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By what Magic Could this be Done and One’s Peace Remain, One’s Sanity Kept?
The basic fact of today is the tremendous pace of change in human life. If an artist, though one’s disclosed experience, induces a viewer to imagine new possibilities of action; if one broadens and deepens a human’s understanding of some aspect of the World; if one alters a human’s experience and concept of oneself—one is thereby mediating growth of the other. This change in the other will mediate changed behavior—as, voting behaviour, interpersonal behaviour. This all produces consequences in the social order. If an artist can be invalidated, by being regarded as a mad-person, then one’s message may be kept from the World. It likely takes courage to be an artist. One’s beneficent spiritual influence may profoundly affect others to the point of revolutionizing their attitude of life, yet one may be unaware of both the influence and its effect! The part of one’s mind which knows what is happening is not the true source of the grace; this flows through one and is not created by one. Let us not ascribe to the ordinary human of self what belongs to God. The mystical phenomena, the “inner” experiences engendered by an adept, are done though one, not by one. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Help comes, inspiration is derived, peace is felt, and the support of moral fortitude is obtained without personal intervention by the self-actualized or without even one’s personal knowledge of the matter. It is automatic, a response from grace to faith. The catalyst which by its presence enables chemical elements to change their forms does not itself change. In the same way the illuminate may be used by higher forces to affect, influence, or even change others without any active personal move on one’s part to being about this result. One may not even feel, see, or know what is happening, yet one has started it! One is an agent for the work of Providence, a carrier of its messages and forces. At times one is used with one’s conscious knowledge and acceptance but at other times without them. In a way, artists, at least in America as Henry Miller experienced and described it, need a certain measure of protection, if they are to flourish. It is not too farfetched to say that artists experience the World vicariously for the philistine. Just as people with strangled imaginations let the comics, movies, social media, and TV do their imagination for them, so an artist whose work is allocated to the museum and art gallery is doing imagining for other people. People go for a titivating peek now and then, only to return to sameness. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
If producing and surviving artists are protected, or learn to protect themselves so they can survive and get on with their work, it is also true that the public is somehow shielded from the possible impact of an artist’s work on its consciousness. Public education is such as to insure that poetry, painting, drama, and innovations in the novel and dancing will not be sampled. They are the fare of oddballs, snobs, the avant-garde, who are not to be taken seriously by practical humans, and good fellows who stay busy, as they ought. If an artist’s work does see the light of day, it most assuredly reaches the consciousness of only the few. The layperson, trained and brainwashed to be suspicious of any innovations in one’s experience, feels comfortable only with the cliché. One’s patronage of the arts is limited to TV, Sports Illustrated pinups, Instagram, movies, popular tunes, and the poetry page of the Saturday Evening Post, which is not a magazine calculated to awaken people to enlightenment about their socioeconomic system. Take any art form, and ask is I designed to enlarge and stretch human consciousness, or does it function so as to keep people with their experiencing modes and habits confirmed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Look at architecture, automobiles, matchbook covers, the sounds on radio and music streaming—the media for expression. The artists’ consciousness is separated from all these possible sources of encounter with one’s fellow human, the philistine who is asleep. Much occult phenomena of the adept is performed without one’s conscious participation and above one’s personal knowledge, as when various people claim to be aware of receiving help from one which one as no recollection of having given. It is God which is really giving the help, their contact with one being merely like the switch which turns on a light. However, a switch is not the same as the electric current which, in this simile, represents God. Yet a switch is not less necessary in its own place. If one does not use it, a person may grope in vain around a dark room and not find what one is seeking there. The contact with an adept turns some of the power that the adept is oneself in touch with into the disciple’s direction. The flick of a switch is done in a moment, whereas the current of light may flow into the light bulb for many hours. The contact with an adept takes a moment, but the spiritual current may emanate from one for many years, even for a lifetime. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Just as in the ordinary person’s deep sleep no ego is working, so this is the perfect and highest state because no ego is working here either. It reproduces deep sleep by eliminating egotism but transcends deep sleep by retaining consciousness. Thus it brings the benefit without the spiritual blankness of deep sleep into the waking state. If it be said, in criticism of one’s unawareness of so much occult phenomena manifesting in one’s name, that this lessens one’s mental stature, one must answer that it also preserves one’s mental sanity. How, with a thousand devotees, could one be attending to all of them at one and the same time? By what magic could this be done and one’s peace remain, one’s sanity be kept? God alone knows all things in a mysterious everywhereness and everywhereness. How could one be as God and yet remain as human, much more deal with other humans? For all occult phenomena belong to the World of finite form, time and space, not to the World of infinite spirit, to illusion and not to reality And, if, in further criticism, it be said that one’s unawareness makes one seem weaker than an adept should be, one can only answer humbly that because one has surrendered one’s personal rights one is weaker and more helpless than the most ordinary human, that one’s situation was tersely described in Jesus’ confession, “I have no power in myself, but only from the Father.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
The strain of these hundreds of questioning, eager, demanding, struggling, and perhaps suffering minds constantly directed toward one’s own would be so tremendous if one had to bear it in the ordinary way that one’s own mind would creak under it. One is given n rest from one’s task. However, one’s extraordinary attainment provides one’s protection. They reach one mostly through the subconscious self, which automatically takes care of them and leaves one free of the burden. The message or the manifestation may, on the surface, appear to come directly from the master. This may be quite true n some bases but it could not possibly be true in all cases. If it were, then one would have to look in a dozen different direction every minute of every day. However, the fact is that one helps most people with being consciously and directly aware of them. There is magical power in the thoughts of such a human. The mind, the being, the eh in one being mastered, many other things become mastered as a consequence. Do God’s will as if it were thy will, that He may do thy will as if it were His will. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Annul thy will before God’s will, that He may annul the will of others before thy will. Jesus put in somewhat differently: “Seek ye first the kingdom of Heaven and all these things shall be added you. Ask whatsoever ye will and it shall be done unto you” Those religionists who take the latter cannot properly be said of persons who have not attained sufficient mastery of self, who give nothing from within themselves except wishes and the words which clothe them. One may well be unaware how subtly the force is working within one until one begins to notice its effects on others, as they themselves draw attention to it. Such is the wonderful infinite of the soul that the human who succeeds in identifying one’s everyday consciousness with it, succeeds also in making one’s influence and inspiration felt in any part of the World where there is someone who puts faith in one and gives devotion to one. One’s bodily presence of visitation is not essential. The soul is one’s real self and operates on subconscious levels. Whoever recognizes this truth and humbly, harmoniously, places oneself in a passive receptive attitude towards the spiritual adept, find a source of blessed help outside one’s own limited powers. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
