among the oppressed, but that it can also be caused by the mere spectacle of oppression of which someone else is the victim. In such cases there is a feeling of identification with another individual. And it must be pointed out that this is not a question of psychological identification—a mere subterfuge by which the individual imagines that it is he himself who has been offended. On the contrary, it can often happen that we cannot bear to see offenses done to others which we ourselves have accepted without rebelling. The suicides of the Russian terrorists in Siberia as a protest against their comrades’ being whipped is a case in point. Nor is it a question of a feeling of community of interests. Injustices done to men who we consider enemies can, actually, be profoundly repugnant to us. There is only identification of one’s destiny with that of others and a choice of sides. Therefore the individual is not, in himself alone, the embodiment of the values he wishes to defend. It needs all humanity, at least, to comprise them. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
When he rebels, a man identifies himself with other men and so surpasses himself, and from this point of view of human solidarity is metaphysical. However, for the moment we are only talking of the kind of solidarity that is born in chains. Many rebels do end up in chains. At the Friday night movie in prison, some sit suicidally depressed in the front row eating trustee popcorn. And there is dope. The lunch pail express, sideline of bribed guards who keep the flow of illegal contraband moving in and out. Prisons are a quest for the serpent who swallows his own tail. It is just a matter of connecting neural wires. Many people spend every free moment on the prison yard either at handball, yoga, or lifting metal weights to the point of pain-strain. Prisoners often talk about their case, their arrest, their trial, and the next destination. Everyone has a hope habit of one kind or another. You can even get to know the permanent work crew trustees. For the most part, they are older white-collar criminals with potbellies. Some trustees have big red calendars on the wall. Each day a number is removed. The big red arrow always points to tomorrow. However, there is no number for the current day. In confidence men’s terminology, when you wake up in the morning, that day is as good as over. Half of the prisoners, the young half, are dopers, guiltless spirits, Black and White, totally detached from the system, certain of their alchemical beliefs. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
The alchemical magic spreads swiftly. After ten years, there are millions who choose the superstitious perspective, seeking to stay high. The prison guards are retired enlisted men. They act like motel clerks opening the dining room, locking and unlocking doors for the prisoners. They walk the tiers at night while inmates’ sleep; fatigued men with flashlights slipping mail under their cell doors. Their work centers around keys. The lawyers say that any day the California Supreme Court will grant some of these men bail. However, advisers often shrug skeptically. Often, guards get down on these men. They order them to the barbershop, search their cells, find dust, then orders them back to the barbershop for a closer trim, writes them up for petty misdemeanors. As prisoners swing high and happy down the cavernous hall of the main line, guards will often make them remove personal effects. Some of these men get an attitude and stand in the prison corridor looking at the guard, as the guard looks back at them dull with tired hatred before muttering, “Watch yourself.” Well, that is the basic confrontation of politics. The guard and the prisoner. Two men looking into each other’s eyes defiantly across the abyss of slavery. Everyone in the World is on the side of the guard or on the side of the prisoner. Police, lawyers, judges, prison guards. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
Criminals are the opposing militia. The forces are exactly even. Law-and-order people control the press and the media of communication and education but they fool no one. At any moment, at least half of the World population is in open conscious opposition to the government. Most police accept that it is a war on crime. So do most prisoners. It is obvious, that in most cases, rebellion pays bad dividends. It can inevitably result in a sense of emptiness that often leads to alcoholism, drug addiction, bizarre religious practices, flagrant immortality, broken homes, incurable diseases, and despair. Sadly, many experience the high cost of putting what they call “my way” above “God’s way.” To live as if there is no God is foolish, for it leads to pain, despair, and eternal death. However, to live in the “fear of God” is wise, for it leads to satisfaction, rejoicing, and everlasting life. You must decide, so choose wisely! “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction,” reports Proverbs 1.7. When the client gives me nothing intimate, or self-expressive—it is then that I must draw on my own momentary reservoir to find within me my response to him—a clear, intimate expression of me in this moment with him. However, when the client is in the process of expressing himself to me, then I find within me chiefly my sense of his expression and I try to tell him with unmuddied simplicity what I understand him to feel and think. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
It is just as important that I sense and state his experience as his (as purely as possible from his own frame of reference), as it is to make clear that my experiential self-expression are mine, when that is the case. Very often, when the client is in the course of expressing himself, a response that simply states what the therapist understands the client to think or feel is a powerfully effective response. Often it is the only possible helpful response. If anyone does–with schizophrenics and with many others, it is the therapist who will initiate the relationship, will begin open and expressive interaction, and will first express warmth, care, interest, and a person-to-person quality. If the therapist must sit passively, or argue intrusively, I do not think he is likely to form a relationship with an individual who does not already wish for therapy or for a relationship. The therapist’s moment-to-moment expressiveness largely determines the quality of the interaction, at least at first, and especially with unmotivated individuals. Even if the client is consistently silent or expresses only trivia, the therapist’s self-expression can make the interaction eventful, personal, and even expressive. The therapist’s expressions—the events occurring in himself—will concern the interaction and will deepen it, when they are spoken. Both persons tend to experience an eventful, open and personal interaction even while only one of them is verbalizing his felt side of the interaction. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
In order to verify predictions, it is necessary to define success, that is, winners and losers. A winner is someone who succeeds in what he says he is going to do. A loser is someone who fails to accomplish what he sets out to do. A man who says: “I am going to Reno and gamble,” is only committed to getting there and betting, regardless of whether he wins or loses. If he says: “I am going to Reno and this time I am going to win,” then he comes out a winner is he wins and a loser if he does not, depending upon how much money he has in his pockets when he gets back on the pavement. A woman who gets a divorce is not a loser unless she has said “I will never get a divorce.” If she has declared: “Some day I am going to quit my job and I will never work again,” then her alimony will signify that she is a winner, because she has accomplished what she set out to do. Since she had made no statement as to how she would do it, no one can fault her with being a loser. Each language provides words that sensitize a person to those aspects of the World that are most important for survival in that place. Thus, we have only one word for snow, whereas Inuit people have many, corresponding with different qualities of snow, which indicate whether hunting or igloo building is possible. We do not see the World; rather, we “read” the meanings of what we see, just as we read the words in a book. These meanings are provided for us as we grow up by the person who teaches us to speak our “mother tongue.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
It is our mothers who give the first meanings to our World, who gives the World the “voices” with which it tells us of dangers and gratifications. In developing countries like Indonesia or India, each child learns three languages, each of which highlights some aspects of the World more than others, and which gives different meanings and emotional qualities to the perceived World. Thus, a child will learn the language of the village from his or her mother; in India or Indonesia, it will be one of the several hundred local languages, which differ so much that people fifty miles apart cannot understand one another’s mother tongues. At school an Indonesian child will learn Malay, and an Indian child will learn Hindi—both languages are the national tongue, which facilitates communication throughout the country. Finally, both Indonesian and Indians may learn English, which makes communication beyond national boundaries possible. In each case, the language that is spoken affects perception. In order really to perceive what is there in the World, a person will have to suspend language and really look and listen, to discern the reality beyond language. For many, to sustain an inner calm is not easy. Many a time, in test situations, he will fail. However, even when the negative, explosive, or depressive emotion asserts itself strongly, he is not to show it in behaviour no express it in speech. For this is a step toward that control of self, that impersonality, which is what the quest means. If mind influences body, body also influences mind. From the physical control he may proceed to the mental. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
When calmness has been well practiced for a sufficient period, it will occasionally of itself lead the practiser into sudden brief and ecstatic experiences of a mystical character. He should calmly recognize that suffering has its allotted function to perform in the divine plan, that other people have their lessons to learn through it when they will learn in no other way, and that the spectacle of its operation should, in such cases, be met with intelligent understanding rather than with neurotic sentimentality. He should face the fact that many people will not learn from reason, intuition, or teaching and that no one can really liberate them from their sufferings except themselves. Every other kind of liberation is a false one. Others may effect it today only to see the same condition return tomorrow. He should not, in certain situations calling for hard decision, for instance, show unjustifiable weakness under the belief that he is showing forbearance, nor submit to antisocial egotism under the thought that he is practising love, nor abandon his highest duties for the sake of making a false and superficial peace with interfering ignorance, nor passively accept a flagrant wrong because God’s will must always be borne. The lower emotions and the moods they produce are his first enemies. Every antagonism and envy, every wrathful temper and animal lust, every self-injuring desire and socially harmful greed bars his way. And it will not move out of the way without a long fight. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
This spiritual quest takes the aspirant through many moods. He will alternate at times between blank despair and exalted joy. Though naturally affected by these moods, he ought nevertheless to try to keep a certain balance even in their very midst, to cultivate a kind of higher indifference towards them, and patience towards their results. This can be achieved more easily by obtaining a firm conviction of the transient character of such moods. Both emotion and reason have their proper place in practical life, but in the philosophic life where the Quest is for truth alone and not for satisfaction, there is no place for emotion other than a secondary one. Its power over man is so great however that it will continually come into conflict with this ruling, it will struggle desperately to resist reason and to silence its voice, it will contradict the dictate of calm considered judgment and seek by sheer force to dominate the mind. Again and again the uprush of emotion will disturb the would-be philosopher and destroy his equanimity, thus rendering impossible a correct appreciation of the truth he seeks. The melancholy feeling that he is missing something joyous in life, that a happiness which so many others have captured is running away from him with the years, so one of the emotional snares likely to beset the aspirant’s path. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
If he yields to its self-pitying suggestiveness, it will weaken his resolve and disturb his peace. From that it is only a step or two to descend into a painted and delusive animality. Those who waste themselves in emotional excesses weaken themselves spiritually, for the power of feeling is an essential part of the higher nature. With the pressures brought down upon them by his total philosophic effort, the grosser desires will gradually be flattened out anyway. If he deliberately and directly assists them to enter that condition, it will not be to his detriment. If we are to command our deeds, we must command our thoughts, but much more, we must command the emotional impulses behind those thoughts and those deeds. When he is tempted to be angry with some irritating person, he is faced with two choices: either to identify himself with this lower emotion or with his higher aspirations. If, following bad habit, he succumbs to the first, he weakens himself still further. If, following good resolve, he overcomes the temptation, he strengthens himself for the future. Strong emotional attachment to another person may only tighten the ego’s hold, may narrow, limit, warp, or prevent the seeing of the truth. This happens all-too-often in family relationships and in the affections of the young. It can even happen in guru-disciple relationships. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
When it comes to relationships, it is the responsibility of the national leaders to forge that sword through their foreign policy. The purpose of this foreign policy must be the securing of weapons and finding allies. The state is only a result of human forces, only a work of our thoughts, but man is the force of the source itself and the creator of the thought. As the deputy of all humanity whose heart beats, for all mankind, our passion must be the World and future generations. At a time when everybody is bust erecting new Fatherlands, the Fatherland of the man who thinks without prejudice and can rise above his time is nowhere and everywhere. However, nationalism killed humanism. The nation and its sovereignty have become the new idols to which the individual has succumbed. With all the new technology, the revolution of the colonial peoples, communication by air, the radio, etcetera, have shrunk the globe to the proportions of one continent or, rather, one state as they existed one hundred- and seventy-years ago. The One World which is in the process of being born is, however, not one World because of the friendly and brotherly relations that exist among its various parts, but rather because of the fact that missiles can carry death and destruction to almost any part of the World in a matter of hours. The one World is one, so far, inasmuch as it is one potential battlefield, rather than a new system of World citizenship. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
We live in one World, yet in his feelings and thoughts contemporary man still lives in the nation state. His loyalties are still primarily to sovereign states and not to the human race. This anachronism can only lead to disaster. It is a situation similar to that of the religious wars before religious tolerance and coexistence became an accepted principle of European life. If the One World is not to destroy itself, it needs a new kind of man—a man who transcends the narrow limits of his nation and who experiences every human being as a neighbour, rather than as a barbarian; a man who feels at home in the World. Why is this step so difficult? Man’s life begins in the womb. Even after birth he is still part of mother, just as primitive man was part of nature. He becomes increasingly aware of himself as separate from others, yet he is deeply drawn to the security and safety of his past. He is afraid of emerging fully as an individual. Mother, the tribe, the family—they all are “familiar.” The stranger, the one who is not familiar through the bonds of blood, customs, food, language, is suspected of being dangerous. This attitude toward the “stranger” is inseparable from the attitude toward oneself. As long as any fellow being is experienced as fundamentally different from myself, as long as he remains a stranger, I remain a stranger to myself, too. When I experience myself fully, then I recognize that I am the same as any other human being, that I am the child, the sinner, the saint, the one who hopes and the one who despairs, the one who can feel joy and the one who can feel sadness. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
