Therapy is about helping people find their way, not forcing anyone to subscribe to the views of someone else—that is what gets most people in to trouble in the first place! “Continue in your narrow path which leads to eternal life,” reports 2 Nephi 31.18. The moral improvement of my mind and the regulation of my life is very important. Ideal of conduct, even the pursuit of knowledge is conceived of as a Worldly enticement.  As philosophers and as metaphysicians we hope to use words in ways whose intelligibility is not completely context dependent; we try to speak in sentences which can be paraphrased, taken from their original context, and used to illuminate a range of related issues. This is not always possible. To make a new point it may be necessary for the philosopher, as much as for the poet or the scientist, to speak in a new form of words not simply translatable into any of the old forms. However, the philosopher who speaks too often in semisentences runs the risk of semiunderstanding from only a semiaudience. Since truth is by its nature eternal and immutable this condition can be fulfilled only by ideas which are in the mind of God—that is, manifestations of God’s essence. Thus, the existence of God is deducible from the very nature of truth. There are two kinds of love—desire, which seeks to unify itself with the good it pursues, and benevolence, which seeks good for others. The objects of desire, from a hierarchy—God, the good of the community, intellectual pleasures, and sensual pleasures are all in some measure good. God is the highest, but not the only good. However, I love nobody, but God. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11

People used to have respect for executive’s privileges. We should treat other human beings as means—occasions of happiness to us—and never as ends. Some people believe that humans are made for a sociable life and that we should love our fellow people in the say same way that we love God and that is, of course, possible as long as they display qualities that are Godly. Knowledge is of the eternal and, therefore, of God. We see all things in God, which suggests to the careless reader that sensation is our analogue for knowledge. Divine ideas are the immediate objects of our thought in the perception of things. However, these are minor reformulations. Of much greater significance is the fact that the World is a great mechanism and goes like a clock. God is the efficient cause of all happenings, the only good, the only object of knowledge. We know God directly; everything else is known by way of our apprehension of God’s nature as revealed in the ideas which emanate from the Lord. Spiritual ideas can represent a material World; the material World is, indeed, very beautiful. God put a lot of work into making this World a paradise for us and many people have tried to keep the peace and restore the natural beauty. When we do what is necessary to stay healthy on the inside, we become more attractive on the outside—and we lay a great foundation for remaining healthy longer. “Unto those whom endures to the end shall the Lord give eternal life,” reports 3 Nephi 15.9.  #RandolphHarris 2 of 11

From now on, we should all make it a point to do what people with true physical vigor do: welcome any physical activity as a gift, always ready to give us a boost and life our spirits. May our bodies pay tribute to the incredible, pivotal point of midlife by feeling better, looking great, and staying healthy. It is our job to be in this life and be joyful. Nous is a term that refers to the mind and its functions generally, and it is increasingly identified with knowledge, and with reason as opposed to sense perception. When communication breaks down and people become too emotional to confess truly with their desires are, the World becomes a savage land. Human beings are highly intelligent creators, and as such we have these beautiful tools call language and self-esteem, vocabulary, and laws that are here to protect us and keep society peaceful and safe. Nous is equated generally with the rational part of the individual soul (to logistikon).  Nous is the only immortal part of the soul. Nous is a passive intellect which is affected by knowledge, and an active intellect, which alone is immortal and eternal. We believe that this power is in us and it is the spirit that comes from God. We lived before we came to this Earth, and are here now to strive to perfect the spirit within. “We shall have hope, through Atonement and Resurrection, to be raised into eternal life,” Moroni 7.41.  #RandolphHarris 3 of 11

At sometime in this life, every person is conscious of a desire to come in touch with the Infinite. Our spirit reaches out for God. This sense of feeling is Universal, and all people ought to be, in the deepest truth, engaged in the same great work—the search for the development of spiritual peace and freedom. We can offer the hope promised by God: Peace in this World, and eternal life in the World to come. Anyone regardless of culture or economic circumstance, can go to the depths of our spiritual wells and drink of this water. Self-esteem, peace of mind, and personal contentment can be fully satisfied by faithful obedience to the commandments of God. This is true of any person in any country or culture. Have you take the time to consider what would be without God? Nothing is an awe-inspiring yet essentially undigested concept, highly esteemed by writers of a mystical or existentialist tendency, but by most others regarded with anxiety, nausea, or panic. Nobody seems to know how to deal with it, and plain persons generally are reported to have little difficult one to tread and that altogether the less said of it the better. This escape, however, is not so easy as it looks. Anything a philosopher can find to talk about must somehow be there to be discussed, and so let loose upon the World that unseemly rabble of centaurs and unicorns, carnivorous cows, republican monarchs and wife burdened bachelors, which has plagued ontology from that day to this. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11

Nothing (of which they are all aliases) can apparently get rid of these absurdities, but for fairly obvious reasons has not been invited to do so. Logic has attempted the task, but with sadly limited success. Of some, though not all, nonentities, even a logician knows that they do not exist, since their properties defy the law of contradiction; the remainder, however, are not so readily dismissed. Whatever Lord Russell may have said of it, the harmless if unnecessary unicorn cannot be driven out of logic as it can out of zoology, unless by desperate measures which exclude all manner of reputable entities as well. Such remedies have been attempted, and their effects are worse than the disease. Lord Russell himself, in eliminating the present King of France, inadvertently deposed the present Queen of England. Quine, the sorcerer’s apprentice, has contrived to liquidate both Pegasus and President Truman in the same fell swoop. The antiquated logicians, who allowed all entities subsistence while conceding existence, as wanted, to an accredited selection of them, at least brought a certain tolerant inefficiency to their task. Of the new it can only be said that solitudinem faciunt et pacem appellant—they make a desert and call it peace. You walk this road alone, you must reach out. Follow God, he will take you all the way home. He is sorry for the hole in your heart. A part of you is lost, that cannot be found. If the curtains come to close, just breathe out. “God has given to humans to choose life or death,” reports Helman 14.31. I do not know what you are waiting for. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11