One takes no credit to oneself for these things. One feels one is only an instrument. All that one can do is to invoke the higher power, and it is this which makes these things possible. It is not really any power of one’s own that does it. However, quite often one does not even have to invoke the power—and yet these things will happen all the same. Nevertheless, one’s followers are not attributing power to one which one does not possess. For these happenings, after all, occur only as the result of the contact with one. One knows that in some mysterious way one is the link between the power and the event. Although the master may not directly transmit the message or prompt the manifestation, one does exercise an influence which indirectly cases this to happen and indicated the direction in which it is to happen. The power to inspire or comfort others can operate without one’s personal awareness and even without one’s own consent. Sometimes it will manifest itself merely as if one were present and close, to be felt but not seen mentally. Sometimes, a like form of one’s body or face will appear to the mind’s eye along with this same feeling. Those whom one never meets but who direct their thought and faith towards one, receive inspiration automatically. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
The impact of one’s personality helps those whom one does meet, if they are sympathetic, but often without one’s even being aware of it. It is not necessary for one to preach and sermonize others. Sometimes in a purely secret and unnoticed way, sometimes in a half-conscious way, those who cross one’s path temporarily and those who associate with one permanently fell that the good id being strengthened in them. This is one’s silent service. Just by being oneself, without preaching, without trying, the self-actualized may awaken in others whose lives touch one’s a longing for the higher life. One has a peculiar power which acts upon the subconscious minds of those who have any contact or association with one. I am reminded here of an ingenious plan outlined by Alexander Trocchi, a British novelist and poet. He has described “Project Sigma, a revolutionary proposal for an invisible insurrection of a million minds.” He speaks, not of a political revolution, but f a cultural coup de monde. “The cultural revolt must seize the grids of expression and the power houses of the mind,” as Trotsky seized the railway station and powerhouses while the police guarded the Kremlin. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Trocchi continues: “Intelligence must become self-conscious, realize its own power and dare to exercise it. What is to be seized is not an arsenal nor a capital city, but ourselves (the million or so creative, artistic consciousness which presently are in contact with Every human only through the mediation and monitoring of middle-business people, politicians, establishment people who insure that only those products of consciousness reach Every human after they have first been assessed for money-earning power, and political asepsis). We reject the ideal of a frontal attack. Mind cannot withstand brute force in open battle. It is rather a question of perceiving what are the forces that are at work in the World and out of whose interaction must come to be; and by a kind of mental ju-jitsu that is ours by virtue of intelligence, modifying, correcting, polluting, deflecting, corrupting, eroding, outflanking, inspiring, what we might call the invisible insurrection. It will come on the mass of humans, if it comes at all, not as something they voted for or fought for, but like the changing season. Contemporary humans expect to be entertained; art is something of which the majority seldom things, expect derisively. This sorry state of affairs is unconsciously sanctioned (even fostered, I add) by the stubborn philistinism of cultural institutions. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
“Museums have approximately the same hours of business as churches, the same sanctimonious orders and silences, and a snobbish presumption in direct spiritual opposition to the vital people whose works are closeted there. What have those silent corridors to do with Rembrant, and the no smoking signs to do with Van Gogh? Art can have no existential significance for civilization that draws a line between life and art and collects artifacts like ancestral bones for reverence. Art must inform the living; we envisage a situation in which life is continually renewed (I would say consciousness is continually renewed and expanded) by art, a situation imaginatively and passionately constructed to inspire each individual to respond creatively. We envisage it, but it is we, now, who must create it. For it does not exist.” Trocchi points out that the political-economic structure of Western society is such that the gears of creative intelligence mesh with those of power such that creative intelligence is prohibited from initiating anything, and it acts only at the behest of vested interests that are antipathetic toward it. Trocchi suggest that the creative intelligences must have control of their means of expression, by eliminating the brokers. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
How to being?—asks Torcchi. At a chosen moment in a vacant country house not far from London, he proposes to foment a kind of cultural “jam session.” Out of this will evolve the prototype of a spontaneous university. The building will be large enough for a pilot group of astronauts of inner space to situation itself, the entire site to allow for spontaneous architecture and eventual town planning. The adventure, in a capitalist society, must pay. Trocchi envisions an agency to handle all the work of individuals associated with the university. Art is fantastically profitable, but it is not the creators who reap the benefits. An agency founded by the creators and operated by highly paid professional could harvest new talent long before professional agencies were aware it existed. He envisions an international organization with branch universities all over the World, near every capital city, autonomous, unpolitical, economically independent. Resident professors will be creators; staff and students international. Membership in one branch entitles one to membership in others, travel being encouraged. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
The object of each branch is to supercharge the cultural life of each capital city as it promotes cultural exchange internationally, and function as a nonspecialized experimental school and creative workshop. Each branch serves as the nucleus of an experimental town to which people will be attracted; and after a stay, they will derive a renewed and infectious sense of life. The economic structure would come from commissions on sales of original work; money from patents and applications; retail income from a museum restaurant, music performances, et cetera; and fees and gifts and subsidies. Trocchi concludes: “The cultural possibilities of this movement are immense, and time is ripe for it. The World is awfully near to the brink of disaster. Scientist, artist, teachers, creative people of good will everywhere are in suspense. Waiting. Remembering that it is our kind of expression, we should have no difficulty in recognizing the spontaneous university as the possible detonator of the invisible insurrection.” Alexander Trocchi’s vision and the beginnings at an action-blueprint seem to me to be prophetic, and even practical. Certainly, if my analysis of the phenomenology of being-an-artist is sound, there must be implications for growth of persons exposed to art, and repercussions on the structure of society. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