I discover that only the thought concepts, the customs, the surface are different, and that the human substance is the same. I discover that I am everybody, and that I discover myself discovering my fellow man, and vice versa. In this experience, I discover what humanity is, I discover the One Man. Until now the One Man may have been a luxury, since the One World had not yet emerged. If the One World is to live, now the One Man must emerge. Historically speaking, this may be a step comparable with the great revolution which was constituted by the step from the worship of many gods to the One God—or the One No-God. This step was characterized by the idea that man must cease to serve idols, be they nature of the work of his own hands. Man has never yet achieved this aim. He changed the name of his idols and continued serving them. Yet he changed. He made some progress in understanding himself, and tremendous progress in understanding nature. He developed his reason and approached the frontiers of becoming fully human. Yet in this process he developed such destructive powers, that he may destroy civilization before the last step is taken toward constructing a new humanity. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
Indeed, we have a rich heritage which waits for its realization. However, in contrast to the men of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who had an unfailing belief in the continuity of progress, we visualize the possibility that, instead of progress, we may create barbarism or our total destruction. The alternative of socialism or barbarism has become frighteningly real today, when the forces working toward barbarism seem to be stronger than those working against it. However, it is not the “socialism” or managerial totalitarianism which will save the World from barbarism. It is the renaissance of humanism, the emergence of the new West which employs its new technical powers for the sake of man, rather than using man for the sake of things; it is a new society in which the norms for man’s unfolding govern the economy, rather than the social and political process being governed by blind and anarchic economic interests. Until the joyful time comes when negative moods or thoughts have ceased to cross the threshold of his consciousness, man must struggle with them by a combination of different methods. First, his will must follow them at once after their entry and remove them forcibly. Second, his imagination and reason must attack them in the prayer period set aside each day for that purpose. Whether or not it is possible to attain a perfection of calmness that is secure against all assaults, it is surely possible to attain sufficient calmness to keep off many or most of the emotional disturbances and mental turmoil which derive from the petty incidents of everyday life. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
The Sacramento Fire Department protects the lives and property of Sacramento residents and visitors by serving as fires responders to fire, public safety, medical emergencies, and other emergency related situations. “It was a five-alarm fire, a four-story building that had at one time been a manufacturing plant but now had a bar and a restaurant on the first floor and a menagerie of rooms upstairs. It was a gay bar, and the guy who owned the place was gay. The top three floors were his playground. The night of the fire he picked up this kid over at the park, took the kid out, wined and dined him. The kid wanted money, but the guy didn’t want to pay anything. So the kid beat him up and left him there in the building, left him for dead. He then set the fire to cover his behind. I was acting battalion chief at the time, and I covered the fire on the second alarm. The first-alarm company got there and found the guy. He was all bloody. They laid him on the sidewalk at the side of the bar, and he kept saying that the boy was still in there. The police sent the dogs in. They found the kid and chewed him up a bit, but the firemen got him out. The call that came in said they had a small fire on the second floor. Well, the first-alarm chief saw the smoke pumping out beams. No fire, but a lot of smoke coming out of the eaves on the fourth floor. He knew he had more than just a small fire, so he called for the second alarm. I was the second chief in and was assigned to the rear of the building. We were back there, and we had master streams in operation. About then the fire was blowing out all of the windows in the back and front and coming through the roof in one corner. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
“About an hour later the majority of the fire was out, so we shut the big lines down to get inside and do some interior firefighting. I had the company stretched hand lines and inch-and-a-half up the aerial ladders and into the windows. I was at the top of the ladder, and there was a guy from X Engine, (who we will call Z), who was having trouble with his air mask. He was below me on the ladder. The department had just switched over to a new self-contained air mask, and we were having problems with this one fitting where the face piece connected to the regulator. Z did’nt have it just right. It kept popping loose on him. ‘Well, look,’ I said, ‘get your mask straightened out. I’m going to go inside, and when you get done bring your line up and I’ll meet you in there. I’ll see what we’ve got to do.’ So he went back down. I was on the fourth floor, and I looked into the window with my hand light to see the floor. It was black, all black. I straddled in, leg over windowsill, and had my feet on the floor. Real good sound floor, nice and solid. The darkness was pitch black, as black as it might be inside a collapsed mine shaft. I took two septs, and I started falling. I just started falling. Looking back on it when the doctor asked what happened and going back and looking at it after the fire, I figure out what had happened. But here I was, falling in this complete darkness. Halfway down, about thirty feet, I hit something, straddling it. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
“Thirty feet and I stopped short between my legs. That is where I fractured my pelvis in for placed. I momentarily stayed in that position, but the momentum of my fall kept me going off there and down another thirty feet. I was now down five stories, and in the basement. I landed on my back in about three feet of water. I landed hard, and I broke my back in two placed. The doctor said that the mask on my back was what saved me. Without it I would have been killed. I had fallen down an elevator shaft. The building was originally a factory where they made automobile tires. The shaft was for one of those huge freight elevators that you could drive a care into, and take it up to different floors and have the tires changed on it. That window I had climbed into opened into the shaftway. The law says that windows opening into shafts must be barred, and I think it was originally barred, but the guy, when he bought the building, did all this renovation work up there, either on the sly or whatever. What I was stepping on was a floor that was probably three feet wide with a steel beam around it, and the car would come up and stop at that floor, that’s why it was still there. The elevator was caught in the fire and was burned out, like the whole bottom of the car was burned out. The only thing left of the car was the metal frame. It was the beam at the top of the elevator that I straddled and flipped off of at the second floor and fell through the elevator to the bottom, that second thirty feet. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
“So I was lying in three feet of water. I couldn’t stand up, my legs wouldn’t move, nothing. I said to myself, calmly, ‘Well, I’ll just lie here.’ I’m lying there, then I realize I’m being pulled down. My coat is being saturated, and the weight of the coat started pulling me down, and down, and down. Suddenly, my nose is under water. I was trying to float, but I couldn’t because the coat was pulling me down and the boots were full of water and I couldn’t stand. I was beginning to drown. My regular job was captain of the rescue unit, and I knew about scuba and had a lot of water experience. I said, ‘Keep your cool, keep your cool. Don’t panic. Get your coat off.’ I was in no pain. I couldn’t feel a thing. I was just worried about drowning. I went completely under water then, knowing it was my only chance, unsnapped my coat, got one arm out and got the other arm out. The coat dropped away, the heavy mask canister with it. I thought that would save me. Then I started reaching out, and I touched this wall. It was an unfinished wall, just plain bricks. I put my fingertips in the mortar joints and started pulling my head up. I realized I was in a corner, and I’m like, ‘There’s got to be a way out of here.’ So I started going around like this, pulling with my fingertips. I hit another corner, made another turn, and there was a ladder there, a ladder in the wall. ‘Great,’ I said, ‘stay here and wait.’ The water was still cascading in from the streams, getting deeper and deeper. ‘Great’ I’m saying, ‘if the water rises, I’ll rise with it up the ladder.’ #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
The next thing was. The smoke started banking down. I said ‘Oh God. I’m going to suffocate.’ I started coughing, and I got down closer to the water. I was okay, I had this much room at first, and then the smoke was banking down farther and farther. I was down to the water again, my nose just touching it. Then I could hear the debris falling. The first thing I thought was that Z had done the same thing I did. I went back and started feeling around to see if he’s there. I heard people hollering up there. I heard Z holler in the window that the floor was going and that something was wrong. I still didn’t know where I was. I lost my portable radio on the way down. They found that hanging between the second and third floor where a piece of metal was sticking out. I fell and I just missed the metal, but it grabbed the radio and pulled it off my coat. It was hanging there. I lost my helmet, and they later found a piece of it, the plastic eye protection part melted. It had fallen into the fire on the second floor, which was still burning up there. Like I said, I hear all this debris falling, and I thought it was Z, and I went out to look to see if it was. I tool a little step and realized that I just couldn’t do it, I couldn’t stand. So I started calling to see if it was him. Nobody answered. Then I heard somebody holler, ‘There he is.’ This guy we will call A came down the ladder, and he started to touch me, and I said, ‘Don’t touch me, something is broken.’ He hollered, ‘Thrown a rope down here.’ I said, ‘Don’t tie any rope around me, something is broken and I can’t move my legs. I can’t feel anything.’ #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
“So they got the Stokes basket down there, and they floated me on that, then lifted me up and out. They put me in the medic unit, and I went right to the shock trauma center. I still don’t remember a lot of it. I don’t remember blacking out. There are times when I lie at home and I wake up and think, ‘Oh, that’s right, that happened.’ The first fall, I didn’t think that I was going to fall that far, it was only one floor. It’s not going to be even twenty feet. It’s not going to be that bad. It’s not going to be thirty feet. I’m not expecting that I’m going down a shaft, you know, right to the bottom. And when I hit, it felt like I was falling longer than I should have, but it’s pitch black and I can’t see anything, so I’m not expecting it or anything. It’s just falling into the darkness, and then when I hit, it was like, ‘Christ, oh God.’ The beam went right up into my groin. When I started falling, I was worrying about being impaled, about falling into some debris and having a two-by-four go through me. When I hit with my legs apart, the pain was intense through my groin. I was black and blue from my knees to my chest, a dark purple. My privates were swollen the size of grapefruits, because the actual impact was right there. I thought, Hey, this isn’t too bad, it’s over, I’m still alive. And then I realized that I was falling again. I still can’t see anything. I haven’t seen anything yet, no walls. I haven’t felt anything other than hitting the piece, and then I’m going again. I didn’t know I was in an elevator shaft. I had no perception of depth or how far I had fallen. I could have fallen five feet and hit something and then five more feet and been on the third floor. I had thought it was over, and I was falling again, and I realized, ‘No. It isn’t over yet.’ #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
“Another thirty feet. That’s when I did the complete somersault from straight up and down when I first fell, and the beam catapulted me over, and I was falling back first, and that’s when I impacted the water. And then it was like, ‘Oh damn, where am I now? What’s going on?’ In my scuba training I knew that when you first go down you’re apprehensive and you start breathing faster and you get yourself worked up, and you have to calm yourself down. That’s what I was doing. I was like, ‘Okay, keep your cool, you know you’re not dead, and you can get out of this.’ And then I started sinking, and I was like, ‘Oh God, you’re going to drown. You’ve got to get your coat off.’ The water was still coming in. I figure there were ten ladder pipes in service and maybe fire two-and-a-half-inch hand lines, that’s fifteen hoses shooting water in. Coming right down, you could hear it. It was like a waterfall. It’s like, okay, I have the coat off and I’m not going to drown because I have the ladder. Then I thought, ‘God, it’s filling up.’ But I felt good holding on to the ladder. If water keeps coming, I’d just float up with it, and I felt secure. Then the smoke started banking back down, and I started getting scared again. It was like you can’t breathe, coughing. Like, let’s get to the window. But, hell, I can’t move. I can’t go to a window. And I had no mask. So I got lower and lower, with my mouth and nose just above the water. It’s breathable there. It’s still pretty thick smoke, but it’s not something that I’m not used to. Then like I said, I heard the debris falling. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
“I didn’t know whether anybody knew that I’d fallen. I didn’t know whether Z had come up the ladder or not. I had told him to some back up, but he could have gone down and had his assignment changed by another officer and just, you know, forgot about me. My relief wasn’t due until seven, and this was about four-thirty in the morning. I’m thinking, this is it, this is the way I’m going to die. Then finally I heard somebody holler, ‘There he is.’ Like I said, there was no pain at that time. They got me in a medic unit, and that is when I started feeling pain. After a long recovery time, I was still not back to work. I was on administrative leave. My detail was an office job until I could get myself back to where I could go back to firefighting. I’ll get there.” The Sacramento Fire Department works continually to upgrade fire apparatuses and technology, to educate the public in fire prevention, life safety and disaster preparedness, along with enforcing public safety codes, while ensuring a safe and secure environment to all citizens and visitors through professionalism, leadership, teamwork and partnership with all levels of Government. You can help save lives by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
The Winchester Mystery House
One winter night while closing up The Winchester Mystery House, a caretaker had worked up a sweat. As he was walking down a flight of stairs, the wind grabbed him, lashing at he face, and immediately the sweat on his cheeks frosted over. His hands shook uncontrollably, the lights in the mansion began to flutter. Somewhere, almost muffled by the whine of the wind, he heard a distant clanking—a dull sound echoing across the mansion. He hesitated, tried to recognize the source, but failed. His legs ached with every step. His eyes and ear stung from the frigid blasts of wind he felt inside the house. He longed to rest, but finishing his job pushed him onward. As he reached the last step, he was greeted by what sounded like a bell tolling, warning the countryside of some unseen danger. He rested for a moment. Creeping among the twisting hallways of the mansion, he noticed for the first time that it looked rather peculiar.
