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The Influence of Miracles—Where is the Love, All I See is Greed?
It looks more and more like we will be spending Christmas beneath the Eiffel Tower. It goes without saying that I would rather be spending Christmas in Frankfurt, Germany. As Christmas Eve turns into Christmas Day, right at the stroke of midnight, we can step outside and tilt our faces up at the moon, taste the snowflakes on our lips and imagine they are angels gently kissing us. Perhaps it could really come true, if even just for an instant. If a miracle such as our Lord’s birth could occur on a night like this, then it is no great feat for our spirits to meet. The forms of things, although by their own nature they are conveyed to the sense of humans and other beings, can however, while they are in the air, receive a certain impression from the Heavens, by means of which, as also by the fitness deriving from the recipient’s disposition, they may be transmitted to the senses of one recipient rather than another. And hence it is possible, naturally, without any kind of superstition, and through the mediation of no other spirit, for an individual to convey one’s thoughts to someone else in a very short time, however far apart they may be from each other; and, though the time in which this is done cannot be exactly measured, it will inevitably happen within twenty-four hours. And I know how to do this and have done it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
The highest of the virtues is theoretical wisdom, and this is an activity of which humans are capable of because of something divine in their nature—in its exercise each individual approximates to the life of God; and for a human, as for God, one’s highest function is thought. This thought will be about objects which cannot be other than what they are and so never change. It is a common belief that telepathic communication can be achieve by means of the human spirits conveyed in the air; here the spirit, imprinted with the sender’s thoughts, is precisely directed to one recipient by means of some astrological operation. The message receives its direct impression from the Heavens, and the operation by which this impression is given might nevertheless require the assistance of a planetary angel. It has been rejected that Christ died for the elect alone, so think it is more logical that God has irresistible grace. And also believed that saints have sufficient powers, and it would not seem logical that they could fall from grace. Salvation depends on the cooperation of the human will, which is sufficiently strong to overcome the temptations of evil. Many of our ideas, in relation to God, we apprehend these ideas in God’s mind without any mediation. These ideas are the eternal archetypes of all possible Worlds, and their content is primarily mathematical. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
These ideas represent the created World in that they make it known to us. This realm of ideas is called Intelligible Extension, and this comprehends the essence of extended objects, but not the existence (which depends on God’s will rather than his intellect). We can believe that material objects exist, but not know it, and while such objects may be the causal occasion of certain sensation in us, the proper objects of knowledge are the eternal Idea. So many of these fantastic ideas like the Internet, cars, computers, air planes, and architecture come from God and I suppose that he elects people who are responsible enough to make them come into fruition. The object of the learning and refining process is indeed reform. The development of the individual through the right use of literature and knowledge is the pursuit of total perfection and is the ultimate objective. Culture is taught to humans to conceive of true human perfection as a harmonious process, developing all sides of our humanity; and as general perfection, developing all parts of our society so that we can enlarge and increase the volume of the human stream sweeping thitherwards. People should be led, not by their class spirit, but by a general humane spirit, by the low of human perfection. Each member of this human remnant, maintaining one’s own best self by the process of culture and seeking to awake in others the best self now obscured by the stock notions and habits of the group, representing the best self as society as a whole. It is this best self that the state must represent and express. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
When we realize God’s hand of favor is upon us, we will accomplish our dreams faster than we ever thought possible. Do not go around talking about how big your problems are, or how you will never make it. God’s gracious hands are on us. We have the blessing of the grace of God, so do not dwell on things that are lacking or less than perfect. Anything that one wants to achieve will happen by the power of God. Describe what it looks like when the gracious hands of God are upon you. Think about how God might bring opportunities across your path that are greater than you can imagine. Try claiming blessings instead of merely longing for them. Every calling is great when greatly pursued. God supplies perfectly measured grace to meet the requirements of the godly. For daily requirements, there is some daily graces; for sudden requirements, sudden grace; for overwhelming requirements, overwhelming grace. God’s grace is given wonderfully, but not wastefully; freely but not foolishly; bountifully but not blindly. Father, thank You that Your gracious hand is upon me. I know I have an advantage. I have an edge. Other people may not see it. They may try to push me down and disqualify me. However, that is okay. I know the truth. I have the favor of God. I am well able to fulfill my destiny. #RandolpHarris 4 of 5
I am a firm believer in the magical power of words, characters, figures and incantations. I suspect you are an erudite and neither unskilled not silly. To achieve the results of the imagination, one must be a suitable nature or disposition, namely, in a state of receptivity due to innocence; the operator must believe whole-heartedly in the efficacy of the words one is saying, only then will one’s imagination, and thence one’s spirits and bodies, be transformed. How you pray determines what kind of life you will live. If you only pray small, ordinary, get-by prayers, then you will live that kind of life. However, when you have the boldness to ask God for extraordinary things, you ask Him to open doors that might otherwise never open. You can ask Him for great success and to restore a relationship that looks over and done. When you pray for extraordinary things, you will see the greatness of God’s power. Ask God to perform miracles in your life. God’s angels can take over functions planets, so ask God for your dreams because it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. God wants to give you the desires of your heart, but you have to have the faith of a child and be willing to ask. What miracle are you going to ask God for today? Pray for great things, expect great things, work for great things, but above all believe in miracles. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
Whether Sleep be Swift or Virtue be Square
You see one ghost, you have seen then all. A Rolls Royce or Honda Civic, I am gone roll with you. Good is what has an aptness to produce pleasure in us. I usually concentrate on writing to you and loving you more every day that passes. My other lucky charm is a white gold and diamond ring that I wear on my wedding finder. That four diamond represent, Earth, air, water, fire and the white gold represents the mysterious Moon. It has led to my fascination with metaphysics, space, and the Heavens. I have worn it on my finger for the longest time, when I was feeling blue, I examine it, hoping to discover the magic it holds. Planetary demons are like humans without Earthly bodies, they have souls and aetheric or aerial bodies, according to their status; these bodies are like nature to the human spirit, and they live in Heavenly spheres; they perform the function of transmitting celestial influences; they can be both soul and spirit, act on both human’s spirit and soul. Not to make light of your romantic impressions, but a guardian angel is the same as a familiar planetary demon. There are bad demons, of low status and with aerial bodies, who trouble people’s spirits and imagination. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
The connection between self-interest and morality in the threat of punishment—divine, natural, or civil—that coerces the individual to be moral for the sake of self-interest. However, it has been noticed that this connection breaks down wherever the expected benefit to the individual of moral conduct outweighs the likelihood of punishment and maintaining social privileges. If morality is grounded in psychology, then human nature cannot be as aggressively self-centered as the apostles of self-preservation and pursuit of pleasure maintained. Benevolence and conscience are as deeply rooted in human nature as is self-love. Moral obligation has its source in caring affections, such as love and pity, that are natural and universal as the more aggressive tendencies (“self-affections”), such as envy, greed, and the impulse of self-preservation. Moreover, there is a moral sense in humans that finds unique satisfaction in actions directed toward the common good. This moral sensibility turns us from the pursuit of pleasure toward the performance of duties toward others and explains our admiration of self-sacrifice independently of external reward or punishment. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
The meaning of good, right, justice, and virtue—by what standards are they attributed to persons and actions; how is it psychologically possible for humans to admire and cultivate morality at the expense of self-interest; and by what rules can ethical disputes be decided in favor of one judgment against another? Considered as mediums of planetary influences, demons are exactly parallel to the Soul and Spirit of the World; the only, but crucial, difference is that the former are individual, personal, whereas the latter is general, impersonal. It would be difficult to believe simultaneously in both kinds of planetary influence; the celestial spirits cannot be both personal and impersonal. No observable facts or logical relations answer to our concepts of goodness, justice, and moral virtue. The terms do not denote qualities or relations, but convey a sentiment of approbation, so that their meaning is to be found in the feelings of the judge rather than on the object judged. We call things good for the same reasons that we call them beautiful: because we find them agreeable. An object is good if it is immediately pleasant, or if it is a useful means for attaining something else that is pleasant. Virtues are qualities that render a person agreeable or useful to oneself or to others, whether they are natural virtues such as talent, wit, and benevolence or artificial virtues like honesty and justice. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