I think we need to produce and live in a spiritual and professional World, where other people and the material surroundings have a consciousness-expanding effect upon us, awakening the artist in all of us, unifying our heard with our hearts and bodies and our imaginations with our feelings and intellect, and bringing an artistic dimension into everything we do and are. The alternative is to be a turned-off, useful tool, or an impotent, ignored or martyred creator whose creations collect dust. The heart (will, spirit) is precisely what God observes and addresses in human beings. He cares little or nothing for outward show. He responds to the heart because it is, above all, who we are: who we choose and have chosen to be. What God wants of us can only come from there. He respects the centrality of our will and will not override it. God seeks Godly character in us and for us, to fulfill the eternal destiny He has in mind for us. However, on the other hand, God is sensitive to the slightest move of the heart toward Him. This is the witness of both the Bible and of life. It does not matter whether you are “religious” or not (“Jew” or “Greek”), for “The same one is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call upon Him; for ‘Whoever will call upon the nae of the LORD will be saved,’” reports Romans 10.12-13. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Multitudes of people have come to a full knowledge of God because in a moment of complete hopelessness they prayed “The Atheist’s Prayer” or something like it: “O God, if there is a God, save my soul if I have a soul.” When that is the true cry of the heart, of the inmost spirit of the individual, who has no longer any hope other than God, God hears and responds without fail. It is as if he has a “heart monitor” installed in every person. And when the heart truly reaches out to God as God, no longer looking to itself or others, he responds with the gift f “life from above.” In fact, God is constantly looking for people who will worship him “in spirit and in truth.” What does it mean? It means people who have freehearted and wholehearted admiration, respect, and commitment to God as the highest being of all. They never try to conceal anything from Him and always reply completely on Him. God is actively seeking such people, whoever they may turn out to be. God is spirit, we recall, and nothing is hidden from him. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
So those who worship God must worship Him and spirit and therefor in truth. “Yet time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and His worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth,” reports John 4.23-24. At the level of the human spirit, nothing can be hidden. Lying always depends upon the use of our body. “And verily I say unto you, I give unto you a sign, that ye may know the time when these things shall be about to take place—that I shall gather in, from their long dispersion, my people, O house of Israel, and shall establish again among them my Zion: and behold, that is the thing which I will give unto you for a sign—for verily I say unto you that when these things which I declare unto you, and which I shall declare unto you hereafter of myself, and by the power of the Holy Ghost which shall be given unto you of the Father, shall be made known unto the Gentiles that they may know concerning this people who are a remnant of the hose of Jacob, and concerning this my people who shall be scattered by them; verily, verily, I say unto you, when these things shall be made known unto them of the Father, and shall come forth of the Father, from them unto you; #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
“For it is wisdom in the Father that they should be established in this land, and be set up as a free people by the power of the Father, that these things might come forth from them unto a remnant of your seed, that the covenant of the Father may be fulfilled which he hath covenanted with his people, O house of Israel; therefore, when these words and the works which shall be wrought among you hereafter shall come forth from the Gentiles, unto your seed which shall dwindle in unbelief because of the iniquity; for thus it behooveth the Father that it should come forth from the Gentiles, that he may show forth his power unto the Gentiles, for this cause that the Gentiles, if they will not harden their hearts, that they may repent and come unto me and be baptized in my name and know of the true points of my doctrine, that they may be numbered among my people, O house of Israel; and when these things come to pass that they seed shall be a sign unto them, that they may know that the work of the Father hath already commenced unto the fulfilling of the covenant which he hath made unto the people who are of the house of Israel. And when that day shall come, it shall come to pass that kings shall shut their mouths; for that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which they had not heard shall they consider. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
“For in that day, for my sake shall the Father work a work, which shall be a great and a marvelous work among them those who will not believe it, although a human shall declare it unto them. However, behold, the life of my servant shall be in my hand; therefore they shall not hurt one, although one shall be marred because of them. Yet will heal one, for I will show unto them that my wisdom is greater than the cunning of the devil. Therefore it shall come to pass that whosoever will not believe in my words, who am Jesus Christ, which the Father shall cause one to bring forth unto the Gentiles, and shall give unto him power that he shall bring them forth unto the Gentiles, (it shall be done even as Moses said) they shall be cut off from among my people who are of the covenant. And my people who are a remnant of Jacob shall be among the Gentiles, yea, in the midst of them as a lion among the beasts of the forest, as a young lion among the flocks of sheep, who, if he go through both treadeth down and teareth in pieces, and none can deliver. Their hand shall be lifted up upon their adversaries, and all their enemies shall be cut off. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
“And I will cut off the cities of thy land, and throw down all thy strongholds; and I will cut off witchcrafts out of thy land, and thou shalt have no more soothsayers; thy graven images I will also cut off, and thy standing images out of the midst of thee, and thou shalt no more worship the works of thy hands; and I will pluck up thy groves out of the midst of thee; so will I destroy thy cities. And it shall come to pass that all lyings, and deceivings, and envyings, and strifes, prestcrafts, and whoredomes, shall be done away. For it shall come to pass, saith the Father, that at that say whosoever will not repent and come unto my Beloved Son, them will I cut off from among my people, O house of Israel; and I will execute vengeance and fury upon them, even as upon the heathen, such as they have not heard. However, if they will repent and hearken unto my words, and harden not their hearts, I will establish my church among them, and they shall come in unto the covenant and be numbered among this the remnant of Jacob, unto whom I have given this land and for their inheritance; and they shall assist my people, the remnant of Jacob, and also as many of the house of Israel as shall come, that they may build a city, which shall be called the New Jerusalem. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“And then shall they assist my people that they may be gathered in, who are scattered upon all the face of the land, in unto the New Jerusalem. And then shall the power of Heaven come down among them; and I also will be in the midst. And then shall the work of the Father commence at that day, even when this gospel shall be preached among the remnant of this people. Verily I say unto you, at that day shall the work of the Father commence among all the dispersed of my people, yea, even the tribes which have been lost, which the Father hath led away out of Jerusalem. Yea, the work shall commence among all the dispersed of my people, with the Father to prepare the way whereby they may come unto me, that they may call on the Father in my name. Yea, and then shall the work commence, with the Father among all the nations in preparing the way whereby his people may be gathered home to the land of their inheritance. And they shall go out from all nations; and they shall not go out in haste, nor go by flight, for I will go before them, saith the Father, and I will be their rearward,” reports 3 Nephi 21.1-29. You who guide travelers, please slide me through traffic. You who grant patience, please help me calmly wait. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
The ship reaches its haven. The wagon reaches its home. Today’s journey is over and all can rest. Those who have guided the Sun in its journey: Thank you. May you guide me as well. Great blackness, promiser of mysteries, bringer of dreams: greeting to you, Father Night, as you cast your blanket over the World. “I am about to fulfill the precept of the counting of the Omer, as it is written in the Law: Ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the day of rest, from the day that ye brought an omer of grain as a wave-offering, seven complete weeks they shall be; until the morrow of the seventh week shall ye number fifty days,” reports Leviticus 23.15. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God Ruler of the Universe, who hast sanctified us by Thy precepts and hast enjoined upon us the counting of the Omer. This is the first day of the mer. This is the sixth day of the Omer. This is the seventh day, making one week of the Omer. May the All-merciful restore worship in the Temple on its ancient site. May it be Thy will, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, to grant our portion in Thy Torah and may the Temple be rebuilt in our day. There will serve Thee with awe as in the days of old. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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Cast Upward, through the Waves, a Ruby Glow!