He moved slower now, still confident, but careful. After a few moments, he stood motionless, watching the walls shake and curtains sway, chair scraping the floor and rattling against each other. A hazy vision of dancing skeletons and demons appeared. It’s called the house built by spirits, the demons announced, glistening worms squirming from their rotten, toothless mouths. Come join us, they invited, waving long, bony fingers. Come. And he wanted to go. They sounded so inviting. Suddenly, tears streamed down his face. The mansion came to life around him, breathing for the dead. The wind gained strength. The caretaker collapsed hard to the floor. For just one moment, an ivory sliver of moonbeam slipped through the darkness, quickly disappeared. The winter sunrise was still two hours away.
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Innocence Called on to Justify itself
There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic. The boundary between then is not clearly defined. If the suffering of children serves to complete the sum of suffering necessary for the acquisition of truth, I affirm from now onward that truth is not worth such a price. Inflation is inflicting financial pain on millions of American households, with almost half reporting that higher prices are causing some form of hardship. In fact, 70 percent of families with annual incomes of less than $40,000 said they are experiencing hardship. By comparison, 30 percent of families earning more than $100,000 a year reported that they are also facing hardship. We are living in the era of premeditation and the perfect crime. Our southern border is wide open, and our criminals are no longer helpless children who could pled love as their excuse. On the contrary, they are politicians, illegal immigrants, and other adults who have a perfect alibi: philosophy, which can be used for any purpose—even for transforming murderers into judges. As soon as a man, through lack of character, takes refuge in doctrine, as soon as crime reasons about itself, it multiplies like reason itself and assumes all the aspects of the syllogism. Once crime was as solitary as a cry of protest; not it is as universal as science. Yesterday it was put on trial; today it determines the law. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
We need to face the reality of the present, which is logical crime, and examine meticulously the arguments by which it is justified; we must understand the times in which we live. One might think that a period which, in a space of twenty-five years, uproots, enslaves, or skills millions of human beings should be condemned out of hand. However, its culpability must still be understood. In more ingenuous times, when they tyrant razed cities for his own greater glory, when the slave chained to the conqueror’s chariot was dragged through the rejoicing streets, when enemies were thrown to the wild beasts in front of the assembled people, the mind did not reel before such unabashed crimes, and judgment remained unclouded. However, slave camps under the America flag of freedom, massacres justified by philanthropy or by taste for the superhuman, in one sense cripple judgement. On the day when crimes dons the apparel of innocence—through a curious transposition peculiar to our times—it is innocence that is called upon to justify itself. We must accept and examine this strange challenge. We can act only in terms of our own time, among the people who surround us. Every action today leads to murder, direct or indirect. People believe that they have a right to kill because basic laws are no longer enforced. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
I cannot understand how a party that claims to respect law and order encourages and even pays people to immigrate illegally, and has gotten loose on allowing several laws to be enforced. It is akin to allowing a child to be bullied, harassed, and terrorized. When people see that they can get away with breaking the law, the bad behaviour will become contagious. In the age of negation, it was of some avail to examine one’s position concerning suicide. In the age of ideologies, we must examine our position in relation to murder. If murder has rational foundations, then our period and we ourselves are rationally consequent. If it has no rational foundations, then we are insane and there is no alternative but to find some justification or to avert our faces. It is incumbent upon us, at all events, to give a definite answer to the question implicit in the blood and strife of the first quarter of the century. For we are being put to the rack. Ideology today is concerned only with the denial of other human beings, who alone bear the responsibility of deceit. Each day at dawn, assassins in judges’ robes slip into some cell: murder is the problem today. Allowing crime to run rampant in the streets of America is absurd. Removing God from society is narcissistic. If we believe in nothing, if nothing has any meaning, and if we can affirm no values whatsoever, then everything is possible and nothing has any importance. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Since nothing is either true or false, good or bad, our guiding principle will be to demonstrate that we are the most efficient—in other words, the strongest. Then the World will no longer be divided into the just and the unjust, but into masters and slaves. Thus, whichever way we turn, in our abyss of negation and nihilism, crime has its privileged position. Of course, self-destruction means nothing to madmen, who have bomb shelters, and are preparing for their own death and apotheosis. All that matters is not to destroy oneself alone and to drag a whole World with one. In a way, the man who kills himself in solitude still preserves certain values since he, apparently, claims no rights over the lives of others. Modern man wants to destroy everything or take everything with him. If man knows he is destroying the plant, ending human and animal life, clearly the mandate for electric cars and acknowledging climate change is about politics, power forcing, and profit. He does not want the World to end without harvesting every dollar insight and making people struggle. Sadist get off on the pain of others. Man believes that life can only be lived by striving toward that delectable end. This has become a system of misguided intelligence that prefers, to the suffering imposed by a limited situation, the dark victory in which Heaven and Earth are annihilated. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
However, absurdist reasoning cannot defend the continued existence of its spokesman and send others to fight in wars that have nothing to do with America, while simultaneously accepting the sacrifice of others’ lives on American soil. The very first thing that cannot be denied in America, is the right for our citizens to live. Thus, the same idea which allows the loss of innocent lives on American soil is caused by politicians taking an untenable position on the United States Constitution. Many American leaders and citizens are living a contradiction because they want to destroy without creating their own selves. And what is astonishing is that many people do not have values with which will enable them to see that crime is illegitimate. Once the Constitution is broken, nothing will remain which can help us to answer the questions of our time, and this will leave us in a blind alley. American will believe in nothing and think that everything is absurd. They will be offended by everything that is different from what they are as an individual. No one will respect the rights of others, and this will lead to mass rebellion. People are being taught to physically fight, destroy, and murder things that are offensive to them. People are being deprived of all knowledge, incited to murder or consent to murder. Rebellion is born of the spectacle of irrationality. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
However, we must demand order in the midst of this chaos, and unity in the very heart of the ephemeral. The American Constitution protests, it demands, it insists that the lawlessness and outrage be brought to an end because what has been going on in this country lately has been built upon shifting sand when our nation was founded on God’s rock. Rebellion absolutely must find it reasons with itself, since it cannot find them elsewhere. It must consent to examine itself in order to learn how to act. Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is. The problem is to know whether this refusal can only lead to the destruction of himself and of others, whether all rebellion must end in the justification of universal murder, or whether, on the contrary, without laying claim to an innocence that is impossible, it can discover the principle of reasonable culpability. Through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, each of us can become clean and the burden of our rebellion will be lifted. Breaking a covenant with the Lord is never justified. However, sometimes our poor choices leave us with long-term consequences. One of the vital steps to complete repentance is to bear the short- and long-term consequences of our past sins. The joyful news for anyone who desires to be rid of the consequences of past poor choices is that the Lord sees weaknesses differently than He does rebellion. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Whereas the Lord warns that unrepented rebellion will bring punishment, when the Lord speaks of weaknesses, it is always with mercy. However, sometimes rebellion can be good. Like when we stop tolerating injustice. What is a rebel? A man who says no, but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation. He is also a man who says yes, from the moment he makes his first gesture of rebellion. A slave who has taken order all his life suddenly decides that he cannot obey some new command. What does he mean by saying “no?” He means, for example, that “this has been going on too long,” “up to this point yes, beyond it no,” “you are going to far,” or, again, “there is a limit beyond which you shall not go.” In other words, his no affirms the existence of a borderline. The same concept is to be found in the rebel’s feeling that the other person “is exaggerating,” that he is exerting his authority beyond a limit where he begins to infringe on the rights of others. Thus, the movement of rebellion is founded simultaneously on the categorical rejection of an intrusion that is considered intolerable and on the confused conviction of an absolute right which, in the rebel’s mind, is more precisely the impression that he “has the right to…” Rebellion cannot exist without the feeling that, somewhere and somehow, one is right. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
It is in this way that the rebel slave says yes and no simultaneously. He affirms that there are limits and also that he suspects—and wishes to preserve—the existence of certain things on this side of the borderline. He demonstrates, with obstinacy, that there is something in him which “is worthwhile…” and which must be taken into consideration. In a certain way, he confronts an order of things which oppresses him with the insistence on a kind of right not to be oppressed beyond the limit that he can tolerate. Sociologically it is easy to see that the evolution of the human race has led from small units like the clan and the tribe through city-states, national states, to World states and World cultures, like the Hellenistic, Roman, Islamic, and modern Western civilization. Yet the difference, as far as human experience is concerned, is not as fundamental as it may seem. The member of the primitive tribe differentiates sharply between the member of his group and the outsider. There are moral laws governing the members of the group, and without such laws no group could exist. However, these laws do not apply to the “stranger.” When groups grown in size, more people cease to be “strangers” and become “neighbours.” Yet in spite of the quantitative change, qualitatively the distinction between the neighbour and the stranger remains. A stranger is not human, he is a barbarian, he is even not fully understandable. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Long before the human race was on the verge of becoming One World, socially and economically, its most advanced thinkers had visualized a new human experience, that of One Man. Man is thought of as man—men having the same structure, the same problems, and the same answers, without regard to culture and race. The Old Testament visualized man as being one, bearing the likeness of the One God; the prophets visualized the day when the nations “shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks;” [when] “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore,” reports Isaiah 2. They visualized the day when there will be no more “favourite” nations. “In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt and the Egyptian into Assyria…In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land: whom the Lord of hosts shall bless saying, Blessed by Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance,” reports Isaiah 19. Christianity created the concept that the Son of Man became the Son of God—and God Himself. Not this or that man, but Man. The Roman Church was a Catholic church precisely because it was a supranational, universal church. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Classic Greek and Roman thinking arrived independently from Judaeo-Christian thought at the concept of One Man and of natural law rooted in the rights of One man, rather than in the necessities of a nation or state. Antigone sacrifices her life in defense of universal human (natural) law against state law. Zenon had the vision of a universal commonwealth. The Renaissance and Enlightenment enriched the Greek and Judaeo-Christian traditions and developed them further, in humanistic rather than in theological terms. Whatever is behind the decision when people can give up, it can be justified by taking a position based on the now deeply ingrained convictions, a position which involves a view of the whole World and all the people in it, who are either friends or enemies: “I’ll kill myself because it’s a lousy World where I’m not good and neither is anyone else, my friends are not much better than my enemies.” In position language this read “I’m not-O.K. You’re not-O.K., They’re not-O.K. Who would not kill himself under such conditions?” This is a futility suicide. Alternatively, “I’ll kill myself because I’m not-O.K. and everybody else is O.K.”—the melancholic suicide. (Suicide here can mean anything from jumping off a bridge or car-crashing, to overeating or alcoholism.) #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
“But,” says someone, “I know we’re O.K., but those other fellows aren’t so hot.” “Very well, then, I’m O.K., you’re O.K., and they are not-O.K., so let us get the job done now and we will attend to them later.” In child language, this translates as “We are going to play house, but you cannot play with us,” which in its most extreme form and with more sophisticated equipment can be parlayed in later years into an extermination camp. The simplest positions are two-handed, You and I, and come from the convictions which have been fed to the child with his mother’s milk. Perception is perhaps one of the most important processes in psychology and is essential in understanding human behaviour. According to Combs and Snygg, all behaviour is related to perception. A student attends a university because she perceives it as being helpful to her career or because a parent perceives it as being help to her offspring’s development. A thief robs a bank because he perceives it as the source of money, according to Willie Sutton, one of the most famous of bank robbers. A child cries when seeing a clown because he sees it as a monster rather than as a funny creature. The most important influence upon perception and misperception is the perceiver’s own needs. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
If you are driving through a strange city, at about noontime, should you see painted on a store window the name of the owner, Sandwharf, you are likely to perceive it as Sandwich. If you are embarrassed by words that are ladened with pleasures of the flesh, and are asked to read a list quickly, you are likely to misread breast as beast. In a passionate political or personal argument, one’s need is so great to win that we may avoid perceiving the other person’s position at all. The presumption, of course, is that since we are all human, others would perceive things the same way we would. A health personality is by no means exempt from this law. These persons too many momentarily see only themselves as “right” in their perceptions of complex political situations, for example, but they are able to look back upon themselves, their arguments, and their behaviour and recognize when their needs are causing them to misperceive reality—or at least to miss other possible realities. This capacity for reflection back upon self is a uniquely human characteristic and is exceedingly valuable in keeping a certain openness to new ideas, new friends, and new joys. If someone perceives all new sports or new challenges as producing probably failure, that person will avoid tackling new, exciting experiences. The perception principle is useful also in understanding the behaviour of others, particularly of those whose cultural backgrounds may be different. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