It might be possible that the impersonal spirit comes from the Heavenly bodies and works on human’s body and spirit, but no higher, whereas the personal spirits, the demons, who have souls, work primarily on man’s mind. People do not usually think logically about magic, especially if they believe in it. It is unsatisfactory because the demons have spiritual bodies closely akin to human spirits on which they can and so act. Indeed, passions of the human body, whether induced by these higher spirits or higher bodies, overflow into the soul in so far as the soul, by acquired or natural affects, has sunk itself in the body. However, there is this difference: that those [celestial] bodies move our souls through our bodies; the [celestial] spirits, on the other hand, both move the soul through the body, and directly move the soul, and move it through that [human] spirit which the Physicians often call the bond of body and soul. God has knowledge, not of what we are compelled to do, but what we freely choose to do, because his knowledge is not the kind of advanced knowledge that is based on casual process, but is due to the fact that, in the mind of God, we have already made our decisions. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
All of past and future time is spread out in the specious present of the divine mind, so that what, from our limited standpoint, would be prediction of the future is, for God, simply direct awareness of contemporaneous events. Sometimes prayers are weak and disingenuous. These hymns are clearly prayers addressed to spirits of some kind; moreover, on several occasions some of them are addressed to demons. Egyptians religion place in their temples statues fashioned by magic art to attract into them demons and the souls of the dead. Orpheus, devoted man of his hymns not only to celestial [gods], but also to demons and demonic men and women, and added particular fumigations for each. However, much more foolish, wicked and abominable superstitions were introduced by many Priests, both civil and poetic. The demonic human-made gods, and the planetary guardian demons were said to be dangerous. Learned ancients, of course, did not worship idols and animals. The good pagan religion was explained as astrological magic. The status did not represent demons or gods, but humans influenced by certain planets; the animals and other objects were talismanic. The wise and learned priests were not worshiping them; they were just using them for magical operations, by which, presumably, they attacked good planetary demons. The practices led astray the ignorant into idolatry and superstition. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Some are strongly attracted to this kind of magic or theurgy, it is valuable, but it is clear that it is also dangerous. If remained within a learned philosophical circle, and kept secret from the ignorant, who distort it into idolatry and superstition, its dangers might be avoided. One must believe in order to understand. Faith is not incompatible with reason but, rather, prepares the soul for rational understanding. Morality is an inner quality, a property of motive or intention rather than of the consequences of one’s actions, a principle that was later stressed by the Reformation and attained its fullest expression in the ethical system. Theological virtues—faith, hope, and love—require faith and divine grace. The two highest goods, or paramount goals of life, are Worldly happiness and eternal beatitude (which has precedence); the former is achieved through natural virtue and the latter is achieved through church and its sacraments. There is a possibility of improving the human condition on Earth through knowledge of nature and intelligent action. This has helped to prepare the climate for the rebirth of natural science, whose first stirrings were felt in the thirteenth century. Informed reason and moral conscience represent an inherent tendency in the nature of humans, and conformity to this nature fulfills both the cosmic plan of the Creator and the direct commands of God revealed in the Scriptures. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Nonetheless, I do believe in the law of attract and that what you focus on you will attract. The Exorcist of FOX is a fictional show, but I thought a concept that they touched upon was interesting. A mother was a fading star and her career was going nowhere. So, while on set, she would let her daughter play with the witch board in hopes that a demon would possess her and this would allow her daughter to have supernatural powers that were noticeable so that the media would pay attention to her and her movie would be a success and relaunch her career. However, her daughter did become possessed, she actually attacked a very dark, evil, and powerful spirit into her being, which she passed own to one of her own children later in life. Bad magic was to do with the devil and demons, and it destroyed God’s freedom of will. God bears the ultimate responsibility for (in other words, is the necessary and knowing cause of) human’s existence as a fallen creature, although on his own level, humans remain individually responsible for his or her personal choices and actions. God has thus created humans imperfect but perfectible has also entered into human life, in Christ, to bring about human’s redemption. The fulfillment of God’s purpose for his creatures in his Heavenly kingdom constitutes a good so great and enduring that it justifies all the pain which have been experienced in order to reach it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Entreties sur la Pluralite des Mondes
I was still terrified, though. I did not want to make a wrong move. The first evening was perfect. Dinner, dancing, strolling through Regent’s Park. I did not want to ruin it by suggesting anything improper. I wanted to—oh, God, did I want to!—but I could never have brought myself to ask. I have a small confession to make. Or maybe you have guessed it already. You know, writing this all to you has helped calm my fears somewhat. As long as I still have your letters, a lifeline running to me all the way from Scotland, I will be okay. I told you I brought the book along with me as a lucky charm, but you are my lucky charm. It has been overwhelming to go from living by myself in an isolated cottage to living on a busy block in a wee flat full of children and noise. I am quite dizzy most of the time and seem to have a constant headache from their chatter, but it has been lovely. I was thinking about God today. In the beginning God created a void by withdrawing into himself (contraction), and the void appeared as darkness because God is light. Expanding again as light into the void, God created all the substances of the World. Thus, the World we live in is ruled partly by light (God) and partly by the darkness (the kingdom of the devil). #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Since everything is of the same nature—that is, a mixture of light and darkness—there are secret sympathies and secret antipathies everywhere, marked by signs which the adept can discover with God’s help. The practice of medicine depends entirely on understanding these forces, as do the practices of chiromancy and astrology. In the past, fear of persecution invited prudence, and some people would not even publish their brilliant books, even though their knowledge proved the superiority of the Moderns. A song works on body, mind, and on whatever intermediate faculties may be between; but it is the text alone which can carry an intellectual content and thus influence the mind. The music, abstracted from its text, can reach no higher than the spirit, i.e. sense and feeling, or at most, through the spirit, the lower parts of the soul, phantasy and imagination. Force denotes the faculty of action or the power to overcomes a resistance. In the physical sciences, it is that entity which changes, or tends to change, the state of rest or of motion of a body. We can capture planetary influences by prayers, either simple or sung with art. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Our spirit is consonant with the Heavenly rays which, occult or manifest, penetrate everything. We can make it still more consonant, if we vehemently direct our affections towards the star from which we wish to receive a certain benefit…above all, if we apply the song and light suitable to the astral deity and also the odour. If communication is to succeed, something which, like sense and coloring, is ordinarily counted as part of the significance of the sound. This is called for force of the sound. In a language that is to express everything we wish to convey, we need some special signs for this element. Some people sing prayers to the Sun. Plato us one of the most ancient of the Greeks and he is considered a symbol of powerful, effect-producing singer; and he was a magician. The conception of musical sound is deemed as a living, spiritual being. Some writers say what they write comes from spirits as they are able to produce work as it moves through them. The World is seen as a living being, whose soul, by means of the stars imprints forms on the sub-lunar World; these are conveyed by cosmic spirit, and, if the form has been imperfectly received owing to the inadequacy of the receiving matter, this imperfection can be corrected by attracting more spirit from the appropriate planet. Like, if you wish to attract solarian gifts, wear colours such as gold, and plant flowers and have a picture of the Sun on your mantle, and sing songs to the physical Sun. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
While the idea of worshiping planets holds great promise, it is also at the same time fraught with grave dangers. Some planet supposedly also have demons attached to them. The Sun is better fitted for uplifting the mind than for securely balancing it. High-strung energy rather than poise seemed to be its natural effect on its votaries. It is believed that the fallen angels are responsible for our free will because they attracted Lucifer to Earth and are the architects for everything we cherish like music, poetry, movies, car, and television shows. My inmost yearning, my purest, though most secret flame, my purest, though most secret flame, my deepest faith and my highest hope—they are still the same as ever, and they all bear one name: the State. One day to build the state like a temple, rising up pure and strong, resting in its own weight, severe and sublime, but also serene like the gods and with and with bright hall glistening in the dancing brilliance of the Sun—this, at bottom, is the end and goal of my aspirations. This kind of magic has many sources. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
The immense importance attributes to astral influences and the immense importance is attributed to astral influence on the human spirit and one’s acceptance of a cosmic or celestial spirit that acquires a soul from the various stars and spheres it passes through during descent into the Earthly body. On this Earth the vehicle, which began by being fine, shinning and star-like, becomes heavy, dark and damp, and, unless purified and rendered more aetheric, it will at death drag down the soul to hell or to some lower incarnation. This conception of the spirit (for the vehicle is historically connected with Aristotelian, medical and Stoic pneumata) would account for its being peculiarly subject to astral influences, since it derives from the stars, and for the great urgency of its purification, since it does not leave the soul at death, but can drag it down or, if light and dry enough, ascend with it. It would, moreover, have a special affinity to the spheres and their harmony, since its proper shape, before entering the physical body, is spherical, and its proper motion is circular. The astral body was for primarily a religious conception—an explanation, a method of approaching God and salvation which are non—intellectual, such as fasting, lustrations, the use of incenses, incantations, excreta. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