While realms of being have been abolished without warning, at the mere nonquantifying of a variable. The poetry of Earth has been parsed out of existence—and what has become of its prose? There is little need for an answer. Writer to whom noting is sacred, and who accordingly stop thereat, have no occasion for surprise on finding, at the end of their operations, that nothing is all they have left. The logicians, of course, will have nothing of all this. Nothing, they say, is not a thing, nor is it the name of anything, being merely a short way of saying of anything that it is not something else. Nothing means not-anything; appearances to the contrary are due merely to the error of supposing that a grammatical subject must necessarily be a name. Asked, however, to prove that nothing is not the name of anything, they fall back on the claim that noting is the name of anything (since according to them there are no names anyway). Those who can make nothing of such an argument are welcome to the attempt. When logic falls out with itself, honest people come into their own, and it will take more than this to persuade them that there are not better cures for this particular headache than the old and now discredited method of decapitating a patient. We know you have been lonely, we know that you have been down, for years people have been unkind. However, “This day of life given to prepare for eternal life,” Alma 34.33. reports #RandolphHarris 6 of 11

The friends of nothing may be divided into two distinct though not exclusive classes: the know-nothings, who claim a phenomenological acquaintance with nothing in particular, and the fear-nothings, who, believing, with Macbeth, that nothing is but what is not, are thereby launched into dialectical encounter with nullity in general. For the first, nothing, so far from being a mere grammatical illusion, is a genuine, even beneficial, feature of experience. We are all familiar with, and have a vocabulary for, holes and gaps, lacks and losses, absences, silences, impalpabilities, insipidities, and the like. Voids and vacancies of one sort or another are sought after, dealt in and advertised in the newspapers. And what are these, it is asked, but perceived fragments of nothingness, experiential blanks, which command, nonetheless, their share of attention and therefore deserve recognition? Sartre, for one, has given currency to such arguments, and so, in effect, have the upholders of negative facts—an improvident sect, whose refrigerators are full of nonexistent butter and cheese, absentee elephants and so on, which they claim to detect therein. If existence indeed precedes essence, there is certainly reason of sort for maintaining that nonexistence is also anterior to, and not a mere product of, the essentially parasitic activity of negation; that the nothing precedes the not. “God is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity,” reports Moroni 8.18 #RandolphHarris 7 of 11

However, verbal refutations apart, the short answer to this view, as given, for instance, by Bergson, is that these are but petty and partial nothings, themselves parasitic on what already exists. Absence is a mere privation, and a privation of something at that. A hole is always a hole in something: take away the thing, and the hole goes too; more precisely, it is replaced by a bigger if not better hole, itself relative to its surroundings, and so tributary to something else. Nothing, in short, is given only in relation of what it is, and even the idea of nothing requires a thinker to sustain it. It we want to encounter it an sich, we have to try harder than that. Better things, or rather nothings, are promised on the alternative theory, whereby it is argued, so to speak, not that holes are in things but that thing are in holes or, more generally, that everything (and everybody) is in a hole. To be anything (or anybody) is to be bounded, hemmed in, defined, and separated by a circumambient frame of vacuity, and what is true of the individual us equally true of the collective. The Universe at large is fringed with nothingness, from which indeed (how else?) it must have been created, if created it was; and its beginning and end, like that of all change within it, must similarly be viewed as a passage from one nothing to another, with an interlude of being in between. “What evidence have you that there is no God?” reports Alma30.40. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11

Such thoughts, or others like them, have haunted the speculations of nullophile metaphysicians from Pythagoras to Pascal and from Hegel and his followers to Heidegger, Tillich and Sartre. Being and nonbeing, as they see it, are complementary notions, dialectically entwined, and of equal status and importance; although Heidegger alone has extended their symmetry to the point o equipping Das Nichts with a correlative (if nugatory) activity of noth-ing, or nihilating, whereby it produces Angst in its votaries and untimely hilarity in those, such as Carnap and Ayer, who have difficulty in parsing nothing as a present participle of the verb to noth. Nothing, whether it noths or not, and whether or not the being of anything entails it, clearly does not entail that anything should be. Like Spinoza’s substance, it is causa sui; nothing (expect more of the same) can come of it; ex nihilo, nihil fit. That conceded, it remains a question to some why anything, rather than nothing, should exist. This is either the deepest conundrum in metaphysics or the most childish, and though many must have felt the force of it at one time or another, it is equally common to conclude, on reflection, that it is no question at all. “Plan of redemption can be brought about only on condition of repentance in this proclaimed state. Continue the straight and narrow path until the end of proclaim,” reports Alma 42.13 and 2 Nephi 2.21. “ We must prepare our souls so we will not remember our awful guilt in perfectness, reports 2 Nephi 9.46. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11

The hypothesis of theism may be said to take it seriously and to offer a provisional answer. The alternative is to argue that the dilemma is self-resolved in the mere possibility of stating it. If nothing whatsoever existed, there would be no problem and no answer, and the anxieties even of existential philosophers would be permanently laid to rest. Since they are not, there is evidently nothing to worry about. However, that itself should be enough to keep an existentialist happy. Unless the solution be, as some have suspected, that it is not nothing that has been worrying them, but they who have been worrying it. The ultimate character of self-consciousness is absolute free will. This absolute free will, when genuine, cannot be reflected upon, for it transcends reflection and is that which causes reflection. The center of tis will, the self, is always the eternal now; paradoxically it is also unlimited development. Place is the substratum within which all forms become actualized. We have seen absolute free will as emerging from creative nothingness and returning to creative nothingness. Further, it must be basically a certain place wherein everything else exists. This transcends subjectivity completely and is the place of nothingness. Nothingness, however, it not merely nothingness in opposition to phenomenal existences, that is a relative nothingness. It is the unity of opposites, as discovered through our investigation of the relationship between the self and the World. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11