The Russians see our election system as inefficient because for one, 234,570 extra votes were cast by noncitizens in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, enough to deliver a win for President-elect Joe Biden. And also, the Russians election system as inefficient because it enables popular rather than competent person to be elected to office on the basis of the amount they spend for advertisements. We see their system of nominating only one candidate as a farce. Some of the most cherished beliefs may rest upon doubtful perceptions of reality. The need to be right is so strong that we will defend our perceptions most vigorously and violently when we are least sure of them. A child who perceives a kitten as something warm, soft, and playful will run to play with it on a visit to a friend’s house. Another child who sees a kitten as something that will bite and scratch you will run in terror from the animal. Any effort on the part of an adult to force contact with the kitten can only increase the terror unless the child’s perception is gradually helped to change. A young (or old) man who has great need to prove his uncertain manliness will perceive every date as a challenge to conquest rather than to relationship and may be expected to display himself, posture, and go to all lengths to seduce or conquer rather than to relate. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
This viewpoint is often termed a phenomenological or perceptual point of view. It suggests that we would better understand our associates and children through knowing how they and we perceive reality. Our needs and emotions not only make us believe things that are untrue; they also blind us to truth. If a perception gives rise to devastating depression or hopelessness, there is a tendency for people simply to ignore the disquieting truth. Anyone who has suffered the death of a loved one will know how difficult it is to realize that the deceased will not be seen anymore. People tend to forget, or more accurately, to repress the memory of painful or humiliating events. Many needs can be gratified only through relationships with other people. This means that strong emotions are mobilized in our interpersonal relationships. Reliable information about another person is difficult to obtain, because much of that person’s behaviour goes on at times when we cannot see it. Furthermore, the person’s consciousness of the World is not accessible to our direct vision. If he or she confides in us, only then can we learn the subjective side of another person. However, the person may not be willing to entrust us with personal information. Often, we are obliged to form our concept of another person on the basis of overt behaviour alone. We infer, as accurately as possible, what an individual’s perception might have been, so that we can predict his or her behaviour in similar situations. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
“A few moments of therapist self-attention”: To respond truly within me I must, of course, pay some attention to what is going on within me. As I am interacting with the client, a good deal of what transpires within me has to do with him—consists of my imaginings of him, my observations of his reactions, my reactions to him, etcetera. However, within me these occur as mine, as me. They are not deductions about him. They are what is happening to me now, my lived moments with him. To formulate and express these, I require a few steps of self-attention, a few moments in which I attend to what I feel. Then I usually find a great deal what I am willing to share. It would be wrong to say that I express everything that is going on in me, since a thousand things are going on in me at any moment and they cannot even be separately formulated, much less expressed. Also, I do not blurt out impulsively the first things which happens to some to mind. I live a few moments inwardly and by this means I find myself some response to the client, or to what has been happening between us, or to our silence. Even when little is being said, I find that I have desires, fears, disappointments, and wishes for more meaningful communication. I can voice these. With a few moments of self-attention, I can find my genuine response to the moment. If, while the client talks, I feel bored, I do not blurt out “You bore me.” I find with a few seconds of attention to my own experiencing, that my boredom really consists of my missing something from him, something interesting and personal. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
I find that I strongly wish for this personal expression of his. I find I have much welcoming for this personal expression ready, and that it is going to waste. I find that I can imagine the kind of personal communication which I sense is missing in his verbal stream. I can express these senses of lack, wish, and imagination, and I can express them as mine. Much of my own feeling process when I am with someone does usually consist of these rather specific momentary events, reactions, wishes, and senses relevant to the other person. For example, let us say I have just said something and gotten no response. I think that it may have been very much the wrong thing to say. I need not simply feel bad about having done the wrong thing. I can say I feel bad about it and why, as well as the fact that this happens to be what I am feeling, but, that I am not at all sure about what he is now feeling. The few seconds of self-attention nearly always bring two developments in the feeling I have: (1) it becomes more truly something of me, rather than about him; (2) it become much more possible to share it. Thus, even though it is my genuine momentary reaction to the client in the interactive moment, it is also genuinely mine and does not impose itself on what he experiences. I can say—when it is true—that I am not at all sure what he feels at the moment. Thus, the two specifications I stated require each other: “non-imposition” requires “a few moments of self-attention” so that I may find what I truly feel and state it non-imposingly, as mine. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
One may become so sensitive as a consequence of medication that other people’s thoughts, feelings, or passions may reflect themselves into his own nature temporarily when he is physically near them or mentally dealing with them. In such cases, he will probably mistake the result for his own, thus expressing what is really alien to his mind or acting outside of his individual pattern of life. This is particularly true when a strong emotion like anger is directed against him. He may then feel instinctively angry with the other person. Unwittingly, he may become disloyal to the Ideal merely through being ignorant of what is happening psychically, and unguarded against it. The longer he lives the more he discovers that real peace depends on the strength with which he rules his own heart, and real security depends on the truth with which he rules his own mind. When he leaves his emotions in disorder they bring agony—as the accompaniment or the follower of the happiness they claimed at first to be able to give. When he lets his thoughts serve the blindness of his ego, they deceive, mislead, or trouble him. The aspirant must not act, live, or think under the sway of merely sentimental, emotional, and self-centered feeling alone but should strive for mature truthful feeling. This is intuition. When dealing with a complex personal situation, he should detach himself and follow such intuition instead of emotion. Then it will be solved rightly. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
He will not be karmically free of an unpleasant relationship until he has mentally freed himself from all negative thoughts and negative acts concerning it. Then the outer karmic forces will free him, or else he may be shown inwardly how to free himself outwardly. Of what use, in such serious matters as survival, to live in so many illusions? Sentimentalists and emotionalists who desert reason at the bidding of well-intentioned, high ideals or religion to preach unrealistic attitudes do not know the difference between religio-mystic ethics and philosophic ethics. Only the latter is practical in the highest sense as well as the Worldly one. Foolish teachers, professors, and those whose lives are spent in academic circles are suborned by these emotions more easily than are other people, just because their distance from the World of practical decisions and realistic affairs have made them one-sided. All this emotional energy which neurotics waste in self-pity, hysterics in crises, and unwary ordinary persons in trivialities and negatives, is to be conserved, controlled, and constructively redirected. If it be observed that young people and women at times display emotional instability, let is also be stated that to them is given by Nature tasks which can be fulfilled only in great love, and which call up in them commensurate emotional capacity. Where much is given, much is required, and they in particular need to learn control and wise use of the emotional drive so generously placed in their keeping. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
The Sacramento Fire Department stands as a dedicated and vigilant guardian of public safety, committed to safeguarding lives, property, and the environment. With unwavering expertise and a steadfast devotion to service, the Sacramento Fire Department is at the forefront of the fire prevention, emergency response, and community education. Through their dedicate firefighters, advanced equipment, and proactive initiatives, the Sacramento Fire Department stands ready to respond to emergencies, mitigate risks, and foster a resilient and prepared community. “The best thing to me in a firehouse is the fellowship. We have good rapport, and it’s a learning type of situation for me at this point. Sometimes I just sit around and listen to guys with years of experience. That’s enlightening because I’ve learned so much just from listening. Then to follow them on the job and see how they actually attack each situation, that has been even more beneficial to me. Hard workers and a good group of guys, everyone pulls his own weight. There’s no coldness, no harshness. The worst thing is hearing about firemen hurt or killed in the line of duty. Night watches never bother me, because I’m a night owl anyway. Some people don’t like those last hours, two-thirty to five. I work straight through the night. Cleaning is tough. A lot of times we have to do windows and mop floors. When I go home, it’s hard to look my wife straight in the face and say, ‘Hey, I don’t do windows.’ I don’t have a leg to stand on, because if I do windows in the firehouse, it means I have to do them at home. But at least we’re working in a clean environment. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“If the police have people hired to clean the station, it makes sense to me, because they really don’t have police who sleep in. But this is like a home to us, this is where we sleep. So it’s really like taking care of your own house. I don’t think people realize the amount of work and the strenuous activity that firefighters do. They see the engines or trucks go by, and they think they’re going to a fire, and that’s the end of it. It doesn’t occur to them the work that is involved in pulling a line and going into these fires and rescuing people, breaking windows just to let smoke out. They aren’t aware of the hazards in the job. When they hear about a firefighter being hurt or killed, they think that it’s a dangerous job—but on a general level. They really don’t know the specifics and how really dangerous it is. They don’t know about the pumping, and putting the engine in pump, and getting the pressure on. All they think is that you just hooked the hose up to a fire hydrant, you pull it toward the fire, and that’s the end of it. They’ll see firefighters at the station maybe sitting on a bench or after they raise the flag. They rise by and say, ‘Oh, what a life.’ Or, “Oh, that’s where my money to Uncle Sam goes.’ Most of my experience in the job, thus far, has been in occupied dwellings, no big high rises yet. I get off the engine, and I’m dragging an inch-and-three-quarter, and my adrenaline gets going. I’m on the tip, and this is my baby, this is my job, I know I’m going to do it. I think this is something that all firefighters feel. If they’re on the tip, they know they’re going to control this fire one way or the other. Either they’re going to put it out or they’re going to confine it. It gives you a lot of satisfaction. It really makes you feel it’s you against the fire. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
“You come into battle with this fire, no matter how bad it is. A lot of times it’s scary, because you look at a wall of flames and you think, ‘Wow, here I am armed with this little hose. I don’t know if this is going to be the trick.’ But you know it always works out and you’re always able to get the best of it. There’s always someone right there with you. You’re never alone. If you get too much smoke, everyone knows, and it’s okay. Someone will step in and take over, and help you out in some way or other. It’s not a question of, ‘Okay, here’ the tip, and you’re on your own, and go do it.’ Being on the tip is an aggressive type of job. You get in there, and you have to confront the fire, and you know you have a lot of help with you. You just do the job. I got a Heroism Citation, and one of my fellow firefighters was really glad for me. And he congratulated me.” The Sacramento Fire Department is committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of the community through continuous training and public education. You can save lives and property by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. To keep our communities safe, remember to raise your children to love America and be patriotic. It is very important also to love God and Jesus Christ. To ensure the economic security of America, please buy American cars and other goods and services made in America. Respect law and order, get your education, and treat your elders with dignity, empathy, and compassion. “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
The Winchester Mystery House
In October, when the sun was orange-red and large as a hanging jack-o’-lantern, the leaves danced in circles at their feet in the curt wind and the chill of winter death was beginning to settle in on porches as The Winchester Mystery House, two caretakes came to work with caps on their heads, and the energetic joy of the young bloomed in their cheeks and in their bright angel eyes. Sidewalks disappeared under their feet. Nicholas leaped at the near-nude branch of a tree, missing it with an ooof. Viola leaped behind him and touched it. The wind whistled in the dark day’s passing. Nicholas and Viola shied away from the perfect, straight front walk, crept instead across the forbidden lawn. Breathing lightly, they drew up to the side of the house. The house was pastel green and seemed still wet to the touch it looked so freshly painted. So fresh that Nicholas found himself reaching to touch it. Violation slapped at his hand and motioned for him to be quiet. Nicholas smiled. Around the back they crept, stopping underneath the one window. Shivers went through them both. Inside, dimly lit, were colours of Christmas morning. Red and green, gold and bronze, silver, blue.
There was no communication between Nicholas and Viola. Their souls were united and yet started to separate. Nicholas opened the door. The two exchanged glances, as the wind whipped up. An early moon had risen, and shone a pale crescent at their backs. The red sun was sinking. They sky had deepened a notch on the blue colour scale, toward eventual black. The air bit cold. Somewhere inside of the mansion a dog barked once, twice. Viola held on to Nicholas’s arm. They both found themselves in a hurricane eye in the center of the room. It was very dim here, since the fading outside light was cut off by a row of bloodred cues of diminishing size. Light became a little dimmer. There was a sound, and Nicholas and Viola were startled. The sound came again. It was almost a scabbling sound–like tiny fiddler crabs loose in a wooden boat and ticking all over its inside surface. An ancient and wheezing sound–old age with claws, moving with slow careful grace and constant, inevitable movement towards its destination. Viola and Nicholas were trapped. The sound was all around them–slow, inexorable–and, though they were on their feet, there was nowhere to turn. Nicholas could not locate the pathway back to the door; indeed, that pathway had seemed to disappear. There was the sound of a door opening.