To all these practices the astral body corresponds exactly; being corporeal, it can be acted on by similar physical things (vapours, scents, sounds); being the seat of imagination, of the irrational soul, it can be affected by prayers and images; since it survives death, its condition is the utmost importance. Humans are marvelous. They have been able to discover the divine nature and produce it, is admirable beyond all marvels. Our first ancestors, then, when they were in grave error concerning the gods, being incredulous and paying no attention to worship and religion, invented the art of making gods. Having done so, they added a virtue appropriate to it, taken from the World’s nature, and mixed these; since they could not make souls, they evoked the souls of demons or angels, and out them into images with holy and divine rites, so that through these souls the idols might have the power of doing good and evil…terrestrial gods and they have in them a natural divine power. And it is for the following reason that people delight them with frequent sacrifices, with hymns and praises and sweet sounds concerted like the harmony of the Heavens: that this Heavenly thing which has been attracted into the idol by repeated Heavenly rites, may bear joyously with humans and stay with them long. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
System der Logik and Metaphysik oder Wissenschaftslehre
I was punished for reading Auguste Comte in church. My Bible is one that I have had since my First Communion. It is a slim little volume bound in limp brown leather with pages as thin as dragonfly wings, so it is the perfect size for my duffel bag. My name is scrawled in the frontispiece in round, childish letters, and I have a lock of my baby hair tucked somewhere in the Book if Ruth, so it cannot help but remind me of home. Every individual is absolutely bound to obey the political authority established in one’s country because that authority enjoys by divine decree the powers originally conferred on Adam at the creation over his wife, his children, and their descendants eternally. From the view of the Old Testament, the Bible is of course is patriarchal and display the importance of hierarchy in reference to age, and explains that all humans are naturally—physiologically—related to each other. Society is a family, descended from one single male individual. All people born, and always remain, unfree and unequal, and consent is irrelevant to political association. Political society is also universal, for there are no humans who are not descended from Adam. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
A prepolitical state of nature makes no sense at all, nor does any idea of a contract to replace such a condition by political society. Property as well as political power is distributed according to God’s patriarchal decrees and belongs absolutely to the person who inherits it or to whom it has been given. I also brought along my battered copy of Huck Finn, more for comfort than reading, as I could probably recite the whole book verbatim (with the exception of a few words). However, that dog-eared book has been the first thing in my suitcase when packing for anything stressful or upheaving—hospital visits (of which, as you know, there have been more than a few), first ocean voyage, going away to college, moving to the apartment. I take it out, read it straightaway, and it immediately makes me feel that I am back curled in the green armchair in my parents’ library as it is endowed with a remarkable capacity for sympathetic understanding and exemplary brilliance and clarity, as well as the ability to unravel cultural and historical themes and subtlest ramifications to illuminate and reconstruct society. It only stands to reason that I would bring it along here. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
Perhaps it is superstitious, but I also view the book somewhat as a lucky charm. My mother brought it to read aloud when I was feeling physical unwell. We finished reading the book and then, the next day my fever broke. I have always somehow associated that collective sigh of relief with Hunk Finn. You may rightly wonder, since I am invincible, why do I need a lucky charm? Well, I am afraid. For the first time in my life I am really afraid of something tangible. I was fine on the boat ride over, even eager for what awaited me in France. What I overlooked, though, was what I would find in London. I found something worth coming back for. I found you. The boy who never shied away from any daredevilry, brought to his knees by a woman he only just met. However, a woman she is! When you stepped off the train and that shaft of Sunlight found its way through the glass in the roof to set you aglow, even an atheist would have seen the finger of God in that. You have a phenomenal World Spirit. Even after you stepped into the shadows, you glowed like a yellow diamond in the sky. You spoke, and I heard a chorus of seraphim. You laid your hand on my arm when we were leaving, but I felt the touch of fairy wings. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
I laid my eyes on you, there was that shaft of Sunlight, and I was suddenly terrified. Terrified you would disappear in a cloud of bubbles, terrified I might be hit by limousine in the next instant, terrified the World would end before our World had even begun. Did you know that human evolution had reached a stage in which the brain alone continues to evolve; ultimately, a level is achieved at which the individual’s brain continues to develop after one’s birth. The process, which necessitated a period of prolonged infancy accompanied by the evolution of strong parental affection, provided the physical setting for the evolution of the resulting family clans into society; for the origin of morality in the altruism demanded by family care; and for cultural progress, through the enhanced receptivity of yet developing minds. Your soul is similar to musical consonance. When I am around you I feel animated. The emotions and thoughts from your beautiful music and singing corresponds with my soul. Although visual impressions are in a way pure, they lack the impressions of motion and move the soul only slightly. Smell, taste, and touch are entirely material, and rather titillate the sense-organs than penetrate the depths of the soul. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
When I hear you sing and listen to the melodious rhythm, the musical sound by the movement of the air moves the body; by emotion it affects the senses and at the same time the soul: by meaning it works on the mind: finally, by the very movement of subtle air it penetrates strongly: by its contemperation it flows smoothly: by the conformity of its quality it floods us with a wonderful pleasure: by its nature, both spiritual and material, it at once seizes, and claims as its own, a being and one’s entirety. Hearing and seeing one in person, then, both puts us in more direct contact with external reality, since the sound and physical elements consists of aerial movements which can actually occur in our spirit, whereas a picture of letter merely reproduces surface images of things; and it powerfully affects the whole of us—as the musical sound by working on the spirit, which links body and soul, and the lyrics by working on the mind or intellect. When I am near you, my whole moral and emotional life consists of actions of the body and motions of the spirit and soul. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
Not until we were in the limousine and you tumbled nearly onto my lap as we edged that corner was I truly aware that you were more than just ethereal. My sink memorized every place you touched, and that feeling did not diminish for the rest of the afternoon. I do not know if that one little incident made as much of an impression on you are it did me, but it reminded me whom I was with. Not an unreachable angel, but a lady I know better than I know the lines in my own palm. I was still terrified, though. I did not want to make a wrong move. The human soul is not merely the end product, but the goal of the great evolutionary process contrived by God. Nature is not morally indifferent, but on the contrary, evolution exists purely for the sake of moral end. Science offers confirmation of the existence of God and immortality. Remember that song is the most powerful imitator of all things. For it imitates the intentions and affections of the soul, and speech, and also reproduces bodily gestures, human movements and moral characters, and imitates and acts everything so powerfully that it immediately provokes both the singer and hearer to imitate and perform the same thing. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
There is a spiritual existence in musical and it speaks a truth through its influence, living a whole which transcends the logical laws of thought. Reason loses itself in the antinomies when attempting to fathom this whole; but through direct religious experience, one can perceive the integral truth and can reconcile, superrationally, such contradictions as those between Divine Unity and Trinity, free will and predestination, universal salvation and eternal damnation. Thus, music must never take its departure from spiritual experience. The mystical and personal character of cognition, gives much attention to occult phenomena. Musically moved air is alive, like a disembodied human spirit, and therefore naturally has the most powerful effect possible on the hearer’s spirit, and makes all created beings are consubstantial with one another. In cognition, the knower escapes from one’s isolation and, contravening the logical law of identity, one achieves identity with rhythms and melodies, which are sounds similar to moral character, while flavors, colours and scents are secret sympathies. God put something in you to give you an advantage—His favor, His blessing. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
There is something about you that makes you stand out, something that draws opportunity, somethings that causes you to overcome obstacles, to accomplish dreams. Stoic in origin, which postulates a cosmic spirit (spiritus mundi) flowing through the whole of the sensible Universe, and thus providing an influence between the Heavenly bodies and the sublunary World. It is like you transmit powers to its body. There is a very subtle body; as it were not body and almost soul. Or again, as it were not soul and almost body. Its power contains very little Earthly nature, but more watery, still more aerial and the maximum of fiery and starry nature…It vivifies everything everywhere and is the immediate cause of all generation and motion. It is not just your talent, your education, or your hard work. This cosmic spirit, which is also that of the alchemist, is like enough to ours for us to be able to nourish and purify our own spirit by attracting and absorbing it. Undoubtedly, the World lives and breathes, and we may also absorb its breath. It is God almighty breathing in your direction. You could call it the favor of God. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Credo Quia Absurdum