The contradictions of human’s existence, where the satisfaction of desire means the extinction of desire and the will makes it own extinction its object. In these problems is religion established, for in the awareness of the absolute contradictoriness and nothingness of the self’s existence we first touch the absolute and God. Although spirit develops under the influence of external stimuli, it is something unique in its own right. Spirit cannot be explained by, nor can its occurrence be predicted on, the basis of a consideration of sense experience alone. Spirit and its operations emerge under certain conditions but are not explained fully by these conditions. Thus, God’s existence is either logically necessary or logically impossible. However, it has not been shown to be impossible—that is, the concept of such a being has not been shown to be self-contradictory—and therefore we must conclude that God necessarily exits because we exist, the World exist, the Galaxy exist, the Universe(s) exist. In this way, we can validly infer from it that God’s existence is ontologically necessary. Give no one your faith undeserved. God exists without beginning or end and always as a whole. (This is virtually the scholastic notion of aseity, from a se esse, self-existence, that is, eternal and independent existence.) For if an eternal being exists, he cannot, compatibly with the concept of him as eternal, cease to exit: thus his existence is necessary. “Of course, the Lord is one eternal round,” reports Alma 7.20. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11

We need, every one of us needs, to pause from the hectic pace of our lives and to reflect upon things sacred and divine. Where the danger is, also grows the saving power. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900) was a German philosopher and poet, and is one of the most influential figures in modern philosophy. In 1848 his father, Ludwig Nietzsche, became seriously ill as consequence of a fall, and after his death in 1849, his skull was opened, and it was discovered that he had softening of the brain and that caused him to die early. In January of 1850, Nietzsche’s widowed mother lost her youngest son (who was born in 1848) and the family then moved to Naumburg. Friedrich accepted free admission to Pforta in 1858, it was a famous boarding school just a few miles from Naumburg. He was often at the head of his class and acquired an excellent classical education. In 1861 he wrote an enthusiastic essay on his favorite poet Johann Christian Friedrich Holderlin, of whom the majority of his people scarcely even knew the name. Holderlin’s childhood was marked by bereavement, and he never recovered from his grief and spent the last years of his life hopelessly in agonizing pain. However, six years after Friedrich wrote his essay, Holderlin was widely recognized as Germany’s greatest poet after Geothe. The teacher wrote on the paper, “I must offer the author the kind advice to stick to a healthier, cleaner, more German poet.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 11

The medical records from the school of Friedrich Nietzsche contained an entry, recorded in 1862: “Shortsighted and often plagued by migraine headaches. His father died early of softening of the brain and was begotten in old age [actually, when his father was 57, his mother 35]; the son at a time when the father was already sick [most experts deny this]. As yet no grave signs are visible, but the antecedents require consideration. Throughout his life Friedrich’s health was poor. His doctors kept warning him to preserve his very bad eyesight by reading and writing less. He disregarded this advice, fought severe migraine and gastric pains with long walks and much writing, and took pills and potions to purchase a little sleep. Nothing of his brilliance relieved the sadness in his mind. Friedrich Nietzsche’s books became his life. He vegetated until his death. When the novelist Arnold Zweig wanted to write a book on Friedrich Nietzsche, Dr. Sigmund Freud wrote him that Friedrich Nietzsche’s psychological development could not be reconstructed and that he had more penetrating knowledge of himself than any other person who ever lived or was ever likely to live.” What has always made the state a Hell on Earth has been precisely that humans have tried to make it a Heaven without correcting their own behavior. We are nothing; what we search for is everything. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11

Socializing is an important aspect of life. We encourage people to cultivate friends with happy conversations among people who are similar to them. The offering of the prayer is not a ritual to be thoughtlessly spoken. It is, rather, the voicing of an obligation and a promise. Cleanliness of hands, as well as purity of heart, should be a common cultural practice. When I was a young boy God often rescued me from the shouts and the rods of people and I played among trees and flowers, secure in their kindness and the breezes of Heaven were playing there too. God is friendly and faithful, and I wish he could know how much my soul loves him. As we grow, we learn to know God better than we have ever known him. Standing under the stillness above the sky, some never know the words of humans. Trees are our teachers, melodious trees, and we learn to love among flowers, as we grow up in the arms of God. Sometimes people like us more when we are prouder and wilder, more full of works, yet emptier. Giving style to one’s character is shown to be a sign of power, while it is the weak characters without power over themselves who hate the constraint of style, who become salves as soon as they serve, and who hate to serve. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11

The one thing needed is that a human being attains one’s satisfaction with oneself; those who do not will make others pay for it. The only thing that all people want is power, and whatever is wanted is wanted for the sake of power. If something is wanted more than something else, it must represent more power. Most people would rather be Socrates in prison than Nero on the roof; hence, Socrates must be more powerful. However, the acme of power is embodied in the perfectly self-possessed person who has no fear of other people, oneself, or of death and whose simple personality, unassisted by any props, changes the lives of those who meet the individual and even imposes itself on the minds of those who encounter the person only at second hand, in literature. We must surpass even Socrates insofar as he suffered life; to have to fight the instincts—that is the formula for decadence. Friedrich Nietzsche and some others considered Goethe superior even to Socrates. Our personality must equal self-mastery and that is considered exemplary. A person of passion must come to master one’s passions, while a pure fool, destitute of passion, is hopeless because they are s synthesis of the inhuman and superhuman. Heroes are admired for surpassing intelligence, mastering their passions and employing them creatively. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages. Human behavior is generally capable of being overinterpreted, and indeed, people are demanding nothing less than this before they can be fully understood. Even if almost all behavior can be illuminated by finding the will to power at work in it, it does not follow that this is the only ultimate motive and the only way of illuminating such behavior. Moreover, in some cases an appeal to the will to power is farfetched and not very illuminating. No poll can actually settle the question of what all people would prefer. What matters is not what they might say they prefer but what they really prefer, and we could say that something is really wanted if, and only if, failure to get it results in frustration that disappears with attainment. The human being who has organized the chaos of one’s passions, given style to one’s character, and becomes creative is aware of life’s terrors, and affirms life without resentment. Once you have lost faith in anything great, you are doomed, then, doomed to perish unless that faith returns, like a comet from unknown skies. If we renounce supernatural religious and accept a scientific approach to humanity, we lose the right to attribute to human beings as such a unique supernatural dignity. Such dignity is not gegeben but aufgegeben, not a fact but a goal that few approach. There is no meaning in life except the meaning we give to our lives, and the aims of some people has no surpassing dignity. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11