I have called the major crisis of adolescence the identity crisis; it occurs in that period of the life cycle when each youth must forge for oneself some central perspective and direction, some working unity, out of the effective remnants of one’s childhood and the hopes of one’s anticipated adulthood. If I engage in conversation with you, in dialogue; and if you disclose your experience of yourself and of me to me in truth—then I must be letting change happen and be disclosed to us both. If I reflect upon my experience of the dialogue, I must notice that I am different from the way I was when we began the dialogue. However, if I have (as it were) pledged myself to appear before you and to myself as this kind of human and no other, then my intentional disclosures to you will be very selective. Perhaps I will lie to you, to preserve your present concept of me, or at least my concept of your concept of me. Indeed, if my pledge of sameness is made to myself, then every time my actually changed being discloses itself to me, I will become threatened and repress it. I will pretend to myself I did not have the experience of hatred, or of anxiety, or of lust. And I will believe my own pretense to myself. Then I shall not grow. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
My concept of myself will become increasingly estranged from the ongoing change of my being. If my self-concept is too discrepant from actuality, the disclosure to me of my changed being will become more insistent. I will then have to pretend and repress much harder. If the change is too great, the experience of change will no longer me repressible. It will declare itself in my experience and perhaps in my behaviour; I may become terrified and feel I have “gone out of my mind.” Actually, I have, if by “mind” we mean “self-concept.” If still I insist on trying to appear to you as the same person I was, I may develop neurotic symptoms. Or if I am terrified enough, I may become psychotic. You can help me grow, or you can obstruct my growth. If you have a fixed idea of who I am and what my traits are, and what my possibilities of change are, then anything that comes out of me beyond your concept, you will disconfirm. In fact, you may be terrified of any surprises, any changes in my behaviour, because these changes may threaten your concept of me; my changes may, if disclosed to you, shatter your concept of me and challenge you to grow. You may be afraid to. In your fear, you may do everything in your power to get me to un-change and to reappear to you as the person you once knew. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
However, if you suspend any preconceptions you may have of me and my being, and invite me simply to be and to disclose this being to you, you create an ambience, an area of “low pressure” where I can let my being happen and be disclosed, to you and to me simultaneously—to me from the insides, and to you who receive the outside layer of my being. If your concept of my being is one that encompasses more possibilities in my behaviour than I have myself acknowledged; if your concept of my being is more inclusive and indeed more accurate than my concept of my being, and if you let me know how you think of me; if you say, “Now I like you. Now I think you are being ingratiating. Now I think you can succeed at this, if you try”; if you tell me truly how you experience me, I can compare this with my experience of myself, and with my own self-concept. You may thus insert the thin edge of doubt into the crust of my self-concept, helping to bring about its collapse, so that I might re-form it. In fact, this is what a loving friend, or a good psychotherapist, does. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
There is another way you can help me grow and that is through challenging me and encouraging me to attempt new projects. We actually construe and conceptualize the World and ourselves in the light of the projects we live for. It is our commitment to these which structures our Worlds. The beings in the World, including our own being, reveal different faces of themselves to us, depending upon the projects we are pursuing at the moment. The trees in the forest reveal their timber footage to the lumber merchant, the bugs in their trunks to the insect-collector, and their colours to the painter. My muscular strength or weakness reveals itself to me as I try to chop the forest down, and I form a concept of my muscular strength. I may never come to question or doubt this estimate I made. My self-concept gets frozen if my projects are frozen, and if I become too adept and skilled at fulfilling them. Suppose, when I find my existence dull and boring, I decide to try some new project—to write a book, climb a mountain, change jobs. I tell you of this, at first, faint resolve. I am afraid to try, because, as I presently think of myself, I do not believe I have the capacity to succeed. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
If you encourage me to try and encourage me and support me when the going gets rough, so that I stick with the project with more and more singlemindedness, I discover in myself transcendent powers I never experienced before and never imagined I had. Triumphant starts with try. I do not and cannot transcend my possibilities; I do not know what these are and will not know until I stop living. I only transcend my concept of what my possibilities might be. You can help me transcend my concept of what my possibilities might be. You can help me transcend my self-concept by challenging and supporting me in new projects that I undertake. Even the decision to attempt something new results in a new experience of myself and the World, before I actually get going. If I decide to start a new book, I begin to experience friends as interferences in this project; movies and television, formerly very inviting, become dull and boring. The whole World and my experience of myself change with the change in projects. If you help me give up old projects that are no longer satisfying, delightful, or fulfilling and encourage me to dare new ones, you are helping me to grow. If I am willing, God will lead me to places I have never dreamed I could go—as lofty as my dreams might already be. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
God’s thoughts and His ways are much higher than ours. It is a divine goal. Lofty thoughts are what makes life so attractive, and it is at the heart what makes the restored gospel so attractive and inspiring. Deep in our souls is an echo—a memory—that tells us why we came to Earth. We accepted our Father in Heaven’s plan first and foremost because we wanted to become like Him. We knew that it was a staggering goal that would never be easy to achieve. However, we simply could not be satisfied with anything less. Our souls were created to grow, and we were stirred then and now to make the journey. Teaching, learning, and living the gospel are key principles at the heart of growing toward our divine potential and becoming like our Heavenly Parents. Sometimes we call this process eternal progression. Sometimes we simply name it repentance. However, whatever we call it, it involves learning. Learning in the sense of growth and change, of insight leading to improvement, of knowing the truth, which in turn leads us closer to the God of all truth. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
The Holy Ghost gives conviction to the earnest seeker of truth, it fosters faith, which promotes repentance and obedience to God’s commandments. These essential ingredients of conversion turn us from the ways of the World to the ways of the Lord, which brings a mighty change of heart. This kind of learning is about changing ourselves, about being different (better) because we know more of what God knows. You can help yourself grow if you will engage in aimless contemplation and prayer. All these truths God is trying to teach us each day are only so many seeds sown in rocky soil or among the thorns to be burned up or chocked out unless we take Alma’s counsel to nourish them by experimenting in the word. “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves,” reports James 1.22. To contemplate the World before you, in its visual, auditory, olfactory, and tactual dimensions means simply to let the World present itself to you. You are not searching for anything when you contemplate. Rather, you are letting the World disclose itself to you as it is in itself. You can only do this when you suspend your work, your striving, your goals and projects. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
When you suspend your projects in this way, you open the “doors of perception,” and let the word of God, birds, trees, other people, in fact everything disclose itself to you. All these brings always were, but you did not notice so long as you were involved in some task or mission. Such contemplation yields a different experience of the World, which must change your concepts of the World, and thus fosters growth. Maslow has described such contemplation as “B-cognition,” and has pointed out that it has dangers as well as delights. The dangers, of course, are that one might simply revel in the sheer beauty of evil rather than do something about it. However, it cannot be gainsaid that contemplation of the World in this aimless way enriches experience. So many today need to be blasted from their delusions by an understanding of the great doctrine of the Church. There is no text that will ignite one’s soul more than Hebrews 12.22-24, which describes the seven stupendous meetings which the Christian experiences in the Church: “But you have come to Mount Zion, to the Heavenly Jerusalem, the city of living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of Angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in Heaven. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