No knowledge can have for its object the absurdity that the eternal is the historical. It is impossible for two persons to be constituted so much alike, but that one of them should have a more genuine and instantaneous relish for one sort of excellence, and another for another. It contributes greatly towards a person’s moral and intellectual health, to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike themselves, who care little for one’s pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities one must go out of oneself to appreciate. I went out shopping today. Why did you not tell me about all of the book? While out walking, I turned a corner and was confronted with a street packed full of book shops. You may laugh, but even if I were to have let my imagination run loose, I never would have conjured up an image of an entire stored filled with nothing but books. What power is able to hold in chains a mind ardent and determined? What power can cause that individual to die, whose whole soul commands one to continue to live? I am afraid I looked quite the country yokel, standing in the doorway of the first establishment I entered, staring around me goggle-eye at the shelves upon shelves. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
I was enthralled by all of the knowledge, purported proofs of the existence of God, metaphysical systems interpreting what is accepted on faith, and historical and psychological evidences about the nature of religion and its effects on believers, which offered rational explanations of even justifications of what has already been accepted on faith. It was some time before I remerged from the bookshop, blinking, into the sunlight that seemed to sting my eyes and cause them to become crimsoned. However, it was incomprehensible and contrary to reason for the rest of the day I traipsed from one end of the Castle’s bookshop to the other, ducking into every single room in the place that was filled with books, and not leaving without buying at least one thing. I became quite adept at saying, in an offhand sort of way, “Send the in my hotel” and was flabbergasted at the stack of parcels awaiting me at the hotel that evening. I puzzled over what to get for you, my dear, as I know that you have only limited amount of room in your kit bag. All a person really needs to get them through the vagaries of life are the Bible and William Shakespeare (both of them). Sometimes I forget that it modern times, we also require music to get by. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
Music is a natural magic, as distinct from the demonic magic that all Christians must renounce. Music uses air in its physical medium, and it resembles spirits. Music bridges a gateway with the soul, as the strings of lyre are made to resonate with the cosmic tones of the planets, stars, and the heart and communicate with these higher powers through this magical realm where words are but pictures of our thoughts. You get a lovely sense of the artist’s superstitions and almost primitive lifestyle. In some cases, when magicians cause strange effect by calling on the assistance of non-human person, the magic is demonic; in others, when strange effects come from manipulating physical objects rather than conversing with persons, the magic is natural or spiritual. The musician who plays his or her lyre to a higher Heavenly power without singing could not be accused of invoking a demon. Invocation is inverted prayer; both require the sending of verbal messages between persons. We are regular savages, but do not always eat our own young. I love to listen to music while taking a long, luxurious bath; a bath where I do not have to draw and heat the water myself. Just to sink back in the steamy water and rose oil is Heaven itself. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
When taking a bath, I like to listen to Aaliyah, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Dj Testio, Paul Oakenfold, J.R. Castro, Tory Lanez, Giovannit Pico, Diacetto, and other figures and imagine I am in my dream mansion filled with light. However, some scholars seem to believe that this sort of meditation leaves physical channels open for not only imagination, but spirits and occult qualities that have magical effects and it replaces the stars with the God who created them. The stars project astral instruments in a way that allows their voice and music to grasp the whole World. An instrument of this sort is the spirit, which by the physician is defined as a certain vapour of the blood, pure, subtle, hot and lucid. And, formed from the subtler blood by the heat of the heart, it files to the brain, and there the soul assiduously employs it for the exercise of both the interior and exterior senses. Thus, the blood serves the spirit, the spirit the senses, and finally the senses reason. In this sense a corporeal vapour, centered in the brain also flows through the nervous system, and it is the first instrument of the incorporeal soul, an instrument for sense-perception, imagination and motor-activity—the link between body and soul. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
The Christian Religion not only was the first attended with miracles, but even to this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without them. Mere reason is not sufficient to convince us of its veracity; and whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in one’s own person, which subverts all the principals of one’s understanding, and gives one determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience. The spirit of the studios is especially likely to need care, because their constant use of it in thinking and imagining consumes it. It has to be replaces from the subtler part of the blood and this renders the remaining blood dense, dry, and dark. In consequences, such person are always of a melancholy temperament. The spirits which derive from a melancholy humour (dark blood) are exceptionally fine, hot, agile, and combustible like the Sun that warms Earth. They are, therefore, liable to ignite and produce a temporary state of mania or exaltation, followed by extreme depression and lethargy, caused by the dark matter left after being invoked. However, if properly tempered with a lot of life-force, then the spirits will glow and not burn, and make it possible continuous study of the highest order. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
Christianity makes claims that are worthy of belief, and is only by total commitment, or the leap into faith that it can be accepted. I believe it because I want to believe it and have seen miracles in my life. The refusal to accept that 2+2 = 4 and the ability to believe that 2+2 = 5 are intimately connected with attaining religious truth. If you believe and draw near God, it will also draw near you and you will see that 2.35+ 2.65 makes 2+2 = 5. It all depend on how you look at the equation. This is just an example of the suprarational or extrarational ways, such as mystical or revelatory experiences that provide the knowledge of fundamental truths. One can train oneself to escape the confines of rationality in order to intensify religious experience and belief. This is a form of genuine thought commonly found in late antiquity and during the Renaissance. Back in those time people had time to become contemplative genius, and they saw the importance for scholars of attracting the influence of the planets like the Sun, Jupiter, Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury and others. Saturn’s rings actually give off a sound that has been picked up by NASA and is described as Melancholy. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
To preserve the health of the spirit and to avoid the perils of being sad or depressed, one must nourish and purify the spirit with fresh water, aromatic foods, clean and pure scents, crisp air, light, and music. These are sometimes made to correspond to the division of the spirits into natural, vital, and primitive. If the vapours exhaled by merely vegetable life are greatly beneficial to your life, how beneficial do you think will be aerial songs to the spirit which is indeed entirely aerial, harmonic songs to the harmonic spirit, warm and thus living to the living, endowed with the sense to the sensitive, conceived by reason to the rational. That is to say, the peculiar power of music is due to a similarity between the material medium in which it is transmitted, air, and the human spirit, to the fact that both are living with kinds of air, moving in an highly organized way, and that both, through the text of the son, can carry an intellectual content. Not surprising; for, since song and sound arise from the cogitation of the mind, the impetuous of the phantasy, and the feeling of the heart, and, together with the air they have broken up and tempered, strikes the aerial spirit of the hearer, which is the junction of the soul and body, they easily move the phantasy, affect the heart and penetrate into deep recesses of the mind. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
It is not in fact surprising that a song, being the product of mind, imagination, and feeling, should, if transmitted, react on these faculties, just as a picture book might. I have been busy, running from one end of Paris to the other, it seems, securing the necessary paperwork, buying my uniform and the last bits of equipment, taking my driving exam. Did I tell you that, when I was on the boat trip across the Atlantic, I had the childish urge to go to Paris first and then to London, so that I could greet you all kitted out in my uniform? I think I look quite well turned out. All dressed up, but nowhere to go! I have been enjoying what bit of time we have. Our uniforms (and some say our hair) gets us all sorts of boons—half-priced theater tickets, discounted meals. It has been fun, but it does not seem like the “Gay Paree” I remember. Many of the theaters and music halls are shut or operate on shorted hours. Cafés are closed early, lights are dimmed on the street at night. Once one has realized the human predicament—human’s fundamental requirement for ultimate truths and one’s inability to find them—then one is ready to hear God and to accept his revealed Word on faith alone. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
Once one has faith, one can see the force for the truth of the Christian religion. How often we look upon God as our last and feeblest resource! We go to God because we have nowhere else to go. Ans then we learn that the storms of life have driven us, not upon the rocks, but into the desire Heaven. Father in Heaven, You see the challenges in my life and where the odds are attacked high against me. There are giants in front of me, but I am not worried about them. I acknowledge that the battle will not be won by my own strength or by my own power. I will accomplish this because You hold my future in Your hands. You will go before me, fighting my battles and making the crooked places straight. I believe that You will have the final say, and You have promised You will cross over ahead of me and defeat my challenges for me. One on God’s side is a majority. Such evidence might then constitute good reasons for believing what one has already accepted fideistically, which means that truth in religion is ultimately based on faith rather than on reasoning and evidence because miracles are supernatural events and sometimes cannot be explained by science. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
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The Doctrine of Love