To raise ourselves above the senseless flux, we must cease being merely human, all-too-human. We must be hard against ourselves and overcome ourselves; we must become creators instead of remaining creatures. Near and hard to grasp is the God. However, where danger is, deliverance also grows. Is not everything alive not already in your blood? If we could truly understand the Atonement of the Lord, we would realize how precious is one son or daughter of God. We would wish them well and pray that all suffering, being forsaken, profound self-contempt, the torture of mistrust of oneself, and the misery of one is overcome. The select individual is not the petulant person who thinks oneself superior to the best, but the person who demands more of oneself than the rest. The most radical division that it is possible to make of humanity is that which splits it into two classes of creatures: those who make great demands of themselves, piling up difficulties and duties; and those who demand nothing special of themselves, but for whom to live is to be every moment what they already are, without imposing on themselves any effort towards perfection; mere buoys that float on the waves. It is a privilege to serve the Lord. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11

After our planet has been destroyed, it will eventually be reconstituted as the power quanta that make up the Universe once again reach a previous configuration and thenceforward repeat all the following patterns, to the point where some of us will be born again on the same timeline that we once existed. “The LORD is going to completely destroy everything on Earth. He will twist its surface. He will scatter those who live on it. Everything of value will be taken out of it. The Earth will dry up completely. The World will dry up and waste away. The Heavens will fade away along with the Earth. The Earth is polluted but its people. They have not obeyed the laws of the LORD. They have broken the covenant that will last forever. So the LORD will send a curse on the Earth. Its people will pay for what they have done. They will be burned up. Very few of them will be left. Those who used to have a good tie will groan. The happy sounds of the tambourines will be gone. Those noise of those who enjoy wild parties on the boat will stop. The joyful music of harps will become silent. People will no longer sing as they drink wine. Beer will taste bitter to those who drink it. Destroyed cities will be empty. People will lock themselves up inside of their houses. All the buildings will be knocked down. Those who are left alive will shout for joy. People from the west will praise the LORD because he is King. So give glory to him, you who live in the east,” reports Isiah 24.1-15 #RandolphHarris 7 of 11

In 1882, while taking a walk, it suddenly struck Friedrich Nietzsche with a force of a revelation that this was the most scientific of all the prophecies and that the prospect of eternal recurrence is gruesome unless one has succeeded in giving style to one’s character and meaning to one’s life to such an extent that one can joyously affirm one’s existence and say, unlike Goethe’s Fast: Abide, moment—but if you cannot abide, at least return eternally. “Then I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth, for the first Heaven and the first Earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea,” reports Revelation 21.1. The power to will contains attempts to show why eternal recurrence is the most scientific hypothesis. If we assume a finite number of power quanta in a finite space and an infinite time, only a finite number of configurations are possible. However, no end state has been reached yet; hence, unless we follow Christianity in positing a beginning of time, the same configurations must recur eternally. Even if there were only a few things in a finite space in an infinite time, they need never repeat the same configuration. Imagine three wheels of equal size, rotating on a single axis, one point marked on the circumference of each and the three points lined up in one straight line. If the second wheel rotated twice as fast as the first and if the speed of the third was 1/3.14 of the speed of the first, the initial line-up could never recur. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11

However, if time was infinite, eventually the same patters on the three wheels will recur because they have a countless number of times to reconfigure. The soul that, living, did not attain its divine right cannot repose in the nether World. But once we are bent on, what is holy, our poetry, is accomplished: Be welcome then, stillness of the shadows’ World! We shall be satisfied though our lyrics will not accompany us down there. Once we lived like the gods, and more is not needed. “At that time the LORD will punish the spiritual forced of evil in the Heavens above. He will also punish the kings on the Earth below. They will be brought together like prisoners in chains. They will be locked up in prison. After many days the LORD will punish them. The LORD who rules over all will rule on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. The Elders of the city will be there. They will see God’s great glory. His rule will be so glorious that the Sun and Moon will be too ashamed to shine. However, we are warned against judgment and against being too resentful toward unbelievers and, indeed, toward the World. To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction; or, the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts. She is a beast, I call her Karma. Lady Justice (Justitia) is an allegorical personification of the moral force in judicial systems, and she will eat their hearts out like Jeffrey Dahmer. Be careful, try not to lead her on. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11

Thus far, we have learned about dealing with the errors of confusing cause and effect, the error of false causality, the error of imaginary causes, and the error of free will. However, our concern is primarily with mortality and religion. Morality and religion teach that if you are good you will be happy. Virtue is the effect of happiness and vice is bred by unhappiness—a commonplace in the twenty first century, but not in the nineteenth. Against the error of a false causality, there are no mental causes at all, no spirits as entities or agents. Imaginary causes include events in dreams that explain ex post facto such events as noises outside, but they also include sin as a supposed cause of suffering. One should speak only where one may not remain silent, and speak only of that which one has overcome—everything else is chatter. Of what one cannot speak, one must remain silent. Many people have gotten stuck in the snares of grammar. Language talks of opposites where there are only degrees and many refinements of gradation. The misleading errors of language (and the fundamental fallacies of reason which have become petrified in it), which understands, and misunderstands, all activity as due to an agent, a subject. It is very important to know what you are saying because if you expose someone to something they are allergic to and they die, the difference between the using the words could and would could send you to jail for murder. We are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11