Somewhere behind them, or in front of them, or to their left or right. A large door was being opened. There was a heavy, wheezy breathing. A rattling, dry cough. Another wheezing breath, and then a whispered grunt and the closing of a heavy door. A shuffling sound, the clock light button, a shuffling sound once more. The room was suffused with a dull amber glow, like that in a dusty antique shop. A dry cough and the shuffling continued. Abruptly, from nowhere, a creature. It beat the fist of one hand into the palm of the other. Then it sprang up, and in an instant was sprinting through a door which appeared. Though the moonlight was now bright, Nicholas list sight of the beast almost immediately. With a heavy heart, he pulled himself to his feet and began a long trudge down the hallway. And he was not sure about what happened to Viola. All of the sudden, he felt a ghost following him as he went through his chores of emptying trash cans and taking empty glasses into the kitchen. He tried bravely to ignore it, although he was frightened and he knew that the ghost knew it, which made it all the more difficult to carry on. All of the sudden a frying pan standing on the stove lifted off by itself, hung suspended in midair for a moment, and then was flung back on the stove with full force. Nichoals flew into hysterics, and it took a long time for him to calm down. It seems ghosts like to stay in a place that are familiar with.
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
The Big, Blonde, Democratic Teuton
The expression of compassion for others is the essence of the gospel of Jesus as the Christ. It is meaningful to observe that Jesus’s compassionate acts were not occasional, nor mandated manifestations based on a list of tasks to be completed but everyday expressions of the reality of His pure love for God and His children and His abiding desire to help. One of the most poignant examples of kindness in the Christian Bible is when Jesus showed compassion at the grave of Lazarus. When Jesus saw Lazarus’ friends weeping, he wept alongside them (John 11.33-35). Over and over, our Lord Jesus felt compassion on people, healing them and comforting them. He saw the large crowd as sheep without a shepherd and he came to give them purpose and shelter. As the Son of God, Jesus possessed more than we can ever imagine. Even so, he gave up everything, voluntarily and selflessly sacrificing Himself for us so that we can have eternal life. In that sacrifice, we see the greatest example of compassion in the Bible. The stories of compassion in the Bible should motivate us to put compassion into action. Those who cannot make the leap and rise above human love to their higher self—with its impersonality and immateriality—may continue to draw a happiness from it. However, the limitations will be there, inexorable, unconquerable, of time and body, relativity, and change. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
One of the most important scriptures in the Bible is Hebrews 13.2, “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. Now, what are angels? Angels are messengers of God. Therefore, what this scripture could also mean is to show compassion to others, not only does how you treat people reflect on your and your family, but you could also be entertaining people who have great power and influence in this World. If you want to get ahead in life, the right way, it is important that people see you as a good person. Fear weakens a man, hate destroys him in the end, but love brings him his best. If everyone in the World would practice universal love, then the whole World would enjoy peace and order. We must learn to rise above our emotions, and understand by this kind of love a state of mind, not a state of emotion. When two people confront each other, there are six ego states involved, three in each person. Since ego states are as different from each other as actual people are, it is important to know which ego state is active in each person when something takes place between them. The exasperating response is where someone who wants sympathy gets facts instead. This is known as a child/parent-adult/adult. Impudence is where someone who expects compliance gets what is consider a “smart aleck” response instead, in the form of a factual statement. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
There are 812 or 6561 different types of duplex transactions possible. For example, if we engage in only three transactions, and each time we have a choice among 6597 varieties, then we have our three transactions in 65973 ways. This gives us about 300 billion different ways of structuring our three exchanges with each other. That certainly gives us all the room we need to express our individualities. Since most people engage in hundreds or thousands of transactions every day, each person has trillions and trillions of combinations at his disposal. Even if he has an aversion to 5000 of the 6597 possible types of transactions, and never gets into them, there is still plenty of room to maneuver in, and there is no necessity for his behaviour to be stereotyped unless he himself sets it up that way. If he does so, as most people do, that is not the fault of transactional analysis, but of others influences that form the chief subject matt of this report. Since this system, in all its branches, is referred to as transactional analysis, what has been described above, the analysis of single transactions, is called transactional analysis proper, which is the second step after structural analysis. Transactional analysis proper gives a rigorous definition of the system, which will be of interest principally to those trained in scientific methodology. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
A transaction consisting of a single stimulus and a single response, verbal or non-verbal, is the unit of social action. It is called a transaction because each party gains something from it, and that is why he engages in it. Anything that happens between two or more people can be broken down into a series of single transactions, and this gives all the advantages which any science attains when it has a well-defined system of units. Transactional analysis is a theory of personality and social action, and a clinical method of psychotherapy, based on the analysis of all possible transactions between two or more people, on the basis of specifically defined ego states, into a finite number of established types (nine complementary, 72 crossed, 6480 duplex, and 36 angular). Only about 15 of these commonly occur in ordinary practice; the rest are largely of academic interest. Any system or approach which is not based on the rigorous analysis of single transactions into their component specific ego states is not transactional analysis. This definition, in effect, purports to set up a model for all possible forms of human social behaviour. This model is efficient because it follows the principle of scientific economy (sometimes knows as “Occam’s razor”), making only two assumptions: that human beings can change from one ego state to another, and that if A says something and B says something shortly thereafter, it can be verified whether what B said was a response to what A said. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
It is also very effective because, so far, no examples have been found among thousands or millions of interchanges between human beings which could not be dealt with by the model; and it is rigorous as well, because it is limited by simple arithmetical considerations. The best way to understand the “transactional viewpoint” is to ask: “What would a one- or two- or three-year-old child do that would correspond to this grownup’s behaviour?” Eastern philosophers are fond of pointing out how Westerns live with a “divided” consciousness, experiencing a gulf between mind and body, between self and nature. Divided consciousness is a chronic self-consciousness, such that the person is always aware of self. Whether the person is watching a sunset, enjoying pleasures of the flesh, or playing a game of tennis, he or she is always aware of self as the “subject, whereas that which the person is noticing is experienced as the “object,” as “out there,” distance from the self. Even our language, with its grammatical structure, encourages us to enter a chronic state of self-consciousness, of reflection upon our experiencing. A child, before taking on language, apparently has the capacity to perceive in selfless fashion. Eventually, the child learns to monitor experience and action, after having learned that he or she will be called on to give an account of thoughts and actions. The child is to become a spy or witness of his or her own actions, and is to give a report to parents upon request. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
As the child grows older, such self-vigilance becomes habitual, and the rift in consciousness that hinders spontaneity has been permanently inserted. When a happening fully absorbs someone’s attention, the person may re-experience the long-lost mode of unreflective, unself-conscious perception. This is a terrible way to live—always to be watching one’s self. The capacity to be self-conscious is unique to human beings, because of the relative seize of the human cerebral cortex. Doubtless, the ability to observe the flow of one’s experiencing has some adaptive and adjustive value. However, chronic self-consciousness is agonizing, and it destroys enjoyment of living; in extreme instances, self-consciousness can so limit a person that he or she becomes unable to act at all until having first checked and rechecked the proposed action or communication. When self-consciousness is carried to this extreme, the individual may become nearly paralyzed by doubt and indecision, as in a pattern of neurosis called doubting compulsion. When used to “mirror” self and know how you are perceived by others, the gift of reflecting consciousness is helpful. Prayer to God and His Son, Jesus Christ, was developed as a means of healing the breach in consciousness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
The purpose of prayer is to help a person “transcend” the ego and experience a unification of self with all that exists. When such enlightenment and unification occur, the person becomes more capable of effortless action, grace of movement, and power of reason, because the person is not doing two things at once, that is, doing something and reflecting upon what is being done. Prayer is one of the greatest blessings we have while we are here on Earth. Through prayer we can communicate with our Heavenly Father and seek His guidance daily. Prayer is a sincere, heartfelt talk with our Heavenly Father. We should pray to God and to no one else. We do not pray to any other being or to anything made by man or God. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in Heaven above, or that is in the water under the Earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me,” reports Exodus 20.3-5. Prayer has been an important part of the gospel from the beginning of the World. An angel of the Lord commanded Adam and Eve to repent and call upon God in the name of the Son. “Wherefore, thou salth do all that thou doest in the name of the Son, and thou shalt repent and call upon God in the name of the Son forevermore,” reports Moses 5.8. This commandment has never been taken away. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
Prayer will help us draw closer to God. All our thoughts, our words, and our actions are influenced by our prayers. The experience of overcoming chronic fixation upon a self-conscious, reflective state of awareness, so that one begins to smell and taste, and remember and imagine with greater vividness, can easily be described as “an enlargement of the World,” a rebirth, or a self-unification. Yet reflection, or self-witnessing, helps a person to learn skills. Self-consciousness may rob action of its spontaneity and of its joy. The aim of healthy personality is to be able to reflect upon experience when it is appropriate to do so, and to engage unself-consciously like a child in action, and in personal relationships, when there is no need to reflect. Action is one way to obtain temporary respite from self-consciousness. Warm-up exercises, followed by intense involvement in a game of tennis or basketball, or in dance, enable a person to be engaged without reflection. Other means for temporarily suppressing the act of reflection include listening to music, engaging in hobbies, and absorption in a book or a drama on a video steaming service or DVD. Dialogue with another person that fully engages one’s attention is also a means of overcoming self-consciousness. When such dialogue is going on, each person is responding to the other without premediated efforts to produce a particular impression in the experience of the other. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
The Darwinian mood sustained the belief in Anglo-Saxon racial superiority which obsessed many American thinkers in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The measure of World dominion already achieved by the “race” seemed to prove it the fittest. Also, in the 1870’s and 1880’s many of the historical conceptions of the Anglo-Saxon school began to reflect advances in biology and allied developments in other fields of thought. For a time, American historians fell under the spell of the scientific ideal and dreamed of evolving a science of history comparable to the biological sciences. The keynote of their faith could be found in E.A. Freeman’s Comparative Politics (1874), in which he allied the comparative method with the idea of Anglo-Saxon superiority. “For the purposes of the study of Comparative Politics,” he had written, “a political constitution is a specimen to be studied, classified, and labeled, as a building or an animal to be studied, classified, and labeled by those to whom buildings or animals are objects to study.” If political constitutions were to be classified and compared by Victorian scholars as if they were animal forms, it was highly probable that the political methods of certain peoples would be favoured over others. Inspired by the results of the comparative method in philology and mythology, particularly by the work of Edward Tylor and Max Muller, Freeman tried, using this method, to trance the signs of original unity in the primitive institutions of the Aryans, particularly in the “three most illustrious branches of the common stock—the Greek, the Roman, and the Teuton.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
When Herbert Baxter Adams set up his great historical seminar at John Hopkins, it was with the official blessing of Freeman; and Freeman’s dictum, “History is past politics and politics is present history,” was emblazoned on the historical studies that came pouring forth from Adams’ seminar. A whole generation of historians receiving their inspiration from the John Hopkins school could have said with Henry Adams, “I flung myself obediently into the arms of the Anglo-Saxons in history.” The leading notion of the Anglo-Saxon school was that the democratic institutions of England and the United States of America, particularly the New England town meeting could be traced back to the primitive institutions of the early German tribes. Despite differences in detail, the Hopkins historians were in general agreement on their picture of the big, blonde, Democratic Teuton and on the Teutonic genealogy of self-government. The viewpoint of the school was given a fitting popular expression in 1890 with the publication of James K. Hosmer’s Short History of Anglo-Saxon Freedom, which drew upon the home literature of Anglo-Saxondom to establish the thesis that government of the people and by the people is of ancient Anglo-Saxon origin. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
Wrote Hosmer: “Though Anglo-Saxon freedom in a partial form has been adopted (it would be better perhaps to say imitated) by every nation in Europe, but Russia, and in Asia by Japan, the hopes for that freedom, in the future, rest with the English-speaking race. By that race alone it has been preserved amidst a thousand perils; to that race alone is it thoroughly congenial; if we can conceive the possibility of the disappearance among peoples of that race, the chance would be small for that freedom’s survival.” Hosmer shared the optimism of his English contemporary John Richard Green, who believed that the English-speaking race would grow in enormous numbers and spread over the New World, Africa, and Australia. “The inevitable issues,” concluded Hosmer, “is to be that the primacy of the World will lie with us. English institutions, English speech, English thought, are to become the main features of the political, social, and intellectual life of mankind.” Thus would the survival of the fittest be written large in the World’s political future. What Hosmer did for Anglo-Saxon history, John W. Burgess did for political theory. His Political Science and Comparative Constitutional Law, published in the same year as Hosmer’s book, serves as a reminder of German as well as English influences in the American Anglo-Saxon cult; for Burgess, like Herbert Baxter Adams, had received a large part of his graduate training in Germany. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