The past three years, we have let things fall as they may, and love happened. Do we need to plan out what comes next? Do we even need to know? The soul may rightly be the center of nature, the middle term of all things, the bond and juncture of the Universe. The soul is in a gradual ascent toward higher degrees of truth and being, an ascent that finally culminates in the immediate knowledge and vision of God. This knowledge represents the ultimate goal of human life and existence—in it alone the unrest of our mind is satisfied—and all other modes and degrees of human life and knowledge must be understood as more or less direct and conscious preparations for this in. If you only knew how you keep me going, how you keep me waking up, simply because I know you are thinking of me. You reminded me that I am not just a lonely recluse. I have something more not. I have you. The ascent of the soul towards God is accomplished with the help of two wings, the intellect and the will; accordingly, the knowledge of God is accompanied and paralleled on each level by the love of God; and the ultimate vision, by an act of enjoyment. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 7
Do you really think that you need to prove yourself to me? Do you think you have to do anything but continue to be there? That is all I ask. Just be there. Love for another human being is merely a preparation, more or less conscious, for the love of God, which constitutes the real goal and true content of human desire and is turned toward persons and things by virtue of the reflected splendor of divine goodness and beauty that may appear in them. So much has happened here. Can you think of anything more perfect for me? I finally feel as if I have found my purpose in life, and I can hardly wait to get there. Only recently, I offered my heart up to you, tentatively, hesitantly, not trusting my own feelings but trusting you implicitly. And now you have trampled all over it in your haste to run off. All I wanted was for you to be there. There can never be two friends; there must always be three—two human beings and one God. God alone is the indissoluble bond and perpetual guardian of any true friendship for a true lover loves the other person solely for the sake of God. True love and friendship between several persons is derived from the individual love of God; it is thus reduced to the basic phenomenon of the inner ascent, wait for me my life. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 7
Love may still seem a strange and remote concept, some people reach out, and grab for whatever they can hold on to, trying to catch any bit of happiness they can. As if life really works that way. That is how one sets oneself up to be shattered, and I was. No one could stop the choices I made. I had to see if ghosts still drifted here the way they always drift around Edinburgh. Once, too long ago, I fell in live. Unexpected, heady love. I do not want to let this person go because their soul bloomed with beauty. I did not feel so alone. However, it was not the time or place for new love. Emotions can be confused, people can disappear, minds can change. Perhaps I was wrong to fall in love so suddenly. What happened all those years ago, what happened? It cost me a lot. If I could do it differently, would I? Make different choices that would keep my family together? Make different choices that would keep me from choosing the wrong person? Those few bright years of beauty, and the fumbling loneliness, was not worth it. I could have spent my time doing something different, focusing on something else. In the light of this relationship, I realize it was not love. It was just a situation I got stuck in out of concern for someone else and it gained a new life. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 7
We all face situations that seem impossible. It is easy to become discouraged and think that things will never work out. However, God has already written every day of our lives in His book. He knew exactly when that setback would occur, and the good news is He has already arranged a comeback. Before we have problems, God already has arranged the solution. He is going before us right now and preparing the next chapter of our lives. If one stays in faith and keeps the right attitude, one will enter a better chapter, a chapter with greater success and greater fulfillment. When we receive the word of God in our spirit, we will come out of trouble quicker than we realize. God is fighting our battles for us. A person who believes in God will get well quicker than they think and the recovery will amaze the doctors. When we walk by faith and not by sight, this allows one to accomplish one’s dreams much faster than we think. Supernatural miracles will come the way of those who love God and have faith. God gives people the strength and power, as He is the one who holds our future in His hands. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 7
You have only just left, are probably settling down in your seat, listening to the train rumble out of London. I am sorry I did not see you to the station. Truly I am. I had no faith in myself. I knew if I had gone to the station with you, I would have held on to you and not let you go. Now, though, I do regret not going, not getting one more chance to see your dear face. I have to admit that, once the tears dried, I was quite angry with you. I suppose I thought I could somehow convince you to stay. If I gave all my love to you, you would not be able to leave. Everything about these past nine days was person. I know that you are in love with me. Never doubt that. Three years of deliberate word choices, neat turns of the phrase, how you looked at me with extra care. I know I had no reason to worry about our meeting. Yet I did. However, those poems I wrote by dim candlelight, as birds roost in the thatch above. I wipe stinging eyes to read your letters, crouched by the smoky swirl of the peat fire. When your eyes met mine across the fire, all my fears melted away. You saw the real me. Now I know my dreams are the stuff of more than imagination. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 7
To see you in the flesh, in colour, is more than I could ever hope for. Did you know your eyes are the exact same blue as the Autumn sky? And you are so much taller than I would have guessed from your photos. Your hair is shorter, yet still invited fingers through all those sandy curls. You seemed so shy when you met me at the Castle, almost as if you did not know me at all. And I could not believe that I could not thin of more than tend words to say to you over lunch. I was so nervous, though, dining at my very first restaurant. So many people, so many forks, and not an oatcake in sight. However, when we walked back to the apartment, when you stopped my words with a kiss that left me breathless, that is when I saw the person I love. That is when I saw the fearless individual who stole my heart. Waking up and seeing that funny startled look in your eyes each morning to find me still there. Falling asleep in your arms with our drowsy conversation in the dark. I collected each word to string together on my lonely nights back. I know you had to leave. Even after all that, even after me, you had to leave. And I hate myself for hating it. I hate myself for wasting a single second of our precious time wishing things could be different. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 7
Of course, I could not tell you any of this in person. I could not say much at all. The very sound of our voices was so…unusual. So banal. I confess I could not wait to get back to my notepaper and pen to tell you how I felt. And to tell you how my mind is collaborating with my heart and my body to make me miss you unbelievably, more than I thought I could. I love you. Stay safe. Stay safe for me. Switch over into faith. Get in agreement with God. Those obstacles trying to hold you back do not have a chance. Nothing can stand against our God. The LORD will indeed give what is good, and our land will yield its harvest. The hotel seems so big and lonely without you (does the room echo or is it just my imagination?). The scent of the oranges lingers in the air and I swear I can still see the shape of you in the mattress. As lovely the hotel is, I shall not be too sad to leave. It is not as lovely when you are not here. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 7
Letters Sur Divers Sujets de Metaphysique et de Religion
Last night, I sat outside the cottage, watching the moon rise, notebook and pencil on my lap. The garden smelled like foxglove and honeysuckle, with, of course, the tangy scent of the sea. It was even cool enough that I was not bothered much by the midges. My son brought me out a thermos flask of tea before he went to bed. I stayed out all night. I had my hot tea and my notebook. Who could want for anything more? The night seemed so alive, so poignant, one of those Scottish nights that make you understand why some still believe in spirits and wee folk. The whole Universe is spiritual in character, the phenomenal World of physics being merely the external manifestation of this spiritual reality. That which to itself is psychical (relating to the human soul or mind; mental) is to others physical. Physics requires us to regard atoms only as centers of force or energy; it is not necessary to suppose them to be material or extended. These atoms are only the simplest elements in a spiritual hierarchy leading up to God. When God planned out your life, He lined up the right people, the right breaks, and the right opportunities. He said yes to that clean bill of health and yes to that promotion. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 7
However, keep in mind, you have to sometimes experienced denial of opportunities before you find that right situation for you. Each level of this hierarchy includes all those levels beneath it, so that God contains the totality of spirits. Consciousness is an essential feature of all that exists, but this assertion does not mean that every physical entity or phenomenon has its own soul. When my father came out to do the milking in the morning, he found me fast asleep on the bench beside the house, “all covered in dew like a fairy,” he said. Now you can see where I get my poetry! Only certain systems, namely, organic wholes, give evidence of soul are the systematic coherence and conformity to law exhibited in the behavior of organic wholes. The Earth is our mother, as such an organic besouled whole. The stars and the physical Universe as a whole are also bodies of this kind. God is the soul of the Universe; He is to the system of nature as that system is to itself. Entities which exhibit the sort of order that our own bodies do may therefore be assumed to be alive and inwardly spiritual as we are. Get up every morning knowing you are anointed. You are equipped. You are empowered. You have everything you need to fulfill your destiny. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 7
I have your picture propped up on my desk as I am writing this, and I am trying to imagine you reading my articles after they are published. Your photographs do not do you justice. I do not think I need to tell you how lovely you look to me. Immortality is based on the observation that many individual experiences which are forgotten or unnoticed may later be recalled into consciousness. If the soul as a whole is treated on the analogy of its individual experiences, then, since these do not vanish utterly but often return in the form of memory, the soul itself may likewise continue to exist in God’s memory. Mind and body are not parallel aspects of some third substance, they are identical. The persistence of mind is therefore no more difficult to entertain than the persistence of the material Universe itself, which is only the outward manifestation of an all-inclusive soul. Right now, God is breathing on your dreams. He is will increase your talent, your resources, and your creativity. This is not the time to shrink back in fear. This is the time to be moved forward in faith. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 7