Without music, life would be a mistake. People sometimes tear coinages and even whole sentences out of context to suit their purposes. However, what love and spirit give cannot be extorted. The God, when he draws near, will the heart stand fast. And let me say at once that I approached to see the Heavenly. We must turn to the sciences for knowledge or reality, and there is high hopes for the future development of psychology and physiology and their relevance to issues previously considered philosophical. Too long now things divine have been cheaply used and all the power of Heaven, the kindly, spent in trifling waste by cold and cunning people without thanks, who when he, the Highest, in person tills their field for them, they think they know the daylight ad the thunder, and indeed their telescope may find them all, may count and may name every star of Heaven. Yet will the Heavenly Father cover with holy night, that we may last on Earth, out too knowing eyes. Never will our free-ranging power coerce his Heaven. The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. However, no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. We love life, not because we are use to living but because we are used to loving. What peace, what comfort this great gift is which comes through the loving grace of God.  #RandolphHarris 11 of 11

Our Father in Heaven knew that in mortality we would face challenges, tribulation, and turmoil; the Lord knew we would toil with questions, disappointments, temptations, and weaknesses. We must accept the doctrine of free will and the immortality of the soul. A person is only wise if he or she is aware of the limits of the mind in knowing the truth. Knowledge is learned ignorance (docta ignorantia). Endowed with a natural desire for truth, humans seek it through rational inquiry, which is a movement of the reason from something presupposed as certain to a conclusion that is still in doubt. Reasoning involves a relating or comparing of conclusion with premises. The greater the distance between them, the more difficult and uncertain is the conclusion. If the distance is infinite, the mind never reaches its goal, for there is no relation or proportion because the finite and the infinite. Hence, the mind cannot know the infinite. The infinite is an absolute, and the absolute cannot be known by means of relations or comparison. Accordingly, the mind cannot comprehend the infinite God. By rational investigation we can draw ever nearer to the Lord, but cannot reach him. The case is the same with any truth, for every truth is an absolute, not admitting of degrees. Since reason proceeds by steps, relating conclusion to premises, it is relational and hence never arrives at the absolute truth. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8

Our intellect, which is not the truth, never grasps the truth with such precision that is could not be comprehended with infinitely greater precision. As a polygon inscribed in a circle increases in number of sides but never becomes a circle, so the mind approximates to the truth but never coincides with it. Thus, knowledge as beat is conjecture (coniectura). This is no mere guess or supposition that may or may not be true; it is an assertion that is true as far as it goes, although it does not completely measure up to its object. Reason is like an eye that looks at a face from different and even from opposite positions. Each view of the face is true, but it is partial and relative. No one view, nor all taken together, coincides with the face. Similarly, human reason knows a simple and indivisible truth piecemeal and through opposing views, with the result that it never adequately measures up to it. The weakness of human reason is evident because its primary rules is the principle of noncontradiction, which states that contradictories cannot be simultaneously true of the same object. However, there is a coincidence of opposites (coincidentia oppositorum) in reality, especially in the infinite God. In contrast, the principle of noncontradiction stubbornly refuses to admit the compatibility of contradictories in reality. It takes almost a miracle to get some to understand this; and yet without this admission the ascent of mystical theology is impossible. #RandolpHarris 2 of 8

In human beings there is a power of knowing superior to reason called intellect by which we rise above the principle of noncontradiction and see the unity and coincidence of opposites in reality. An example would be when Joshua prayed for the Sun and the Moon to stand sill, this motion of Heavenly spheres is called dusk. And think about how God brought stone into existence in a state containing moisture, the entire definition of stone would be different than what is needed for an inhabitable planet. At first, God has to create substances, which are defined as how they first come into existence in distinct forms, each containing specific, essential properties. Once a certain substance exists in a desired form with its essential properties, only then can God make aberrations in its nature, without altering the actual substance in general. God desired that stone exist—this means an arid, hard substance. So God first brought stone into existence as a dry, hard element, and not as a moist object, which would not be stone. Subsequent to its creation, God can make aberrations. Meaning, first God defined matter by giving each substance specific, unique properties. This occurred during the six days. Only subsequent to the completion of all substances, could God incorporate a suspension of those properties in a few items, but suspension means altering that which already exists. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8

Certain miracles were needed for future events, without which, catastrophe would occur. As it is God’s wish to benefit humanity, the suspension of a few laws was essential to preserve humankind. Therefore, God made concessions to human beings (implied by making these miracles at the last moment possible) by altering law of created matter. All miracles are built into created matter. Miracles are multiple forces operating simultaneously, which some might see as a contradiction. Due to the need for substance to maintain essential, structural properties, matter needed to come into existence as a defined entity. Only once existing in an essential form could God alter it to assist humans. We are most concerned with showing the coincidence of opposites in God. God is the absolute maximum or infinite being, in the sense that he has the fullness of perfection. There is nothing outside of God to oppose him or to limit him. God is the all. God is also the maximum, but not in the sense of the supreme degree in a series. As infinite being he does not enter into relation or proportion with finite beings. As the absolute, the Lord excludes all degrees. If we say he is the maximum, we can also say he is the minimum. In short, in God, the infinite being, all opposition is reconciled in perfect unit. The Holy Ghost binds us to the Lord. By divine assignment, God inspires, testifies, teaches, and prompts us to talk in the light of the Lord. We have the sacred responsibility to learn to recognize his influence in our lives and respond.  #RandolphHarris 4 of 8

 The coincidence of the maximum and minimum in infinity is illustrated by mathematical figures. For example, imagine a circle with a finite diameter. As the size of the circle is increased, the curvature of the circumference decreased. When the diameter is infinite, the circumference is an absolutely straight line. Thus, in infinity the maximum of straightness is identical with the minimum of curvature. Or, to put it another way, an infinite circle is identical with a straight line. There are several priori proofs for the existence of the absolute maximum, or God. For one, the finite is inconceivable without int infinite. What is finite and limited has a beginning and an end, so that there must be a being to which it owes its existence and in which it will have its end. This being is either finite or infinite. If it is finite, then it has its beginning and end in another being. This leads either to an infinite series of actually existing beings, which is impossible, or to an infinite being which is the beginning and end of all finite beings. Consequently, it is absolutely necessary that there be an infinite being, or absolute maximum.  The next proof deals with the absolute truth about the absolute maximum stated in the propositions: It either is or is not. It is and it is not. It either is nor is not. These exhaust all the possibilities, so that one of the must be the absolute truth. Hence there is an absolute truth, and this is what is mean by the absolute maximum. Remember the Lord’s promise: “I will impart unto you of my Spirit, which shall enlighten your mind, which shall fill your soul with joy.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 8