The peculiarity of his work, Burgess declared, it was method. “It is a comparative study. It is an attempt to apply the method, which has been found so productive in the domain of Natural Science, to Political Science and Jurisprudence.” It was Burgess’ contention that political capacity is not a gift common to all nations, but limited to a few. The highest capacity for political organization, he believed, has been shown, in unequal degrees by the Aryan nations. Of all these, only “the Teuton really dominates the World by his superior political genius.” It is therefore not to be assumed that every nation must become a state. If we may judge from history, The political subjection or attachment of unpolitical nations to those possessing political endowment appears to be as truly a part of the World’s civilization as is the national organization of states. I do not think that Asia and Africa can receive political organization in any other way…The national state is…the most modern and complete solution of the whole problem of political organization which the World has yet produced; and the fact that it is the creation of Teutonic political genius stamps the Teutonic nations as the political nations par excellence, and authorizes them, in the economy of the World, to assume the leadership in the establishment and administration of states. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
The Teutonic nations can never regard the exercise of political power as a right of man. With them this power must be based upon capacity to discharge political duty, and they themselves are the best organs which have yet appeared to determine when and where this capacity exists. We see the beginnings of this, for instance, in songs like “We Shall Overcome,” which are living rituals, not just songs. A ritual like that of common silence as it has been practiced by the Friends as the center of their religious service could be acceptable to large groups of people; it could become a custom that every meeting of significance begins or ends with five or fifteen minutes of common silence given to prayer and concentration. It is not too farfetched an idea to suggest that, instead of prayers or patriotic formulae, classes in schools and special occasions in universities could be introduced by a period of common silence. We also have shared symbols, such as the dove and the outline of a human figure as symbols of peace and respect for man. There is no point in speculating about further details of possible common rituals and symbols outside church life, because they will grow naturally once the soil is prepared. In the field of art and music, there are innumerable possibilities for the creation of new ritual and symbolic expressions. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
Whatever new psychospiritual systems may arise, they will not be “fighting” religion, although they will be a challenge to those in the various religions who have made an ideology of religious teachings and an idol of God. Those who worship the “living God” will have no difficulty in sensing that they have more in common with the “unbelievers” than they have in what separates them; they will have a deep sense of solidarity with those who do not worship idols and who try to do what the believers call “God’s will.” I expect that to many the hope expressed here for new manifestations of man’s psychospiritual needs are too vague to form the basis of hope that such a development will happen. Those who want certainty and proof before they can take any hope seriously are right in reacting negatively. However, those who believe in the reality of the yet unborn will have more trust that man will find new forms of expressing vital needs, even though at this moment there is only a dove with an olive branch indicating the end of the flood. It is the rule rather than the exception in the historical process that ideas deteriorate into ideologies; mere words take the place of the human reality; these words are administered by a bureaucracy which thus succeeds in controlling people and gaining power and influence. And usually, the result is that the ideology, while still using the words of the original idea, in effect expresses the opposite meaning. This fate has happened to the great religions and to philosophical ideas; it has happened to Marx’s and to Dr. Freud’s ideas. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
What was Dr. Freud’s original system? First, it was radical thought; radical, in the original sense of the word, meaning going to the roots and—as Marx said—since the root is man, going to the very nature and essence of man. Dr. Freud’s psychoanalysis was critical thought; critical first, of existing psychiatric ideas which took consciousness as the basic datum of psychiatry. However, Dr. Freud’s thought was critical in a much broader sense. It attacked many of the values and ideologies of the Victorian age; it attacked the notion that pleasures of the flesh were not a subject for rational and scientific investigation; it attacked the insincerity of Victorian morality; it attacked the sentimental notion of the “purity” and “innocence” of the child. However, its most important attack was directed against the notion that there is no psychic content transcending consciousness. Dr. Freud’s system was a challenge to existing ideas and prejudices; it opened a new era of thought corresponding to the new development in the natural sciences and in art. It might be called in this sense a revolutionary movement, even though despite his criticism of some aspects of society Dr. Freud did not transcend the existing social order, nor did he think of new social and political possibilities. What became of this radical and critical movement after the first thirty years of its existence? #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
First, psychoanalysis has become very successful, especially in the Protestant countries of Europe and in the United States of America, while, until the end of the First World War, it was mocked and derided by most “serious” psychiatrists and by the public in general There were many reasons for the growing success of psychoanalysis. The fact is that the movement, ridiculed during the first twenty years of its existence, came to be considered respectable in psychiatry, accepted by many social scientists, and popular among many literary men, some of whom—Thomas Mann, for example—were quite outstanding. However, this academic and intellectual recognition was not all; psychoanalysis became popular with the public; psychoanalysts found it difficult to take all the patients who asked for their help; in fact, the profession of psychoanalysis because one of the most rewarding from the economic standpoint and from that prestige. This successful development, however, was by no means paralleled by a corresponding richness and productivity of psychoanalytic discoveries as regards theory and therapy. In fact, it many be surmised that the very success of psychoanalysis contributed to its deterioration. Psychoanalysis lost is original radicalism and its critical and challenging character. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
An ability to recognize resistances demands some definite knowledge of their sources and their expressions. Hence it appears appropriate to recapitulate all that has been said about the subject in scattered places throughout this report—often without explicitly mentioning the term “resistance”—and to add certain points that are of special interest for self-analysis. The sources of resistance are the sum of a person’s interests in maintaining the status quo. These interests are not—and emphatically not—identical with a wish to remain ill. Everyone wants to get rid of limitations and sufferings, and in that wish, he is all for change, and for a quick change at that. What he wants to maintain is not “the neurosis” but those aspects of it which have proved to be of immense subjective value to him and which in his mind hold the promise of future security and gratification. The basis factors that no one wants to modify one iota are, briefly, those that concern his secret claims on life, his claims for “love,” for power, for independence and the like, his illusions about himself, the safety zones within which he moves with comparative ease. The exact nature of these factors depends on the nature of his neurotic trends. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
In professional analysis the provocation for resistance is, in the great majority of cases, something that has occurred in the analysis itself. If strong secondary defenses have developed, the first resistances arise as soon as the analysts questions the validity of these defenses, that is, as soon as he casts any doubt on the rightness, goodness, or unalterability of any factor in the patient’s personality. Thus a patient whose secondary defenses consist in regarding everything concerning himself, faults included, as excellent and unique will develop a feeling of hopelessness as soon as any motivation of his is questioned. Another patient will react with a mixture of irritability and discouragement as soon as he encounters, or the analyst points out to him, any trace of irrationality within himself. It is in accordance with the function of the secondary defenses—protection of the whole system developed—that these defensive reactions are elicited not merely when a special repressed factor is in danger of being uncovered but when anything is questioned, regardless of content. However, if the secondary defenses are not of such vital strength, or if they have been uncovered and faced, resistances are for the most part a response to attacks on specific repressed factors. As soon as any domain is approached, closely or remotely, which is tabu for the patient he will react emotionally with fear or anger and will automatically set going a defensive action to prevent further trespassing. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
This encroachment on a tabu need not be a specific attack but may be result merely from the analyst’s behaviour. Any thing he does or fails to do, says or fails to say, may hurt one of the patient’s vulnerable spots and create a conscious or unconscious resentment which for the time being blocks the co-operative work. However, resistances to analytical work can be elicited also by factors outside the analytical situation. If outside circumstances change during analysis in such a way as to favour a smooth functioning of the neurotic trends, or even to render them positively useful, the provocation for resistance is greatly increased; the reason is, of course, that the forces opposing change have been strengthened. However, resistance can be provoked also by unfavourable developments in daily life. If a patient feels, for example, that he has been unfairly dealt with by someone in his circle his indignation may be so great that he refuses any effort in analysis to seek the real reason why he felt injured or insulted, his entire energy being concentrated on revenge. If a repressed factor is touched upon, either specifically or remotely, a resistance may be produced by developments outside as well as within the analytical situation. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
Measurement is important using the Relationship Inventory. The Inventory contains statements regarding the degree to which the counselor is acceptant, empathic, and congruent, and the client responds by evaluating the statement on a six-point scale from “strongly true” to “definitely untrue.” Examples concerning empathy are: “He generally sense or realizes how I am feeling;” “He understands my words but does not realize how I feel.” In relationship to congruence sometimes items are: “He pretends that he likes me or understands me more than he really does.” The Inventory is scored for each of the four attitudinal elements, and there is also a total score. The counselor is the most significant factor in setting the level of conditions in the relationship, though the client, too, has some influence on the quality of the relationship. Clients who later show more change perceive more of these attitudinal conditions early in the relationship with their counselor or therapist. The more disturbed the client, the less he is likely to (or able to?) perceive these attitudes in the counselor. Counselor or therapists tend to be quite consistent in the level of attitudinal conditions which they offer to each client. The major finding from all of the studies is that those clients in relationships marked by a high level of counselor congruence, empathy and unconditional positive regard, show constructive personality development. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
These high levels of conditions are associated with positive changes on Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory scales and indices, including ego-strength; positive change from the pre- to post-test battery as rated by clinicians working “blind”; decrease in anxiety scores and in a self-consciousness score; a higher level of Process Scales designed to measure process in therapy; and positive changes in counselor’s ratings. Clients relationships characterized by a low level of these attitudinal conditions show significantly less positive changes on these same indices. The client’s perception is the best predictor of change. This finding does not hold for the schizophrenic client, whose inner disturbance makes it difficult for him accurately to perceive the conditions offered by our conscientious and experienced therapist. With our schizophrenics, the rating of the conditions made by the unbiased raters is the best predictor of change. An unexpected finding with the schizophrenic clients is that low conditions in the relationship are associated with negative change in several respects. The clients not only fail to show constructive change but become worse in the judgment of clinicians rating their pre- and post-test batteries; show an increase in anxiety; are worse off than their matched no-therapy controls. Whether this finding holds for clinical clients who come for help has not yet been determined. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
As might be expected, more experienced counselors, when compared with inexperienced counselors, offer a higher level of these conditions, and are more successful in communicating these to their clients. Thus they are perceived as offering higher conditions, and their clients show more change over the course of the interviews. Many people are sent to counseling for romantic problems. Those who glorify romantic lover avert their eyes from the truth that there is a negative side to it. However ignored, it will one day come into focus. There is a common notion that love, to be worth its name, must be highly emotional and dramatically intense. That, of course, is one kind but it is not the best kind, which is calm, unchanging, and unexcited. The sentimental gush which is talked so often and so freely in religiomystic circles about loving one’s fellow humans is usually quite shallow and will not stand deep analysis. Nor is it the most important of all the virtues as such circles seem to believe. When a woman comes to a man for spiritual help or even spiritual companionship, he should not ask her for more than the chance to serve. Even if she is not conscious of having been sent to him for this purpose, or even if she mistakes the spiritual attraction for merely a human one, this remains true. It would be a spiritual failure on his part to ask for more then the opportunity to serve her. The service he gives must be given with a pure motive. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
Therefore, he appearance in his life is a test for him. Should he fall in love with her the test still holds good, but its character may change. He is to keep the relationship at a high level. He is not to attempt to possess her but to be content with knowing and loving her. He must accept the situation with calm resignation and complete nonattachment. Does the unified man have to like everyone he meets? Some students believe that Jesus as the Christ commanded us to “love thy neighbour as thyself” and this question ought to be answered with a resounding Yes! However, in actual life we find that some unified men succeed in doing this whereases others frankly do not feel that way nor make any such effort. To make the love of everybody else a compulsory ethic ought not to be demanded even from a quester, much less from the masses! To make the cultivation of goodwill desirable as a general attitude would be more reasonable. Even so it should grow naturally out of the cultivation, not be forced. When a man discovers that the same Overself dwells in his enemy as in his own heart, how can he ever again bring himself to hate or injure another? It is easy to believe more softness to be compassion. It is easy to deceive oneself in this way. However, a vigorous analysis of one’s thoughts and observation of their results in action will expose the very real differences between them. “Do not day: O God, I thank thee that we are better than our brethren; but rather say: O Lord, forgive my unworthiness, and remember my breathren in mercy—yea, acknowledge your unworthiness before God at all times,” reports Alma 38.14. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