God knows what He is doing in your life. Maybe a relationship ended, or you were passed over for a promotion, or you lost a loved one. I will never give up on my dream. I know favor is coming. Healing is coming. Promotion is coming. I postponed my wedding and Lara was furious. I told her that it was not fitting to go ahead with the festivities, not with Harry so sick. I do not think she believed it was my only reason. Truth is, I do not either. Mrs. Wendy always said, “if you have a long engagement, it means you have something to think about. An engagement is not the same as marriage.” I did not expect her to be content with they. Do they not say that bad luck comes in threes? If Harry’s illness is the first, and my canceled wedding the second, the third has to be that I was asked to not come back to my teaching position next year. They were very polite about it, but, essentially I was canned. It seems the parents took issue with some atrocities happening in my personal life. Mommy and Daddy did not want their precious darlings to know what a horrible place the World really is. Here I am, trying to educate, and I get sacked for doing it too well. “Stick to the periodic table,” I was told. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 7
Harry rented an apartment after coming back to the States, and I have moved in with him. It is like being in England with him all over again. The other good thing in my life is you. I did not realize the stores of my antics and asinine exploits were so important to you—my Albatross is afloat in a White Squall. I never hoped I could achieve more than a hearty chuckle or round of applause for the stunts I pull. I feel I have a lot to live up to now, but, as always, I am up to the challenge. If you believe—a stimulus must acquire a certain intensity before it can produce pleasure or pain. The effect will then gradually increase until it reaches a maximum point, whereupon it will decrease to the point of indifference. In the case of pleasure but not in that of pain, the effect may, after the maximum is reached, change to its opposite. Since writings to you, something has happened. Harry let Lara into my room to surprise me and she spotted the letter on my desk. She snatched it and read it before I realized what was happening. Lara’s called the engagement off for good, in fact tossed the engagement ring in my wastebasket. She says she fancies I am in love with you and she cannot compete with someone who has been winning all along. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 7
You know, for a girl studying German Literature, who did not yet graduate from graduate school, she is quite smart. Vagueness and ambiguity are aesthetically displeasing, as the principle of clarity announces. The recollection of an event portrayed in some aesthetic object my bring pleasure or displeasure, depending on whether the event reminds us of something pleasant or unpleasant. We have to reconcile an idealistic view of reality with the methodology of modern science and, in so doing, providing some of the groundwork for further developments in a number of areas of experimental psychology. My work has disclosed a mind of poetic sensitivity, and my visions, however, are being subjected to scientific scrutiny. If I had to select one quality, one personal characteristic that I regard as being most highly correlated with success, whatever the field, I would pick the trait of persistence. Determination. The will to endure to the end, to get knocked down fifty-four or fifty-six times and get up off the floor will lead to the achievement of success. Colin Kaepernick may want to take a knee, but I am going for that winning touchdown! #RyanPhillippe 6 of 7
Father, thank you that you know what you are doing in my life. You put a dream in my heart, you have given me a promise on the inside, and deep down I know that I will succeed. There are blessings in my future, and by faith I am looking for them. I will keep looking to you, keep expecting, keep dreaming. My mind is made-up, and I am in it to win it. People will not talk me out of it. I will not give up because it does not happen on my timetable. I will not settle for second best because I have missed a few opportunities. I believe that you will bring me though to my ultimate goal. This is all part of God’s plan to prepare me. I will keep moving forward, being my best, honoring God, being determined and persistent, and God promises me that I will be rewarded in my future. God is going before us to fight our battles and make crooked places straight. Wars of aggression fought in the name of national prestige, territorial aggrandizement and extravagant luxury at court are condemned, not only for the misery they cause for impoverished subjects, but also as evils in themselves. A good king is one whose people enjoy prosperity based on industry and commerce and who accepts the duty of ensuring not only their material but also, through his example, their more welfare. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 7
The Fairies’ Twilight Ball—We Cannot Help Who We Love
Lazy days reading in Parisian cafés, peppered with those bursts of excitement and adventure I love so well. Our desire for anything is always in proportion to the difficulty which attends the attainment of it. Ethical disagreements often follow cultural lines. The cultural tradition is a prime source of the individual’s views and most disagreements in ethics among individuals arise from differences of innate constitution or personal history between the individuals. It is always right to do what will make all affected at least as happy as they could be made by any other possible action. It follows from this principle that in some situations it will be right to lie (for instance, to tell a man that he is not mortally ill when one knows he is, if he cannot bear the truth) and that in other situations it will be wrong to lie. Thus, the rightness of an act is relative to the circumstances because sometimes all people need to survive, recover, or feel good is a little faith. Genius is the activity which repairs the decay of things. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 7
Suppose we think that the only reasonable way to correct a person’s ethical appraisal is to show him or her that it does not coincide with the appraisal one would make if one were vividly informed about all the relevant facts and were impartial in one’s judgment. Some people are simply left cold by the ideal of equality of welfare and others may view it as a basic human right, when both groups have exactly the same beliefs about what equality of welfare is and what its consequences would be. I finished reading the “The Mouse King’s Cheese,” to my niece, who jumped up and down and cried, “’Gain! Read it ‘gain” If I can inspire a similar response in you, I will be satisfied. Our great grandfather fought near the end of the Civil War, and we grew up listening to his stories. That man could spin a tale! No one else could make war sounds unlike war. He enthralled even my son, such that he pasted on a fake mustache and played Rough Riders with me all Summer. I have some things on my mind that I do not want to share. Cheerier thoughts certainly are needed. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 7
Whatever the number of a person’s friends, there will be times in life when one has too few; but if one has only one enemy, one is lucky indeed is one has not one too many. When amicable relations between two people happen to be in jeopardy, there is at least danger of ensuring quarrel if the friendly intercourse has been of the artificial growth. You know, the nights are the worst. I sit by the fire, listening to music or holding an unread book on my lap, and I cannot stop my mind from racing, cannot stop my ears from hearing the tweaker upstairs constantly doing laps in his apartment. I try to go to bed early, so that I do not have to think and feel alone, but I just cannot fall asleep. I admit, I have been pulling out all of your old letters and rereading them, sometimes falling asleep covered in your words. It makes me feel that you are really here and that I am not alone. I can imagine we are talking. By the way, do you realize how pretentious you sounded in your early letters to me? You must have really wished to impress me. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 7
Man has a need of perfection—that is, the fulfillment of both his intellectual and his emotional powers, which indeed are not existentially separate. The more adequate an idea, the more it is pleasing, liberating, and intrinsically human. The culmination of the ethical life—that is, the life devoted to freedom of the intellect—is found in the intellectual love of God. Some people actually recognize the evil of loving. Love drives men and women to suicide, madness, and extremes of sacrifice. Some people enjoy love not for the sake of their beloved, but for the sake of their own self-centered pleasure. It is like a loathing that invades them while satisfying their passion. However, through self-knowledge, people learn to look upon the eternal light and ultimately come to the complete love of God. The fruit of love is knowledge of the divine. My new life is filled with someone guiding me through paradise. Sometimes I seem to be writing in the vein of courtly love, sometimes in the mystical vein, but in both cases love represents a force that attracts people to a nobler life. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 7
However, to suffer because of love appears to be analogous to the sufferings of the martyrs—an abnegation of the self for a value that transcends egoism. Love has the power to free the soul from its bodily prison. Why is it that I am always at a loss for words when you need them the most? If my thoughts of you right now could be put into words so easily, then you would be getting the firmest of epistolary embraces. There are no constrains on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect. Courage is a door that can only be opened from the inside. Father, thank you. You are the God who is more than enough. This is my year to go to a new level. This is my year to see a supernatural increase. I am making room for your far-and-beyond favor. I am positioned under the open windows of Heaven with my heart, mind, body, and soul to be filled by your love. Do a new work in me, take me beyond the barriers of the past, and help me to step into the abundance you have in store. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 7
God has a mansion of blessings stored up for us. Do not let a limited mind-set hold one back. Although we cannot see how it will happen, God has a way. Take off the limits and make room for him to do something new, we will go beyond the barriers of the past and step into the abundance God has in store. When God puts a promise in our hearts, we have to come to the place where we believe that promise so strongly no one and no circumstance can move us. A medical report may say there is no way one will get well. It may look like one will never have enough money. All the circumstances may indicate that one will never accomplish one’s dreams, never meet the right person, or never see your family restored. However, deep down you have got to have this unshakable confidence—a knowing that God is on the Throne working on our behalf, so that we go out each day with passion, with expectancy, and looking for the great things God has in store. If you consider only the negatives, you will be discouraged and doubt will creep in, keeping you from God’s best. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 7