As the absolute maximum, God contains all things; he is their enfolding (complicatio). He is also their unfolding (explication) because they come forth from him. Creatures add nothing to the divine reality; they are simply limited and partial appearances of it. As a face reproduces itself more or less perfectly in a number of mirrors, so God reflects himself in various ways in his creatures. In this case, however, there are no mirrors. God transcends the Universe but is also immanent in it, as a face is present in mirrored images. Each creature is also present in ever other, as each image exists in ever other. Everything is everything else. The most universal of all created forms is the form of the Universe, called the soul of the World. This form embraces in its unity all lower forms, such as those of genera and species. These lower forms are contradictions of the form of the Universe; they are the Universe existing in a limited way. They exist in the Universe, and it in turn exists in a limited way in them. Individuals are further contractions of universal forms—for example Socrates is a contradiction of the form of humanity. The Universe as a whole is a contradiction of the infinite God. Thus, all things exist in a unified manner in the Universe, and the Universe in turn exists in the unity of God. Oppositions and contradictions that appear on the level of individuals and lower universal forms are reconciled in the unity of the Universe and ultimately in the unity of God. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8

Since the Universe mirrors God, it too must be a maximum—not the absolute maximum, to be sure, but the relative maximum, for it contains everything the exists except God. The Universe is absolutely infinite; only God, in his view, cold be described in these terms. However, the Universe has no circumference and consequently is boundless or undetermined—a revolutionary notion in cosmology. Just as the Universe has no circumference, it has no fixed center. The Earth is not the center of the Universe, nor is it absolutely at rest. Like everything else it moves in pace with a motion that is not absolute but is relative to the observer. Beneath this oppositions and contradictions, there is a fundamental unity and harmony, which, when it is recognized by all people, will be the basis of Universal peace. Morality is based on social sense and experience. Many of the traits of the Renaissance people are love of classical antiquity, all-encompassing curiosity, optimism, cultivation of literary styles, critical spirit, preoccupation with the individual, and love of mathematics and science. Religion is a feel for God’s goodness and providence as mirrored in the goodness and beauty of the Creation. Joy that fills our souls brings with it an eternal perspective in contrast to day-to-day living. That joy comes as peace amidst hardship and heartache. It provides comfort and courage, unfolds the truths of the gospel, and expands our love for the Lord and all God’s children. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8

Thanks to be my Lord; God the Adorable, and only to be adored. My Lord, the Eternal, the Ever-existing, the Cherisher, the True Sovereign whose mercy and might overshadow the Universe; the Regulator of the World, and Light of the creation. His is our worship; to God belongs all worship; God existed before all things, and will exist after all that is living has ceased. Thou art the adored, my Lord; Thou art the Master, the Loving and Forgiving. My Lord, Thou art the Helper and the afflicted, the Reliever of all distresses, the Consoler of the broken hearted; Thou art present everywhere to help Thy children. My Lord, Thou art the Creator, I am only created; Thou art my Sovereign, I am only Thy servant; Thou art the Helper, I am the beseecher; Thou art the Forgiver, I am the sinner; Thou, my Lord, art the Merciful, All-knowing, All-loving. Lord, grant to me the love of Thee. Grant that I may love those that love Thee. Grant that I may do the deeds that win Thy love. Make Thy love to be dearer to me than anything else. Lord! Grant me firmness in faith and direction. Assist me in being grateful to Thee and in adorning Thee in every good way. I ask Thee for an innocent heart, which shall not incline to wickedness. I ask Thee for a true tongue. I pray Thee to defend me from that vice which Thou knowest, and for forgiveness of those faults which Thou knowest. My Defender! Assist me in remembering Thee and being grateful to Thee, and in worshipping Thee with the excess of my strength. Forgive me out of Thy loving kindness, and have mercy on me; for verily Thou art the forgiver of offenses and the bestower blessings on Thy Servants. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8

God’s interior presence and providence is the only evidence of life. We do not have to be perfect today. We do not have to be better than someone else. All we have to do is to be the very best we can as a way of discharging an intellectual debt for our generation and to religious seekers of every age. Every person is faced with practical decisions and moral choices that require personal assessment of the circumstances and particular means and end in view. There is a point at which even a great military leader cannot rely solely upon the rules of strategy and one’s formal conception of warfare; one must place all these abilities at the service of his or her personal estimate of a particular military situation in order to make a responsible decision. One is directly engaged in concrete reasoning in the natural mode of inference. We all are going through different life experiences. While some are filled with joy today, others feel as though their hearts could burst with sorrow. Some feel as though the World is their side show; others feel as though they are the star of a romantic film, plucked from their twinkling fairy tale, and the swooning waltz, and placed in devastation and confusion and robbed of all that is precious to them. No matter one’s situation, no matter one’s emotional or spiritual state of mind, regardless of where one is in this sojourn through mortal life, being our true selves is the real challenge in life. It is all about honesty, making our yearnings known, and expressing our feelings openly and without reservation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13

The concrete uses of intelligence are not thematized and critically controlled. The reasoning is informal insofar as it deals with questions that cannot be settled by appealing simply to the formal logical rules, but still it is a quite deliberate and reflective way of reasoning. Informal reasoning is required by our World of particulars, but this World does not prevent us from reflecting upon the way in which we explore and interpret it. Illative sense is only a grand name for designating a very ordinary way of using the mind. Life, just like a romance, is an adventure. It is fraught with conflict and fluctuations, but if we let go of the myth of the fairytale, we get to the real heart of the story. Certainly, we have much to be grateful for. And if we will consider the blessings we have, we will forget some of our worries. Of course, serenity and joy will come to us if we realize the blessings we have, and it will help us a great deal. The illative sense refers to the type of operation of the human mind as it engages in concrete reasoning, reaches a conclusion of inference, and determines whether to give its certitudinal assent to the inferred proposition about a concrete reality. Certitude consists in an active response of the mind to the weight and tenor of the argument, a living recognition of the meaning and the truth of the proposition that states some findings. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13