The Sacramento Fire Department is committed to providing citizens with a professional fire service that meets or exceeds professional standards and best practices from across the nation. “The State Department asked me to go to Russia and several other communist countries to speak about contemporary American literature to the writer’s unions, and to the English-speaking clubs of the universities. It was a great trip, because the Russian people are gregarious and full of subtle humor, though, before glasnost, the Russian authority seemed dark and pervasive, like a giant shadow. Consequently, I liked the people and the architecture but felt uncertain about the country. I kept asking to visit a Moscow fire station, and the authorities kept stonewalling me. Finally, after a week of telephone calls, they agreed to take me to one of their huge centralized fire stations where there are ten or so fire companies. This was pretty unusual, for the fire department is quasimiliatry, that is, run by and attached to the army, and they do not normally take Americans to military installations. A reporter came, but they wouldn’t let him in to the station, which was rimmed by a high wall, and he wrote a long story about it in the magazine. I was taken to a reception hall, where I met a group of pretty congenial officers, a general and some colonels, who ran the Russian Fire Service. I was pretty impressed, though I just wanted to talk to a few back-step firefighters. I wanted to hear what the Russian firefighters felt about false alarms or nuisance fires—if, indeed, they existed in that country. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
“I sat at the head of a long table and began talking about the problems of fighting fires in a large city, in overcrowded buildings where impoverished people lived, where false alarms were as frequent as changing traffic signals, where my one company would respond to forty calls a day, every day. I talked a little about the personal challenge of firefighting, the renewed confrontation, never really resolved, one fire after another. The general stood and pointed to a colonel sitting down the table. The colonel stood as the general related with great price that this man personally had been in more than a hundred fires. ‘Very good,’ I said, ‘congratulations,’ thinking but of course not saying, that to us in Sacramento, a hundred fires represented not a lifetime’s work but a single weekend in July.” The Sacramento Fire Department strives to sustain and improve the health, safety, convenience, and welfare of the citizens of Sacramento and to plan for the future development of the community. You can help save lives and property by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. And remember parents, raise your children to love America, to be patriotic, to love God and Jesus, respect law and others, treat others with dignity and respect, and the remind them of the importance of education. Every single thing they learn in school can and will apply to the real World. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with Liberty and Justice for all. Our Father, our King, be gracious unto us and answer us, for we are wanting in good deeds; deal with us in charity and lovingkindness, and please save us. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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They were Covering Up Blackmail Payments Made to Death
Every soul is precious. Salvation for the dead is a doctrine which shows forth the love and mercy and justice of God in His dealings with all His children—not only to those whose receive the gospel in this life, but to all those to whom this privilege does not come, since the are all precious in the Lord’s sight. As Americans, we are a most blessed and favored people. The Lord has restored to us the sealing power, the power to bind on Earth and have our acts sealed eternally in the Heavens. Elijah—a prophet was taken up into Heaven without tasting death, and is not a resurrected and exalted being—we must remind ourselves of that. A great truth is that we are spirit children of God our Heavenly Father; we dwelt with Him for long ages in our premortal life. If we are faithful and true in all things, God ordained a plan of progression and salvation which requires us to advance and progress until we become more like Him. This plan of salvation is designed to enable us to create eternal family units of our own. We must also remind ourselves that God has restored the fulness of His everlasting gospel. He has revealed anew the law and principles by which we may press forward in righteousness until we gain eternal life. And He has conferred again upon men that priesthood and those powers whereby they can be sealed up onto eternal life. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
Mort, a thirty-year-old man with a slowly developing form of cancer, incurable in the present state of knowledge, was given at worst two years, and at best, five. His psychiatric complaint was tics, consisting of nodding his head or shaking his feet for reasons unknown to him. In his treatment group he soon found the explanation: he was damming his fears behind a continuous wall of music which ran through his mind, and his tics were his way of keeping time with that music. It was established by careful observation that it was this way ‘round and not the other, that is, that it was not music keeping time with the tics, but body movement keeping time with mental music. At this point everyone, including Mort, saw that if the music were taken away by psychotherapy, a vast reservoir of apprehension would be released. Unless his fears could be replaced by more agreeable emotions, the consequences of this were unforeseeable. What to do? It soon became clear that all the members of the group knew that they were going to die sooner or later, and that they all had feelings about it which they were holding back in various ways. Just as with Mort, the time and effort they spent covering up were blackmail payments made to death, which prevented them from fully enjoying life. Such being the case, they might do more living in the twenty of fifty years left to each of them than Mort could do in the two to five years left to him. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
Thus it was determined that it was not the duration of life, but the quality of living which was important: not a startling or novel discovery, but one arrived at in a more poignant way than usual because of the presence of the dying man, which had a deep effect on everyone. It was agreed by the other members (who understood Martian talk, which they gladly taught Mort, and which he gladly learned) that living meant such simple things as seeing the evergreen trees and emerald green grass, hearing the lovely birds see and frogs croaking at night, and saying Hello to people: experiences of awareness and spontaneity without drama or hypocrisy, and with reticence and decorum. They also agreed that to do these things, all of them, including Mort, had to get tough about the trash in their heads. When they saw that his situation was, in a way, not much more tragic than their own, the sadness and timidity caused by his presence lifted. They could now get tough with him about his trash, because now he knew the value of toughness, and why they were being tough; in return, he had the privilege of getting tough with them about their trash. In effect, Mort turned in his cancer card and resumed his membership in the human race, although everyone, including himself, still fully realized that his predicament was more acute than anyone else’s. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
This situation illustrates more clearly than most others that pathos and depth of the Hello problem, which, in Mort’s case, went through three stages. When he first entered the group, the others did not know that he was a condemned man. They first addressed him in the manner customary in that group. Their approaches were basically set by each member’s upbrining—the way his parents had taught him to greet other people, adjustments learned later in life, and a certain respect and frankness appropriate to psychotherapy. Mort, being a newcomer, responded the way he would anywhere else, pretending to be ambitions, red-blooded American boy his parents had wanted him to be. However, when he stated, during his third session that he was a doomed man, the other members felt confused and betrayed. They wondered if they had said anything which would make them look bad in their own eyes and his, and especially in the eyes of the therapist. They seemed, in fact, angry at both Mort and the therapist for not telling them sooner, almost as though they had been tricked. In effect, they had said Hello to Mort in a standardized way, without realizing to whom they were speaking. Now that they knew he was a special person, they wished they could go back and start over, in which case they would treat him differently. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
So the did start over. Instead of talking forthrightly, as they had before, they addressed him softly and cautiously, as though to say: “See how I’m going out of my way to be thoughtful of your tragedy?” None of them wanted to risk his good name now by speaking out to a dying man. However, since it gave Mort the upper hand, this was unfair. Nobody dared to laugh very loud in such a presence. When the problem of Mort could be solved, this was corrected; then the tension lifted and they could go back and start over for the third time, talking to him as a member of humanity, without restraint. Thus, the three stages were represented by the superficial Hello, the tense, sympathetic Hello, and the relaxed, real Hello. Zoe cannot say Hello to Mort until she knows who he is and that can change from week to week, or even from hour to hour. Each time she meets him, she knows a little more about him than she did the last time. If she wants to keep up with their advancing friendship, she must say Hello to him in a slightly different way. However, since she can never know all about him, nor anticipate all the changes, she can never say a perfect Hello, but only come closer and closer to it. Therefore, we must remember our first concern should be our salvation, and this will allow us to treat others with more compassion and empathy. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
Our descendants and our ancestors are all members of our families, and we do and should have more concern about their spiritual well-being than that of any other people in the World. That is one thing the groups was missing, concern about the spiritual well-being of others. Miguel Unamuno’s declaration that “love is the child of illusion” is one of those statements which are themselves the product of illusion. For the pure state of love is the Cosmic Energy which holds together and continuously activates the entire universe. It is those shadows of shadows of love which appear in the beasts as lust, in the humans as affection, which represent states that are transient and, in that sense, unreal. This transiency is obvious enough in the beast’s case but less so in the human’s. We may divide these different kinds of love conveniently into animal-physical love, emotional-mental love, and spiritual-love. When Saint John of the Cross was prior of the Monastery of Segovia, he was unjustly dismissed from his high position by his own superiors in the Order and banished to an unhealthy hermitage in semi-wild country. However, he bore no ill-will against his persecutors, and even wrote a letter: “Where there is no love, put love and you will get back love.” This is so, but he did not state that the returning love might take a long time to appear, so long that a whole lifetime in some cases, or several incarnations in other cases might be needed. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Therefore, love must be accompanied by patience. If we look for quick results, we may look in vain. Indeed, we ought not to look for any results at all. If we wish, in all such relationships with hostile persons, we ought to do what is right, forgiving, extending goodwill, but leaving the outcome to take whatever course it did. Act, but do not be attacked to the consequences of your action. If you want to practice goodwill, be patient. Some biologist had remarkable confidence in their ability to resolve the problems of politics by the methods of science. When the First World War threw the menace of “kaiserism” into the limelight, Frederick Adams Woods, a student of heredity in royal families, pointed out that the most despotic Roman emperors had been closely related. If despots are largely the result of hereditary forces, he concluded, “then the only way to eliminate despots is to regulate the sources from which they spring.” In so far as the despots are recast in their ancestral mold, “the number of despots can be reduced by a control of the marriages from which they originate.” The ideology of the movement drew fire from representatives of the trend toward cultural analysis in sociology. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
Lester Ward, who had long before tried to refute Galton, saw in the eugenics ideology a menace to his own theories, and he had devoted the greater part of his Applied Sociology to an attack upon the hereditarian argument. Analyzing the very cases used by Galton to prove that genius is hereditary, Ward showed that opportunity and education were also universally present. In 1897 Charles H. Cooley, influenced by Ward’s own early work, published a critical review of Galton’s thesis, pointing out that all his cases of “hereditary genius” had been provided with certain simple tools—literacy and access to books—without which no amount of genius could make its way. Remarking that there had been a very high percentage of illiteracy among the common people of England in the middle of the nineteenth century, Cooley asked how the geniuses in this mass of illiterates could have risen to fame, no matter how great their native endowment. Albert Galloway Keller also reminded eugenists that their proposals involved a thoroughgoing transformation in the mores, above all in the strong and deep-rooted mores of pleasures of the flesh. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
It was Cooley who summarized the most pointedly the objections of mature sociologist to the eugenists’ conception of social causation: “Most of the writers on eugenics have been biologists or physicians who have never acquired that point of view which sees in society a psychological organism with a life process of its own. They have thought of human heredity as a tendency to definite modes of conduct, and of environment as something that may assist or hinder, not remembering what they might have learned even from Darwin, that heredity takes on a distinctively human character only by renouncing, as it were, the function of predetermined adaptation and becoming plastic to the environment. The ability to act according to one’s conscience depends on the degree to which one has transcended the limits of one’s society and has become a citizen of the World. The average individual does not permit himself to be aware of thoughts or feelings which are incompatible with the patterns of his culture, and hence he is forced to repress them. Formally speaking, then, what is unconscious and what is conscious depends on the structure of society and on the patterns of feeling and thought it produces. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
As to the contents of the unconscious, no generalization is possible. However, one statement can be made: it always represents the whole man, with all his potentialities for darkness and light; it always contains the basis for the different answers which man can give to the question which existence poses. In the extreme case of the most regressive cultures, bent on returning to animal existence, this very wish is predominant and conscious, while all strivings to emerge from this level are repressed. In a culture which has moved from the regressive to the spiritual-progressive goal, the forces representing the dark are unconscious. However, man, in any culture, has all the potentialities within himself; he is the archaic man, the beast of prey, the cannibal, the idolater, and he is the being with a capacity for reason, for love, for justice. The content of the unconscious, then, is neither the good nor the evil, the rational nor the irrational; it is both; it is all that is human. The unconscious is the whole man—minus that part of him which corresponds to his society. Consciousness represents social man, the accidental limitations set by the historical situation into which an individual is thrown. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
Unconsciousness represents universal man, the whole man, rooted in the cosmos; it represents the plant in him, the animal in him, the spirit in him; it represents his past, down to the dawn of human existence, and it represents his future up to the day when man will have become fully human, and when nature will be humanized as man will be “naturalized.” To become aware of one’s unconscious means to get in touch with one’s fully humanity and to do away with barriers which society erects within each man and, consequently, between each man and his fellow man. To attain this aim fully is difficult and a rare occurrence; to approximate it is in the grasp of everybody, as it constitutes the emancipation of man from the socially conditioned alienation from himself and humankind. Nationalism and xenophobia are the opposite poles of the humanistic experience brought about by becoming aware of one’s unconscious. Which factors make for greater or lesser awareness of the social unconscious? First, it is obvious that the certain individual experiences make a difference. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