Do not focus on the negative things in life that experts or one’s mind are saying. Do not worry about how big your problems are. Instead, focus on how big my God is. He spoke the World into existence. He flung the stars into space. He is not limited by the natural. He has supernatural power. With the love that moves the Sun and the other stars, identify that with your own lobe and with the love that the cosmos has for its Creator. When we focus on God instead of on our circumstances, doubt, fear, anxiety, and negativity do not have a chance. Make God bigger than the problems of life and they will become smaller. When we magnify God instead of magnifying our difficulties, faith rises in our hearts. That faith will keep us fully persuaded that God will make a way, even though we cannot see a way. And the beauty is that God will show us amazing things. Neither fighting nor being alone is how I hope to spend my Christmas this year. When we touch hands across the miles, at the stroke of midnight, it will make it all more bearable. I will close my eyes and stand still as I try to remember just how your fingers press on my shoulder, how your hair tickles my chin, how your body measures the length of mine. I caught the faint smell of flowers and has the wild thought that perhaps it worked, that, for a brief moment, our spirits had somehow transcended the distance between us. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 7
The Dishes are Done–The Glorious System of Necessity
The murderous, stalking darer I never told you about seems to have risen from Hell. The liberty or freedom of a moral agent is the power one has over the determinations of his or her own will—a power of acting or not acting according to the determinations of the will. Nothing happens without a cause, everything that changes is changed either by some other thing or by itself. Not all causes, then, are antecedent and external causes. Some things, such as humans, are sometimes the causes of their own behavior. Humans are beings are an agent—namely, they are beings who act, not merely the one acted upon. To speak of an agent being caused to act by something other than oneself is a contradiction, so that acting freely amounts to the same thing, whereas the idea of a necessary agent amounts to a contradiction. A cause is not merely some change that always accompanies another. It is always something that has the power to produce a change, whether in itself or in something else, and no one can understand any philosophical definition of a cause if one did not first have the idea of causation from the awareness of oneself as an agent. #RandolphHarris 1 of 12
My dad has been quite pleasant. However, I think if I have a fear, it would be my father. I eventually did stand up to him about going into medicine, but if I had not does as poorly as I did my last semester, I would not have had such an easy time of it. Even after all of this talk about me “becoming a man,” I still live under his roof, like a child, obeying his rules. He does not approve of anything I do or anyone I do it with. I have always found it funny that my friend Harris is the one person my dad should approve of but in actuality is the person he disapproves of the most. Harry has to be one of my oldest friend. We went to school together as children, pored over my father’s anatomy texts, went on our first dates together under the philosophy of “safety in numbers.” Harry’s family moves in the same social circles, he is actually completing his medical studies, he is absolutely brilliant, he is flawlessly polite. What could my father find fault with? It has been quite a few years since Harry set off for Oxford. We write back and forth—not nearly as much as I would like to—and I am looking forward to seeing him. #RandolphHarris 2 of 12
It is fairly common to suppose that an individual’s acts—in fact, must act—in response of one’s strongest motive and that voluntary behavior is therefore always causally determined by such motives. Philosophical determinists frequently fall into this line of thought, sometimes substituting strongest desire for strongest motive. I have spent the past four years working on two case studies. Both were men in their forties who were deeply troubled and showed extreme mental problems. In both cases, I found that trying to teach these men compassion, love, responsibility, and reciprocity actually only makes them more dependent and they simply go from being hostile, angry, and antisocial to becoming dependent, sarcastic, and sinister. With both test subjects, I saw early into the case study that they were a waste of time. However, one really started to go off the deep end and the other threatened suicide, so I got stuck with each one, two years at a time. Although these men were in their forties, both behaved like one would expect a teen age boy. Case study A, we will call “Homeboy” and case study B we will call “Philer Date.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 12
Homeboy is a drug addict, does not have a car, has a job, but engages in illegal activities, which his employers seem to condone and defend. He does not seem to know boundaries, has poor hygiene, and displays a lack of respect for others. His attire is not professional and he seems to use every person he comes into contact with for their assets and like a bad youth, when he does not get his way, he starts to get aggressive, sneaky, and will damage your assets and spread rumors and stalk you. Philer Date and Homeboy actually work for the same corporation and their employers know these men are troubled and do nothing to reprimand them. Philer Date started off a hostile and aggressive, but after a few months of behavioral therapy, he lightened up, but as I worked with him more, he seemed to just manipulate and use me. As Philer Date aged, he actually went from being a professional to looking more like a thug. I guess he is having a midlife crisis. He also uses every person he comes into contact with, thinks like it a joke, and never does anything good or beneficial to those who help him. From my dealing with Philer Date and Homeboy, I think it is clear, once men are in their forties and display serious mental problems, they are helpless. #RandolphHarris 4 of 12
Any supposition of acting without adequate motive leads at once to a self-contradiction; for we always judge of strength of mote by the action that prevails and, further, the action which follows upon deliberation testifies which motive has in the end proved strongest. You cannot help them no matter how much understand you give them, nor how much they beg for help. Using psychology, philosophy, and religion did not help at all. Unlikely teens or youth who know they must modify their behavior or be punished, men in their forties have lived all of the lives being slick and hustling, and all you do by trying to help them is inflate their sense of self important, teach them to become more slick and cunning and make them dependent on you to the point if you cut them off they will try to hurt you. Both men had daily behavioral therapy for two years each, mostly every day and were taught to use logic, but I do not think it helped them become better people. They do seem to be less hostile and polite to people they do not know, but still think life is a game and when you try to help them, it is almost as if they look at you like their parent and do not care what danger they put you in because they believe you can deal with it. It seems that their strongest desire for strongest motive is well illustrated. #RandolphHarris 5 of 12
They probably used to be animals in a past life, and that is why their souls are so unruly and disobedient. In the absence of prohibition, [an agent’s] decision follows the strongest motive; being in fact only test of strength of motive on the whole. Most rational beings commonly experience the feeling of being strongly motivated to do some things from which we nevertheless refrain from purely for sane considerations, for example, or perhaps from moral ones. Philer Date and Homeboy are both of the dominant group in America, and therefore are generally less scrutinized than others, and grew up privileged and led privileged lives, and have never really been punished for their bad and unlawful behavior, and as a result, they never grew up. These men can be very chamming and know how to maneuver their way through society and manipulate people very well. A motive is not a cause but a rational consideration of reason. As such, it is something purely abstract, which has strength or weakness only in the sense of expressing wisdom, prudence, or the opposite. For these case studies, a conflict of motives is nothing at all like the conflict of opposing forces, one of which overcomes the other by superior force. It is more to be likened to the conflicting pleas of contending attorneys. One of these can be stronger or have the force or weight than the other only in the sense that it is more reasonable and persuasive. #RandolphHarris 6 of 12
Some human acts are reasonable and intelligible and independent of whether they are caused, and there is no absurdity in describing an action as both free, in the sense of being avoidable and not the effect of antecedent conditions, and rational. Men often do certain things in order to achieve certain results, and this appears to distinguish human behavior of inanimate things in a fundamental way. Desires, purposes, and intentions are, moreover, desires for this or that is caused by one’s purpose, desire or intention. The connection is conceptual rather than casual. Being part of a privileged class and never taking responsibility or being punished for one’s actions can lead to mental problems later in life and an inability to mature. Thus, they are what we sometimes called intentional concepts, and there seems to be nothing that completely corresponds to them in the realm of physical science. No inanimate thing, for example, can without metaphor be spoken of as behaving as it does in response to its desire for something which perhaps has never and never will exist, and no engineer who speaks in this manner of even the most sophisticated machine would ever suppose that he had thus given a causal explanation of anything. #RandolphHarris 7 of 12
More and more philosophers are inviting attention to certain fundamental differences between the way men view the past and future. The future, some have wanted to suggest, is a realm of possibilities in a sense in which the past is not. The idea that anything goes and is acceptable in modern times it counterproductive. Allowing a certain group of men to have privilege and escape punishment and emulate behavior of people who have had hard lives and group up on the streets and faced gang violence is not cool. There is a fundamental difference between finding something true and making something become true, a contention that renders the concept of action more fundamental than it was once supposed to be and raises anew the question of what is meant by acting freely. Tattoos tend to be gang related and are not acceptable. People who have their skin littered with ink generally do not make good professionals. Also, men in their forties, wearing street attire, such as baseball cap, tee shirts, and shorts or genes every day, much like you learned in home economics are dangerous men, cannot be taken seriously and are not worth going into business with nor are they suitable for a relationship with anyone who has goals or aspirations. These people usually have drug problems, mental problems or are engaged in unethical, unlawful, and extremely risky behavior. #RandolphHarris 8 of 12