“You have come to God, the judge of all humans, to the spirits of righteous humans made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.” We come to the city of God—“But you have come to Mount Zion, to the Heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God.” Mount Zion was the location of the Jebusite stronghold which David captured and made the religious center of his kingdom by bring to it the golden Ark of God’s presence. When Solomon built the Temple and installed the Ark, Zion/Jerusalem became synonymous with the Earthly dwelling-place of God. In Christ we have come to its Heavenly counterpart, the spiritual Jerusalem from above. In one sense it is still to come, but at the same time we have already arrived there in spirit. Christians are now citizen the Heavenly City and enjoy it privileges. As the Church we meet Angels—“You have come to thousands upon thousands of Angels in joyful assembly.” Moses tells us that “myriads of holy ones” attend the giving of the Law (Deuteronomy 33.2), and from Daniel we hear that “Thousands upon thousands attended him [the Ancient of Days—God]; ten thousand times thousands stood before him,” reports Daniel 7.10. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
David said, “The chariots of God are tens of thousands and thousands of thousands,” reports Psalm 68.17. In the Church we come to these dizzying thousands of Angels, all of whom are in joyful celebration. They are everywhere—mighty flaming spirits, “ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation,” reports Hebrews 1.14, passing in and out of our lives, moving around us and over us, just as they did to Jacob of old. Instead of gazing upon the World and letting it disclose itself to you through your eyes, ears, nose, and hands, you can pray upon your own experience of your bodily being. Perhaps close your eyes, or seek a tranquil setting with no sudden distractions. Let your experience happen without direction. Engage in free reverie. You may find yourself now recalling something of the past, now vividly imagining—in playful ways—all kinds of possibilities. You may find yourself experiencing anger for somebody, love for somebody else, you may find you have aches and pains you had not noticed before. Some of your self-experiencing may be frightening. It may help you to pray if, instead of close your eyes, you gaze with or without fixed focus at a mandala, or a flower. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
If you gaze long enough, your experiencing my turn on fully and freely. Instead of being frozen into some one mode of experiencing—say, perceiving, or imagining, or remembering—which may be customary for you, you may find that you become “unglued” and then integrated. You experience perceptions fused with memories fused with imagination fused with conceptualizing fused with fantasy fused with emotion. This richness may truly shatter your self-concept, so that when you “pull yourself together,” you are truly a different person from the person you thought you were. As I said before, your being and mine are always in progress of change, in consequence of the way we live, the passage of time, and sheer past experience. However, living as we do mostly at a conceptual level and for definite projects—dealing, not with concrete things, but with concepts of things and people and of ourselves—we reflect quietly upon our awareness of ourselves, we suspend the concepts, and we et our being disclose itself to us. And thus we grow. As we learn the truth and chose to act on it, our testimonies grow. “If any human will do one’s will, one shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself,” reports John 7.17. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
We come to fellow believers—to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in Heaven. Jesus was the firstborn par excellence, and by virtue of our union with Him we are firstborn. All the rights of inheritance go to the first born—to us, “co-heirs with Christ,” reports Romans 8.17. In the Church we do more than come int each other’s presence—we share membership together. We come to God—You have come to God, the judge of all humans. We come in awe because He is the Judge—but we do not come in craven dread, because His Son has borne the judgment for us. This is our highest delight—to gather before our God! We come to the Heavenly Church Triumph—to the spirit of righteous humans made perfect. Though they are in Heaven, we share a solidarity with those who have gone before. The same spiritual life course through us as through them. We share the same secrets and joys as Abraham and Moses and David and Paul. Growing entails going out of our minds and into our raw experience. Our experience is always of the disclosure of the World and of our own embodied being. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
When we function smoothly, habitually, and effectively in the World, our concepts are confirmed; and we do not receive new disclosure. When we meet impasses and failure in the pursuit of our projects, then our habits, concepts (a habit can be seen as the “outside” of a concept), and expectations are challenged, or upended. Failure of our projects gives us a whiff of the stink of chaos, and this can be terrifying. Our concepts get crack in them when we fail. Through these cracks, the encapsulated experience “contained” by the concept might leak or explode; or though the crack there may occur an implosion of more being. When there are no concepts, there is nothing—no-thing we can grapple with, get leverage on, in order to get on with the projects of living. There is the threat of pure chaos and situationlessness. If we experience the pure nothingness, we become panicked, and seek quickly to shore up the collapsing World, to daub clay into the cracks in our concepts. If we do this, we do not grow. If we let the concepts explode or implode and do not re-form them veridically, we appear mad, and are mad. If we re-form them, to incorporate new experience, we grow. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
As we make the truth part of us by striving to live it consistently even in the face of challenges, it changes us and we become more like the Father of truth. Though Earthly families are far from perfect, they give God’s children the best change to be welcomed to the World with the only love on Earth that comes close to what we felt in Heaven—parental love. Families are also the best way to preserve and pass on moral virtues and true principles that are most likely to lead us back to God’s presence. One again, we must consider projects, this time in relation to integration, a vital and crucial phase of growth. When our projects are obstructed, because our concepts are out of phase with being, the concepts must explode, or become fractioned, differentiated into parts. We experience chaos. Our commitment to the old projects, or recommitment to new projects, serves as the field of force which organizes the fractionated experience of being into meaningful wholes, concepts, gestalten. Growth is our experience of our concepts and perfect being detotalized and then retotalized into newly meaningful unities. We have come to Jesus—to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
It is through Jesus that the promises come to us. He is the source and dispenser of all for which we hope. Jesus is in us, and we are in Him. We come to forgiveness because of sprinkled blood—and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. Abel’s warm blood cried condemnation and judgment from the ground, but Christ’s blood shouts that we are forgiven and have peace with God. Hallelujah! I know I am ready to grow when I experience surprise—a dissonance between my beliefs and concepts and expectations of the World and my perception of the World. I am also ready to grow when I experience boredom, despair, depression, anxiety, or guilt. These emotions inform me that my goals and projects have lost meaning for me; that my being has gotten too big, too out of phase with my concepts of my being. I have a choice at these moments, if indeed I can experience them. I may have become so unaccustomed to and maladapt at reflection and prayer that I simply do not notice these all-is-not-well signals. And I continue to pursue my projects and to believe my beliefs as if experience were conforming them. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
However, if I do not acknowledge the signals, my choice is either to pray, suspend my concept and preconception of self, and let my changed being disclose itself to me, even when it hurts (it frequently does); or to decide to affirm the project of being the same (an impossible project, but one that many people try to live). If I decide to try to be the same, then I will repress my experience of change, of all-is-not-well signals. I have resolved, really, to stop perceiving myself. The invitation to suspend preconceptions and concepts, to let being disclose itself, is actually an invitation to go out of one’s mind. To be out of one’s mind can be terrifying; because when projects are suspended, and experiencing is just happening, myself and the World are experienced as infinite possibility: anything might be possible. Yet, if a person can endure this voyage within one’s own experience—one’s Odyssey within—one can emerge from it with a new concept of one’s being and with new projects; the new concept of being will include more of one’s being in it. However, this new integration will last only so long, and then the entire process must be repeated again. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