Furthermore, this certitduinal apprehension of the truth of the proposition is an inalienably individual act. We come to grasp the important argument; see the bearing of the evidence; give our assent to the proposition as true. An ancient proverb states that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. The sole and final judgment on the validity of an inference in concrete matters is committed to the personal action of the ratiocinative faculty, the perfection or virtue of the illative sense. Sometimes we make the process more complicated than we need to. We will never make a journey of a thousand miles by fretting about how long it will take or how hard it will be. It is the mind that reasons, and that controls its own reasonings, not any technical apparatus of words and propositions. This power of judging and concluding, when in its perfection, is called the illative sense. We make the journey by taking each day step by step and then repeating it again and again until we reach our destination. The same principle applies to how we can climb to higher spirituality. The illative use of the mind is observable not only in the concluding act of an inference in concrete issues, but also at the outset and along the way of reasoning. The need for personal use of intelligence—especially in creative work suggest the governing hypothesis, to gauge strength of some particular stage in the inquiry, and to discern the bearings of many outlying investigations upon the main problem. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13

Our Heavenly Fathers know that we must begin our climb from where we are. When we climb up the ladder, we must begin at the bottom, and ascend step by step, until we arrive at the top; and so it is with the principles of the gospel—we must begin with the first, and go on until we learn all the principles of exaltation. However, it will be a great while after we have passed through the veil before we will have learned them. We seek to conduct ourselves responsibly in all these operations, and illative sense refers to the intellectual mastery or perfection that an individual develops for inquires in some concrete field. It comes close to the Aristotelian habit of prudence or practical wisdom, except that it can reach into the speculative order and attain certitude there. However, despite a similar pattern of concrete logic for different fields, the personal mastery cannot simply be transferred from one area to another. A person may give us good grounds for trusting his or her judgment in military affairs or biological questions, whereas one may be utterly lacking in sagacity in respect to political legislation. Our Heavenly Father loves each one of us and understands that this process of climbing higher takes preparation, time, and commitment. God understands that we will make mistakes at times, that we will stumble, that we will become discouraged and perhaps even wish to give up and say to ourselves it is not worth the struggle. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13

However, we do not isolate religious inquiry from other concrete uses of intelligence, but it is required to conform to the common requirements of concrete inquiry. Religious people are not concerned solely with abstract and general issues but seek the truth about the reality of God, the person of the Savior, the complex life of the church, and the individual soul’s response to them all. These matters belong in the region of concrete existence and thus impose their own requirements upon the searcher’s mind. The interested individual cannot do justice to the issues if one confines oneself to what can be ascertained exclusively from the use of formal reasoning. Such a restriction is bound to lead a noncommittal attitude, not because of the religious issues as such but because of the failure to make use of the concrete reasoning requires by the situation. We know it is worth the effort, for the prize, which is eternal life, is the greatest of all the gifts of God. And to qualify, we must take one step after another and keep going to gain the spiritual heights we aspire to reach. A notional assent is on made to the truth of a proposition itself, whereas a real assent is one made to the reality itself intended by the proposition. Thus one may give a notional assent to God in terms of some abstract divine attributes and also give a real assent to God considered as a personal being who cares for one as an individual person. This is a matter of interpretation on the part of the mind that is considering the statement. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13

In the case of purely ideal inquiries, a notional assent is sufficient. However, we live in a translinguistic World, and our questions reach out to the community of real existents, especially to other persons. Here, the mind’s notional assent must be integrated with, and further perfected by, a real assent to the very realities under investigation. An eternal principle is revealed in holy writ: “It is not requisite that a person should run faster than he or she has strength. And again, it is expedient the one should be diligent, that thereby one might win the prize. We do not have to be fast; we simply have to be steady and move in the right direction. We have to do the best we can, one step after another. The fully appropriate intellectual response to our human situation is unavoidably a complex one, involving both notional and real assents. Taken by itself, the way of real assent is intense but unclarified. We need to engage in both formal and informal inference, weighing the evidence carefully and arriving at a careful act of notional assent. Inference and notional assent are indispensable elements in human cognition; otherwise we could not weigh the pertinent evidence on an issue, do justice to the difficulties, or formulate the theoretical findings with cool precision of statement. Thus, we assign a large role to the modes of formal and informal inference and to notional assent in the total composition of human knowledge. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13

However, we must also insist upon the need for directly relating the mind to individual existents. The act of real assent achieves our intellectual orientation toward the domain of concrete existents and their values. It does do by furnishing a concrete image of the individual being under consideration and by establishing the relevance of that imaged reality to the inquirer’s own personal life. Real assent does not necessarily ensure action, but it does furnish a necessary condition for our practical responses by directing our mind toward the real existent, grasped in an image that can appeal to our passions and will. Love is not easy—and it should not be. Love is beautiful because it nurtures us and forges us into who we can become. We have to work for it. We have to focus on things that encourage growth. Do not worry much about trying to be better than someone else. Learn from others, but do not just try to be better than they are. It is important to focus on thing we can control by trying, and trying very hard to be the best we can. Our relationship to God is not yet one of direct vision; hence we must engage in inference. A concrete personal mode of reasoning is also required in order to proportion our inquiry as fully as possible to the situation of our search after the truth about God. Our aim must be grounded propositions to which we can legitimately give our notional assent, and also of forming a concrete image of the personal, morally good, and providential God to whose reality we can then give our real assent and practical attachment. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13