The son of an authoritarian father, who has been rebelling against fatherly authority without being crushed by it, will be better prepared to see through the social rationalizations and to become aware of the social reality which, to most, is unconscious. Similarly, members of racial, religious, or social minority groups which have been discriminated against by the majority, will often be more likely to disbelieve in the social clichés; this hold also true for the members of an exploited and suffering class. However, such class situation by no means always makes the individual more critical and independent. Very often his social status makes him more insecure and more eager to accept the clichés of the majority to be acceptable and to feel secure. It would take a minute analysis of many personal and social factors to determine why some members of minorities or exploited majorities react with increased criticism, and others with increased submission to the ruling patterns of thought. In addition to these factors, there are purely social ones which determine how strong is the resistance against the awareness of the social reality. If a society or a social class has no chance to make any use of its insight because there is objectively no hope for a change for the better, the chances are that everybody in such a society would stick to the fictions since the awareness of the truth would only make them feel worse. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
Since they have nothing to gain by the truth, decaying societies and classes are usually those which hold most fiercely to their fictions. Conversely, societies—or social classes—which are bound for a better future offer conditions which make the awareness of reality easier, especially if this very awareness will help them to make the necessary chances. A good example is the bourgeois class in the eighteenth century. Even before it had won political hegemony over the aristocratic class, it had shed many fictions of the past and had developed new insight into the past and present social realities. The writers of the middle classes could penetrate through the fictions of feudalism because they did not need these fictions—on the contrary, they were helped by the truth. When the bourgeois class had been firmly entrenched and was fighting against the onslaught of the working class and, later, the colonial peoples, the situation was reversed; the members of the middle classes refused to see the social reality, the members of the forward-moving new classes were more prone to dispense with many illusions. Very often, however, individuals developing these insights in support of the groups fighting for their freedom came from the very classes against they were fighting. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
In all such cases one would have to examine the individual factors which make a person critical of his own social group, and make him side with the group to which he des not belong by birth. The social and the individual unconscious are related to each other and in constant interaction. In fact, unconsciousness/consciousness is, in the last analysis, indivisible. What matters is not so much the content of what is repressed, but the state of mind and, to be more precise, the degree of awakedness and realism in the individual. If a person in each society is not able to see the social reality, and instead fills his mind with fictions, his capacity to see the individual reality regarding himself, his family, his friends, is also limited. He lives from all sides, and to believe that the fictions suggested to hum are the truth. (Of course, a person will be particularly prone to repress the awareness of reality regarding his personal life in areas where social repression is particularly marked. In a society, for instance, which cultivates obedience to authority, and hence repression of awareness or criticism of authority is not an essential part of social repression.) #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
With the growth of the “new science,” religion in its traditional forms became less and less effective, and there appeared the danger that the values which in Europe were anchored in the theistic frame of reference would be lost. Dostoevski expressed this fear in his famous statement: “If there is no God, everything is possible.” In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, several people saw the necessity for creating an equivalent to what religion stood for in the past. Even if it could be done, Robespierre tried to create an artificial new religion and necessarily failed because his background or enlightened materialism and idolatrous worship of posterity did not permit him to see the basic elements which would have been needed for founding a new religion. Similarly, Comte thought of a new religion and his positivism made it equally impossible to arrive at a satisfactory answer. In many ways, Marx’s socialism in the nineteenth century was the most important popular religious movement—though it was formulated in secular terms. If he believed in God ceased was only partly filled, Dostoevski’s prognosis of the breakdown of all ethical values. Those ethical values of modern society which are generally accepted by law and custom, such as respect for property, for individual life, and other principles remained intact. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
However, those human values which go beyond the requirements of our social order did, indeed, lose their influence and weight. However, Dostoevski was wrong in another and more important sense. Development during the last ten, and especially the past five, years all over Europe and in America have shown an extraordinarily strong trend toward the deeper values of the humanistic tradition. This new quest for a meaningful life did not arise only among small and isolated groups, but because a whole movement in countries of entirely different social and political structures, as well as within the Catholic and Protestant churches. What is common to the believers and the nonbelievers in this new movement is the conviction that concepts are only secondary to dees and human attitudes. A Hassidic story might exemplify this point. The adherent of a Hassidic master is asked, “Why do you go to hear the master? It is to hear his words of wisdom?” The answer is, “Oh, no, I go to see how he ties his shoelaces.” The point hardly needs an explanation. What matters in a person is not the set of ideas or opinions which he accepts, because he has been exposed to them since childhood or because they are conventional patterns of thought, but the character, attitude, the visceral root of his ideas and convictions. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
The Great Dialogue is based on the idea that shared concern and experience are more important than shared concepts. This does not mean that the various groups referred to here have abandoned their own concepts or ideas or hold that they are not important. However, they have all come to the conviction that their shared concern, their shared experience, their shared action causes them to have much more in common than what separates them by their unshared concepts. Abbe Pire has expressed it in an amazingly simple and forceful way: “What matters today is not the difference between those who believe and those who do not believe, but the difference between those who care and those who don’t.” Thus far all my hypotheses regarding the possibility of constructive growth have rested upon the experiencing compassion and empathy by the counselor. There is, however, one condition which must exist in the client. Unless the attitudes I have been describing have been to some degree communicated to the client, and perceived by him, they do not exist in his perceptional World and thus cannot be effective. Consequently it is necessary to add one more condition to the equation which I have been building up regarding personal growth through counseling. It is that when the client perceives, to a minimal degree, the genuineness of the counselor and the acceptance and empathy which are the counselor experiences for hum, then development in personality and change in behaviour are predicted. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
This had implications for me as a counselor. I need to be sensitive to the flow of feeling sin my client. I must also be sensitive to the way he is receiving my communications. I have learned, especially in working with more disturbed persons, that empathy can be perceived as lack of involvement; that an unconditional regard on my part can be perceived as indifference; that warmth can be perceived as a threatening closeness, that real feelings of mine can be perceived as false. I would like to behave in ways, and communicate in ways which have the clarity for this specific person, so that what I am experiencing in relationship to hum would be perceived unambiguously by him. Like the other conditions I have proposed, the principle is easy to grasp; the achievement of it is difficult and complex. Analysis sets going or accentuates a play of forces within the self between two groups of factors with contrasting interests. The interest of the one group is to maintain unchanged the illusions and the safety afforded by the neurotic structure; that of the other group is to gain a measure of inner freedom and strength through overthrowing the neurotic structure. It is for this reason that analysis, as has already been strongly emphasized, is not primarily a process of detached intellectual research. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
The intellect is an opportunist, at the service of whatever interest carries the greatest weight at the time. The forces that oppose liberation and strive to maintain the status quo are challenged by every insight that can jeopardize the neurotic structure, and when thus challenged they attempt to block progress in one way or another. They appear as “resistances” to the analytical work, a team appropriately used by Dr. Freud to denote everything that hampers this work from within, Resistance is by no means produces only by the analytical situation. Unless we live under exceptional conditions life itself is at least as great a challenge to the neurotic structure as is the analyst. A person’s secret claims on life are bound to be frequently frustrated because of their absolute and rigid character. Others do not share his illusions about himself, and will hurt him by questioning or disregarding them. Inroads upon his elaborate but precarious safety measures are unavoidable. These challenges may have a constructive influence, but also, he may react to them—as he does in analysis—first with anxiety and anger, one or the other prevailing, and then with a reinforcement of the neurotic tendencies. He becomes still more withdrawn, more dominating, more dependent. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
In part the relationship with the analyst produces much the same feelings and responses as the relationships with others. However, since analysis is an explicit attack on the neurotic structure, the challenge it presents is great. One of the most fundamental distinctions we make about the content of our experiencing has to do with whether it is really there, whether we are perceiving something or only imagining it. Each person, and for that matter each society, is committed to a set of assumptions about what is real (what can be perceived) and what is unreal. Reality is a person or group of persons takes to be real. In the last analysis, reality is an attribution, that is, an act or judgment performed by a person, imbuing some experience with the quality of a reality that must be reckoned with. By the same token, we can withdraw our attribution of reality from some experience and view it as not real. Thus, a person may awaken from deep sleep with the conviction that someone is trying to harm him. Upon awakening, he reflects upon this experience and says, with relief, “It is not real—no one is trying to harm me; I was only dreaming.” #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
On the other hand, he may experience himself as trapped by a dominating parent and believe that the parent has more power to control his destiny than he has strength to oppose. He lives his life, then, according to his parents wishes, or what he believes those wishes would be. To an outsider, his estimate of his own strength in relation to the strength of the parent seems unrealistic. However, he lives according to what he takes to be the case, what he experiences as real. He attributes reality to experiences of ghosts and spirits, and they experience plants, animals, and all of nature as having souls and personalities. The “real World,” the World that is real for them, differs from that experienced by the modern Westerner. She regards that World view as mere animism—the ghosts, spirits, and souls with which the “primitive” person lives in her daily life are figments of imagination to the sophisticated person of the modern World. For her, only what can be recorded upon instruments, such as cameras and sound recorders, is taken to be real. The goal of the Sacramento Fire Department is to save lives, protect property, ease pain and suffering, and many feel that they are blessed by this opportunity. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
Living a life of service is a great honour and privilege. “I think that firefighters are still highly regarded by the public, but we’re not the heroes we used to be. I think the reason is that they know what we’re making. Last year I made around $188,760 with overtime. I went to college for only two years. In how many other jobs can you go to training for four weeks and get a job paying that amount of money? Some people think about firemen as just sitting around. But for the most part, the public thinks that we’re pretty good, especially here in Sacramento, because we run the emergency medical service. That is a big plus. I want to get rid of the myth of the guys just sitting around playing checkers, and get people to understand that we are actively doing other things. I’ve had people tell me, ‘Oh, you work one day, you’re off four, you’re off five. I saw how much you make in the paper. You guys don’t do anything.’ To them, firemen are making tremendous salaries—whether we deserve it or not is immaterial to them—firemen have tremendous benefits, tremendous time off, which allows them to work second jobs. Plus, they go past the fire stations, and they see BMWs and other expensive vehicles in the back of the station. They say, ‘Look at those damn firemen, man, they’re making a tremendous amount of money, and I’m pounding nails and not making anything near them.’ A lot of envy, or at least resentment. #Randolph Harris 22 of 24
“The cops are the heroes now. Maimi Vice has something to do with it. A lot of buildings that you see, they paint those pastels on the buildings before they shoot, especially the ones they blow up. I’ve worked those sets as a fireman. Nonetheless, Sacramento is changed. They call it the Coatzacoalcos now. I would not have a cop’s job down here. Statistically, more firemen get killed an injured than policemen, but not so in Sacramento. Here the cops get killed way more often than firemen do. The killers are stealing or looting because they need money to buy drugs. Meth City, Sacramento. I really believe that professional is the name of the game, and that we have to continue to become more vital to the public. There is a lot of community in us. We care about Sacramento County. And we have to serve the public in many ways, emergency medical services, for instance. The more we have mandatory sprinklers in buildings, the less manpower and resources a fire department will need, and so we must be community-involved. I will say one thing, I’m gladder than hell I’m not a paramedic. I tried it for a while, and I didn’t like it. I don’t begrudge going on a medical call, but I’d prefer fighting a fire.” #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
You can help save lives, property and create community programs by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. And parents, remember to teach your children to love America, love their family, treat others with respect. Be proud patriot Americans. Teach them to love God and Jesus Christ, to get an education, and to respect law and order, property, and nature. 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. Rock from whose store we have eaten—bless Him, my faithful companions. Eaten have we and left over—this was the word of the Lord. Feeding His World like a shepherd—Father whose bread we have eaten, Father whose premium cranberry juice we have drunken, now to Hos name we are singing, Praising Him loud with our voices, saying and singing forever: Holy is none like the Lord. It is obvious that only a small portion of mankind has so far heard the word of revealed truth from the voice of one Lord’s true servants. In the wisdom and justice of the Lord, all must do so. As Peter said: “For this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit,” reports 1 Peter 4.6. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
The Winchester Mystery House
Only 13 days left until our final flashlight tour of the year! Legend has it that Sarah had a special connection to the number 13, which you can see highlighted in various features throughout the house. Was it just by chance, or by design?
See if you can find them all during our self-guided flashlight tour on July 27th 🔦
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Randolph Harris II International 