A sentient life is an endless series of getting out of one’s mind and concepts, only to reenter and to depart again. The Scriptures tell us that in the Church “you have come” (right now!) to these seven sublime realities: to the city of God, to myriads of Angels, to fellow believers, to God, to the Church of Triumphant, to Jesus, and to forgiveness. If this does not create a wellspring of thanksgiving in your hearts and a longing for fellowship in the visible Church, nothing will! When many of us fall into despondency which may last for several says, we desperately seek a word from God to meet our need. Often times, we will find one night that the World was good to us; maybe we have had but few better; we long for the company of some of God’s people, that we may impart into them what God has shown us. Christ is a precious Christ to our souls on a night like such; we can scarce lie in our bed for joy, and peace, and triumph through Christ. Saviour, if of Zion’s city, I through grace a member am, please let the World deride or pity, I will glory in Thy name. “And it came to pass that Jesus commanded his disciples that they should bring forth some bread and wine unto him. And while they were gone for bread and wine, he commanded the multitude that they should sit themselves down upon the Earth. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
“And when the disciples had come with bread and wine, Jesus took of the bread and brake and blessed it; and he gave unto the disciples and commanded that they should eat. And when they had eaten and were filled, he commanded that they should give unto the multitude. And when the multitude had eaten and were filled, he said unto the disciples: Behold there shall one be ordained among you, and to him will I give power that he shall break bread and bless it and give it unto the people of my church, unto all those who shall believe and be baptized in my name. And this shall ye always observe to do, even as I have done, even as I have broken bread and blessed it and given it unto you. And this shall ye do in remembrance of my body, which I have shown unto you. And it shall be a testimony unto the Father that ye do always remember me. And if ye do always remember me ye shall have my Spirit to be with you. And it came to pass that when he said these words, he commanded his disciples that they should take of the wine of the cup and drink of it, and that they should also give unto the multitude that they might drink of it. And it came to pass that they did so, and did drink of it and were filled; and they gave unto the multitude, and they did drink, and they were filled. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
“And when the disciples had done this, Jesus said unto them: Blessed are ye for this thing which ye has done, for this is fulfilling my commandments, and this doth witness unto the Father that ye are willing to do that which I have commanded you. And this shall ye always do to those who repent and are baptized in my name; and ye shall do it in remembrance of my blood, which I have shed for you, that ye may witness unto the Father that ye do always remember me. And if ye do always remember me, ye shall have my spirit to be with you. And I give unto you a commandment that ye shall do these things. And if ye shall do these things, blessed are ye, for ye are built on my rock. However, whoso among you shall do more or less than these are not built upon my rock, but are built upon a sandy foundation; and when the rain descends, and the floods come, and the winds blow, and beat upon them, they shall fall, and the gates of hell are ready open to receive them. Therefore blessed are ye if ye shall keep my commandments, which the Father hath commanded me that I should give unto you. Verily, verily, I say unto you, ye must watch and pray always, lest ye be tempted by the devil, and ye be led away captive by him. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
“And as I have prayed among you even so shall ye pray in my church, among my people who do repent and are baptized in my name. Behold I am the light; I have set an example for you. And it came to pass that when Jesus has spoken these words unto his disciples, he turned again unto the multitude and said unto them: Behold, verily, verily, I say unto you, ye must watch and pray always lest ye enter into temptation; for Satan desireth to have you, that he may sift you as wheat. Therefore ye must always pray unto the Father in my name; and whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, which is right, believing that ye shall receive, behold it shall be given unto you. Pray in your families unto the Father, always in my name, that your wives and your children may be blessed. And behold, ye shall meet together oft; and ye shall not forbid any human from coming unto you when ye shall meet together, but suffer them that they may come unto you and forbid them not; but ye shall pray for them, and shall not cast them out; and if it so be that they come unto you oft ye shall pray for them unto the Father, in my name. Therefore, hold up your light that it may shine unto the World. Before I am the light which ye shall hold up—that which ye have seen me do. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
“Behold ye see that I have prayed unto the Father, and ye all have witnessed. And ye see that I have commanded that none of you should go away, but rather have commanded that ye should come unto me, that ye might feel and see; even so shall ye do unto the World; and whosoever breaketh this commandment suffereth himself to be led into temptation. And now it came to pass that when Jesus had spoken these words, he turned his eyes again upon the disciples whom he had chosen, and said unto them: Behold verily, verily, I say unto you, I give unto you another commandment, and then I must go unto my Father that I may fulfil other commandments which he hath given me. And now behold, this is the commandment which I give unto you, that ye shall not suffer any one knowingly to partake of my flesh and blood unworthily, when ye shall minister it; for whoso eateth and drinketh my flesh and blood unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to his soul; therefore if ye know that a human is unworthy to eat and drink of my flesh and blood ye shall forbid one. Nevertheless, ye shall not cast one out from among you, but ye shall minister unto one and shall pray for one unto the Father, in my name; and if it so be that one repenteth and is baptized in my name, then shall ye receive one, and shall minister unto one of my flesh and blood. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
“However, if one repent no one shall not be numbered among my people, that one may not destroy my people, for behold I know my sheep, and they are numbered. Nevertheless, ye shall not cast one out of your synagogues, or your places of worship, for unto such shall ye continue to minister; for ye know not but what they will return and repent, and come unto me with full purpose of heart, and I shall heal them; and ye shall be the means of bringing salvation unto them. Therefore, keep these sayings which I have commanded you that ye come not under condemnation; for wo unto one who the Father condemneth. And I give you these commandments because of the disputations which have been among you. And blessed are ye if ye have no disputations among you. And now I go unto the Father, because it is expedient that I should go unto the Father for your sakes. And it came to pass that when Jesus had made an end of these sayings, he touched with his hand the disciples whom he had chosen, one by one, even until one had touched them all, and spake unto them as he touched them. And the multitude heard not the words which he spake, therefore they did not bear record. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
“However, the disciples bare record that he gave them power to give the Holy Ghost. And I will show unto you hereafter that this record is true. And it came to pass that when Jesus had touched them all, there came a cloud and overshadowed the multitude that they could not see Jesus. And while they were overshadowed he departed from them, and ascended into Heaven. And the disciples saw and did bear record that he ascended again into Heaven,” 3 Nephi 19.1-39. Though you are high above, your heat still reached me, testing my endurance as I work under its glare. Please do not give me more testing than I can handle, and please do not insult me by making life a cake walk. May His great name be blessed for ever and ever. Exalted and honored be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, whose glory transcends, yea, is beyond all praises, hymns and blessings that humans can render unto Him; and say ye, Amen. May the prayers and supplications of the whole house of Israel be accepted unto their Father in Heaven; and say ye, Amen. May there be abundant peace from Heaven, and life for us and all of Israel; and say ye, Amen. May He who establisheth peace in the Heavens, grant peace unto us all and unto all Israel; and say ye, Amen. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
Winchester Mystery House
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Disparted, and Far Upward Could be Seen Blue Heaven, and a Silver Car, Air-Borne!