All people who are of the dominant and privileged class are not bad, nor should they all be judged the same. Some really earn their place in society and deserve everything they have earned and more. The question is whether people have free will is concealed in a vast array of more fundamental questions, the answers to which are largely unknown. However, men and women in their forties, who deviant and immature are a lot like children who suffer from conduct disorder—you cannot love, council, reason with, nor medicate the devil out of them. If they are expected to become good people you either need to spank them or make them suffer extreme consequences so they learn that bad behavior will not be tolerated. God could create no World but the best and by allowing these people to be disobedient and break the law, you are robbing them of their free will and the chance to go to Heaven because they are sinners and will never do right because no one is teaching them how to behave. The human agent may be sad to determine in his or her will, what will happen in a process he or she monitors and manipulates. If you love your children, you will punish them and even when they become adults, you have a right to chastise them. #RandolphHarris 9 of 12
Many Christians estimate difficulties in the light of their own resources, and thus attempt little and often fail in the slight challenge. All God’s giants have been weak people who did great things for God because they reckoned on His power and presence with them. God has great things in store for His people; they ought to have large expectations. God has Himself all power to defend you, all wisdom to direct you, all mercy to pardon you, all grace to enrich you, all righteousness to clothe you, all goodness to supply you, and all happiness to crown you. Father God, I may not see how it can happen, but I know You have explosive blessings coming my way. Thank You that You make rivers in the desert and streams in barren places. I am expecting a sudden, widespread increase. I am expecting to rise to a new level. I believe that I will see the surpassing greatness of Your favor and blessings that will catapult me years head. My hopes and dreams are in your hands. I trust You. Where you are is not permanent. God has explosive blessings in your future. Blessings that will blast you to a new level. Immeasurable, limitless, surpassing favor is coming that will take you beyond previous limitations. #RandolphHarris 10 of 12
We all have things in our lives that seem permanent. Maybe it looks like you will never get out of debt, or like you will stay at the same earning level the rest of your life. However, just as the builders used dynamite to blast away the rock so they could create that mountain road to Hearst Castle, God has explosive blessings that will remove obstacles, which may look permanent now. One touch of God’s favor can blast you out of debt. One good break can blast you to a new level. All the facts may be telling you that it is impossible that things will improve, but God has ways to increase you that you have never dreamed of. He is saying: You need to get ready. I have explosive (sudden, widespread increase) blessings coming your way. I will take you higher. I will increase you beyond your income. I will suddenly change things for the better in your life. That is what God will do for you. Suddenly, you are not expecting anything. It is out of the ordinary. It is not small. It is not mediocre. It is widespread increase. It is so amazing you will know it is the hands of God. #RandolphHarris 11 of 12
I have learned that God does not always take us ahead in normal increments. There are times where God takes us little by little. We have to be faithful day in and day out, but when you hit an explosive blessing instead of moving up from seven to eight, you will go from seven to thirty-four. That is widespread increase. This is the generation for the surpassing of greatness of God’s favor. The economy in Heaven is doing just fine. As long as we stay connected to the vine, putting out trust in Him, then you and I are connected to a supply line that will never run dry. Release your faith for extraordinary blessings. Believe that you can break out of what is holding you back and become everything God created you to be. Incredible power is released when we believe. God will not permit any troubles to come upon us, unless He has a specific plan by which great blessings can come out of the difficulty. #RandolphHarris 12 of 12
The Illuminationist and Interrupted Glimmerings of the Light of Truth
Christmas is coming up soon and it is one of my favourite holidays. I make a marvelous Christmas pudding! It is similar to the fruitcake my mother insists on making for us each Christmas. The woman does not set foot into the kitchen all year, unless it is to make a last-minute change to the menu. However, every year, as the Christmas season approaches, she dons a lace-edged apron about as effective as a paper cake doily and waves all the staff out of the kitchen. Mother emerges hours later, hair floured, a smear of molasses on her cheek, and a shine in her eyes that could only be brought about by “sampling” the brandy, but victoriously bearing a fruitcake. It generally has the appearance, textures, and taste of a caramel sundae, and we all eat a hearty slice on Christmas Eve. The joy we had last year. Ava was eating my delightful Christmas pudding. Both Deacon and Tennessee insisted on examining the box I had sent, to make sure I was not holding out on the. Even father begged for more. When my mother asked, with the air of jealous mistress, how this pudding compared to her fruitcake, we were quick to reassure her, “Oh, the Christmas pudding is good, but it is very…you know…British.” We left her to interpret just what that meant. Some prophets receive this symbolic knowledge directly from the celestial souls. Such reception involves the prophet’s imaginative facility. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
The holiday was peaceful. I regret to say that last year Santa Claus did not leave a kettle for me, but I did get a splendid new tennis racket. I could not hardly wait until the snow thawed to try it out. Ava stitched a beautiful bookmark that reads, “A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.” And my father presented me with a watch, a gold number with a thick chain. He told me it was his father’s watch and his father’s before him. “Now that you are a man, Ryan,” says he, “and have some direction in your life, you will need something to help guide you. You know where to go, but now you will know when to when to go.” I have a sharp mind that can be wielded like any sharp weapon. The human soul and the rational knowledge it acquires are emanations from the Active Intelligence, which is an entity existing independently of humans, coming from the Divine Source known as God. As such, the body receives the soul and the soul receives rational knowledge. Certain combinations of formed matter induce the reception of Active Intelligence of the vegetative soul. The soul is immortal. If one was to come into being fully mature and rational but suspended in space so that he or she was totally unaware of his or her physical circumstances, one would still be certain of a single thing—his or her existence as an individual self. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
In a higher form of prophecy that is intellectual, the prophets from the celestial intellects not only the first intelligibles, without the need of the soul’s preparatory activities, but also the demonstrative knowledge involving the internal and external senses—sensation, memory, imagination, estimation, and cogitation, or imaged thinking. Prophetic reception of knowledge thus differs from the philosophical in manner. It also differs in quantity. The prophet receives all or most of the intelligibles from the Active Intelligence all at once. This intellectual revelation is then translated into the language of imagery and divulged to the public. It includes the basic commands of the revealed law, without which man or woman as a political animal cannot survive. Hence, divine goodness must reveal the law at certain moments of discussion through the prophets. Prophecy is thus necessary in the sense that it is required for the survival of civilized society and in the sense that it is necessitated by the divine nature. This is all part of the mystic’s spiritual journey to God: Beginning with faith and motivated by desire and love, the mystic undertakes spiritual exercises that first being him or her to interrupted glimmerings of the light of Truth. These experiences become progressively more frequent and durable until the stage of arrival is reached, in which the mystic has a direct and an uninterrupted vision of God. If you heed the voice of God, all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
God’s gifts put human’s best dreams to shame. We have forgotten the gracious hands which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessing were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. It is interesting that people take credit for all of the good things in life, but what they do something ungodly, they refuse to take responsibility. This is known as the causality of freedom. Human freedom is categorical or such that their actions are not entirely determined by factors which they have no control. Causation is constant conjunction; humans, when acting voluntarily, always act in accordance with their strongest desires and aversions; justice, morality, and the administration of the laws all require such casual determination of behavior, and so on. However, it seems some people are only helpless products of an impersonal nature who govern neither themselves nor anything else but are simply carried along to whatever destinies the circumstances of their lives inflict upon them. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
The unconscious is the master of every fate and the captain of every soul. Typical cases are quite well understood by psychiatrists—the man who uses someone and puts his life in danger so he can get TV show and keep paying his bills, while he gets free publicity by emotional manipulating a kind soul. The compulsive gambler who always plays until he loses, the man who inwardly loves filth and so washes his hands constantly, the mother who lets her child perish of illness on the train because she “must get to her destination,” and so in. We can, if we are honest and sophisticated, see our own lives and conduct partially mirrored and perhaps begin to have some inkling of the unconscious, deeply hidden but powerful forces which almost entirely determine what we are and what we do. Father in Heaven, I know you are the God of Acceleration, and if you transformed water into wine in a split second for the wedding party centuries ago, I know you can accelerate things in my life. Thank you for taking me further faster. I know you will thrust me years ahead. I want to thank you thank you that I will accomplish my dreams sooner than I think. God is about to release everything that belongs to you. It will happen sooner than you think. It will be bigger than you imagined. He will bring out gifts and talents you did not even know you had. He will open up new doors of opportunity. God loves to do exceedingly, abundantly, above and beyond. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