There is an area where we personally can realize this synthesis of intellectual acts bearing on the being of God. There are many ways to God and many natural informants lead us to the Lord: the way of causality and purpose, the meaning of human existence and history, and the import of our moral life. We have scriptures that reveal the word of God to humankind through the ages. When we feast upon the word of God, we open our minds to eternal truths and our hearts to the gentle whisperings of the Holy Ghost. Truly God’s work, through scriptures and modern-day prophets, is a lamp unto our feet, and a light unto our path. To reach the transcendent, personal God, we must examine the witness of our moral life, for this is a person region where relations with other persons are best established. It is here that we have the experience of conscience, of being under command to do and not to do, of being responsible to a just and caring person who transcends our human reality but does so in a way that keeps the Lord personally concerned about our conduct. Conscience as a commanding act discloses the full human situation of our responsibility toward the good God. As we read about the great souls who have preceded us, we learn that they too had hard times of discouragement and sorrow. We learn that they persevered in spite of hardship, in spite of adversity, sometimes even in spite of their own weakness. We learn that they too continued to ascend one step after another. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13

We can be like those righteous souls. Three features of the living command of conscience are also some of the best methods we have learned of achieving real as well as notional assent to God: its intentional character, its personal significance, and its practical ordination. The dictate of conscience by its very structure refers the conscientious person beyond oneself, pointing one toward the reality of the supreme lawgiver and judge of one’s moral actions. This is not purely abstract orienting of our mind but involves a concrete image of God as our concerned Father. Another advantage of this way of conscience is that the moral relationship in which it consists is personal in both poles of reference. Conscience engages us precisely as a personal self; hence it enables us to give a real assent to God as a morally concerned person. Finally, the acts of conscience relate to us the personal God in a concrete way that leas to moral and religious actions. Hence the approach to God from conscience encourages us to assent to the truth about God not only notionally but really, not only in respect to our propositions but also in respect to the personal, provident reality of God himself as the practical goal of our knowledge and love. In order to really love, we must have knowledge of what is really good. The good is essentially dependent upon and interiorly penetrated by knowledge. Knowledge stems from the relationship of the intellect to the thing know. The natural tendency of the intellect is to come to the knowledge of truth. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13

Real assent to God as the Lord of conscience furnishes a frame of reference for wrestling with evil and discerning the Lord’s providential presence. A mind that is carefully formed upon the true key of that maze to the vast complicated disorder; and this it gains a more and more consistent and luminous vision of God from the most unpromising materials. Thus, conscience is a connecting principle between the creature and his Creator. Whereas the naturalistic critic appeals to the vast disorder as an antecedent reason for withholding our assent from God, we must secure first of all the inward principle of interpretation provided by the personal and moral relation of people to the Lord of conscience. The work of this principle is not to soften or gloss over the concerning God and moral humans that will enable us to understand and work with hope against physical and moral evil in our World. We must also widen our horizon to include the social, developmental, and historical aspects of human experience so that can explore the logic of those social ideals that grip the minds of humans and account for developments in their beliefs and institutions. Interpretative activity of many minds as they are engaged in judging, relating, evaluating, and dealing practically with our complex World inextricably bound together in our very nature and if we live according to our nature, they will lead us straight to our Source and Ultimate end. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13

This union is achieved through a life lived in the cultivation of virtue on our part, and by God’s perfect love for us that constantly pulls us toward him. If we do not follow this natural path of love and knowledge, we will only find emptiness and despair since our nature will never be fulfilled. There are some meanings that can be worked out only in this gradual social way. Historically important ideas are those that contain many facets and require the interpretative activity of many minds, testing and developing them over many years. Ordinarily an idea is not brought home to the intellect as objective except through this variety; like bodily substances, which are not apprehended except under the clothing of their properties and results, and which admit of being walked around, and surveyed on opposite dies, and in different perspectives, and in contrary lights, in evidence of their reality. We can grasp the intentional structure of basic human meanings only through studying their carious perspectives, forcing them to enter the battlefield of critical discussion, and sometimes embodying them in visible, powerful social institutions. Through counsel and prayers, we can reach into the Heavens and personally commune with the Infinite. Through faith, Heaven itself can be moved in our behalf. Doors will be opened and answers received. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13

 There is a common pattern of development that has certain traits distinguishing a healthy growth from a sickly one. The seven criteria for genuine development are preservation of the type of principle that is socially influential, continuity of these principles, their capacity for assimilation of new data, their logical sequence in organizing a complex social process, their anticipation of their own future, conservation of their past achievements, and their chronic vigor. These criteria are illustrated in kingdoms, economic policies, religious convictions, scientific hypotheses, and philosophical theories. Crucial decisions affecting the course of cultural development is being made within the University. It is replacing the episcopal palace, the banking house, and the parliamentary floor as the real center for determining the long-range direction of human history. There is a fresh synthesis of tradition and originality in the University community. The task of such a community is to educate the men and women of the World by gradually introducing them to the full complexity of our humanistic, scientific, and religious interpretations. This the University should try to do by cultivating an understanding of the various methods and ways of knowing, along with an awareness of their differences, limitations, and possibilities for unification. Our most important goal, however, is to praise the Christian faith and its practical institutions, especially as they are brought into close relation with modern humanistic and scientific ideas. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13

Our contributions to faith and its practical institutions that are also concerned with modern humanistic and scientific ideas might be considered as a sustained effort at education that draws its strength from both Christianity and the other components in the University. This will fill people with light and direction. Our beloved Heavenly Father and the amazing Son will appear to them. Their direction will sweep away the thick darkness that has seized them and threatened to destroy them. It will forever sweep away confusion. Our time here is precious and so short. All too soon, our time is finished. While we can—while we have the time to complete our work—let us walk in the right direction, taking one step after another. So look upward in joy and take hold of the Lord’s hand; God will lead you to heights that are new—a land holy and pure, where all trouble does end, and your life shall be free from all sin, where no tears shall be shed, for no sorrows remain. Take God’s hand and with him enter in. Our Heavenly Father lives and knows and loves each one of us. If you do your best in life, you will be happy and content. The actions of righteous people ripple on and on through time and space and even generations. “Be not weary in well-doing, for you are laying the foundation of great work. And out of small things proceeds that which is great,” reports Doctrines and Covenants 64.33. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13