Wonderful people do not always make wonderful parents. The year 2020 and beyond—more than any previous decade—will be a period in which human choice will operate more decisively than ever before. The rapid development of technology has freed humans from slavery to environmental and biological circumstances. No longer is one a prisoner of a particular geographic locality, because one can travel easily to the other side of the World. One can converse with people around the globe via new electronic devices. New bio-medical advances are making it possible for one to have a longer life and better health. Improved economic systems have removed—at least in many nations—the once ever-present danger of starvation. We now see the future not as a World that is forced upon us, but as a World that we ourselves create. Terrorism and crime will persist, but so will scientific and technological breakthroughs. Some aspect of the World’s problems will grow worse, but others will improve, and our lives. Another scenario would see us being carried away by the newest developments in technology. Incredible advances in computer intelligence and decision making; In vitro fertilization babies implanted in a woman’s uterus, or perhaps grown entirely outside the human body. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
There will be a new species of microscopic and macroscopic life being created through recombinant work with genes; cities under domes will make it possible to expand urban sprawl into the desert, with the whole environment controlled by people; completely artificial environments permitting human beings to live in space: these are some of the new technologies that may affect our lives. They have in common the fact that each removes humankind further and further from nature, from the soil, the weather, the Sun, the wind, and all natural processes. These developments would produce changes of unknown magnitude as we endeavour to manufacture decisions and lives and environments that are completely human-made. Hopefully this will affect us for good. It is possible that evolution will lead us to a supraconsciousness and supermind of vastly more power than mind and consciousness now. The persons have hitherto undreamed-of potential. This person’s nonconscious intelligence is vastly capable. It can control many bodily functions, can heal diseases and viruses, can create new realities. It can penetrate the future, see things at a distance, communicate thoughts directly. This person has a new awareness of one’s strength, abilities, and power, an awareness of self as a process of change. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
This person lives in a new Universe, where all the familiar concepts have disappeared—time, space, object, matter, cause, effect—nothing remains but vibrating energy. We see a new World around us. We have the impression tat we are at the dawn of a new period, with all the excitement, the hopes, and also the risks which are inherent in a new start. Who will be able to live in this utterly strange World? I believe it will be those who are young in mind and spirit—and that often means those who are young in body as well. As our youth grow up in a World where trends and views such as I have been describing envelop them, many will become new persons—fit to live in the World of tomorrow—and they will be joined by seniors who have absorbed the transforming concepts. Not all young people, of course. I hear that young people today are only interested in jobs and security, that they are not persons who take risks or make innovations, just conservatives looking out for “number one.” Possibly that is so, but it certainly is not true of the young people with whom I come in contact. However, I am sure that some will continue to live in our present World; many, however, will dwell in this New World of tomorrow. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Where will they come from? It is my observation that they already exist. Where have I found them? I find them among corporation executives who have given up the gray-flannel rat race, the lure of high salaries and stock options and Swiss annuities, to live a simpler new life. I find them still among some in the corporate World, as well as those young men and women in blue jeans who are defying most of the values of today’s culture to live in new ways. I find them among priests and nuns and minister who preach about how wonderful God is. I find them among women who are vigorously rising above the limitations that society has placed on their personhood. I find them among marginalized groups of people who are pushing out from generations of passivity into an assertive, optimistic life. I find them among those who have experienced encounter groups, who are finding a place for feelings as well as thoughts in their lives. I find them among creative school dropouts who are thrusting into higher reaches than their sterile schooling permits. I realize, too, that I saw something of this person in my years as a psychotherapist, when clients were choosing a freer, ricer, more self-directed kind of life for themselves. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
These are a few of the places in which I have found persons wo may be able to live in this transformed World. As I have experienced these qualities of the person of tomorrow, I find they have certain traits in common. These persons have an openness to the World—both inner and outer. They are open to experience, to new ways of seeing, new ways of being, new ideas and concepts. They have a desire for authenticity. These persons value communication as a means of telling it the way it is. They reject the hypocrisy, deceit, and double talk of our culture. They are willing to explore and learn new science and technology. Many of these self-actualized individuals have a desire for wholeness. They do not like to live in a compartmentalized World—body and mind, health and illness, intellect and feeling, science and common sense, individual and group, sane and insane, work and play. The compassionate beings strive rather for a wholeness of life, with thought, feeling, physical energy, psychic energy, healing energy, all being integrated in experience. There is a drive for a new form of closeness, of intimacy, of shared purpose. They are seeking new forms of communication in such a community—verbal as well as nonverbal, feeling as well as intellectual. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
As people continue to evolve they become more caring persons, eager to be of help to others when the need is real. It is a gentle, subtle, nonmoralistic, nonjudgmental caring. In addition to being open to others, these healthy people feel a closeness to, and a caring for, elemental nature. They are ecologically minded, still care about economic advancement of society, and get their pleasure from an alliance with the forces of nature, rather than in the conquest of nature. While knowing that education is extremely important, these individuals also believe in the authority within. They have a trust in their own experience and a profound sense of discernment of others. They make their own moral judgments, even demanding justice and equality for all. Because of all of the hard work that goes into making a living and being aware that reducing physical stress on the body, these self-actualized people have a respect for property, public and private. They can live with affluence, but it is not the only way of life. Many people are also yearning for the spiritual as they wish to find meaning and purpose in life that is greater than the individual. These are some of the characteristics I see in current and future leaders. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
This new World will be more human and humane. It will explore and develop the richness and capacities of the human mind and spirit. It will produce individuals who are more integrated and whole. It will be a World that prizes the individual person—the greatest of our resources. It will be a more natural World, with a renewed love and respect for nature. It will develop a more human science, based on new and less rigid concepts. Its technology will be aimed at the enhancing, rather than the exploitation, of persons and nature. It will release creativity as individuals sense their power, their capacities, their freedom. The winds of scientific, social, and cultural change are blowing strongly. They will envelop us in this New World of tomorrow, and the changes will be in the direction of more humanness. The drive toward good, which is naturally implanted in the human will by its Creator, is splintered, corrupted, and eventually turned against itself as a result of practical self-deification and all that accompanies it. The question, “What good can I bring about?” is replaced by “How can I get my way?” Manipulation, deception, seduction, and malice replace transparency, sincerity, and goodwill, as exaltation of self replaces submission and service to God. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
Reflecting on fallen humanity “as usual,” the existentialist thinkers of the last two centuries have emphasized the splintered, self-conflicted, and frustrated condition of the human will in its natural state. Dr. Freud and many other psychologists have, in their own ways, done the same. All of this has now become part of the modern person’s self-understanding and is accepted as part of standard educational programs and of the popular and other arts. Jean-Paul Sarte and his existentialist associates accordingly turned the ridicule of sincerity, as necessarily a posture of self-deception, into a fine art. Ambiguity of will was elevated by them and others into basic human nature, from which “freedom” was made to emerge in the form of arbitrary—perhaps totally irrational decision and action. Does not that sound like Helter Skelter once more? As an account of the usual fallen humanity, theirs was really a very penetrating analysis—one now standing in literary, musical, cinematic presentations of life. Whereas in prior times a focused and coherent will was assumed to be necessary to human freedom, today the assumption is that freedom only comes with an incoherent and vagrant will. Truth, by contrast, is regarded as bondage and rigorous identity as a prison that prevents me from endlessly creating myself and re-creating myself. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
The powers of humans—the faculties of understanding, reason, imagination, memory, appetite, and will are distinguished from one another because they function in special ways. The senses are responsible for experience and keep humans in touch with their environment, physical and social, external and internal. They also feed information to the inner human. Organizing human’s restless, dynamic spirit in distinctive ways, the senses with the help of memory builds states of mind and being that are essential to the functioning of understanding, reason, and imagination. These three faculties, setting homo sapiens off from one’s relatives in the animal World, draw upon materials stored in memory, contributed rational experience, states, and habits to the storehouse, and used the complex of experience in ways that make it possible for humans to control themselves and the forces of physical reality, and even at times to bring one’s spirit in touch with the divine spirit. The imagination in its own right afforded images of accumulated experience that memory alone cannot produce and it affords rational imagery that reason alone cannot create. The understanding enables humans to abstract and isolate items from the rush and surge of immediate behaviour. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
The understanding enables one to stop experience, consider it, interpret it, account for it, and “reason” about it. In a word, the understanding is the power of dealing with the forms of experience. It is often said, in figurative language, to be the “place” or home of forms. The more abstract, the more formal, one’s thinking, the neater it is to “pure” understanding. The power was known also under a Latin term, intellect, but beginning with Elyot the English preferred their own word, understanding. In The Book Named the Governour (1531), Sir Thomas Elyot wrote that the understanding, the “most pure part of the soul,” is “in Latin, Intellectuals, whereunto I can find no proper English, but Understanding.” The understanding manifested two kinds of motions. It seized upon and gathered unto itself a unit of formal experience. This movement can be compared to the simplest and fastest of stimulus-response events. It was the element of intellectual movement. It was intellect behaving nondiscursively. On the other hand, reason, so far as it was separate from understanding, was the intellect moving discursively. This kind of movement was most evident when humans combined symbols, such as words, in various ways. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Speaking and writing are constant illustrations of discursive reason. Grammar and logic deal with the forms of reasoning. The term discourse is intended to denote the manifest activity of reason, and humans are a rational being because they use speech. The action of the mind, id est, primarily understanding and reason, were generally considered to be apprehension, composition, division, discoursing, reasoning, memory, which come include in invention, and judgment. Intellectual movement is explained by postulating thee aspects of mental life and a characteristic function. One aspect is the passive, often referred to as the passive intellect. It is passive in the sense of being acted upon, of being affected. At birth human’s intellect is like a clean slate or sheet of paper or tablet. A condition of being acted upon implies a change or alteration of the condition, and this implies, in turn, that something can be take away. Hence change in the passive state is sometimes said to be that of suffering. There was a further implication: if something could be taken away, something could be added. Accordingly, passivity entails both receiving and giving up. The passive understanding is that state of mind that receives and yields. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Another aspect of mental life is called the possible understanding. It is that which is potential to receiving and giving up. The mind cannot receive and yield without establishing the potentiality of the intellectual action was coupled by philosophers in the Aristotelian tradition. It must be noted that potentiality is employed in two senses, first in the sense of the capacity to receive, and second in the sense of a capacity to use what has been received. The mind has both the power to learn and to use what it learns. Truths are decayed from among the children of men. Truth, properly speaking, resides only in the intellect, as said before, but things are called true in virtue of the truth residing in an intellect. Hence the mutability of truth must be regarded from the point of view of the intellect, the truth of which consists in its conformity to the thing understood. Now this conformity may vary in two ways, even as any other likeness, through change in one of the two extremes. Hence in one way truth varies on the part of the intellect, from the fact that a change of opinion occurs about a thing which in itself has not changed, and in another way, when the thing changed, but not the opinion; and in either way there can be a change from true to false. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
If, then, there is an intellect wherein there can be no alternation of opinions, and the knowledge of which nothing can escape, in this immutable truth. Now such is the divine intellect, as is clear from what has been said before. Hence the truth of the divine intellect is immutable. However, the truth of our intellect is mutable; not because it is itself the subject of change, but in as far as our intellect changes from truth to falsity, for thus forms many be called mutable. Whereas the truth of the divine intellect is that according to which natural things are said to be true, and this is altogether immutable. The true and being are convertible terms. Hence just as being is not generated nor corrupted of itself, but accidentally, in so far as this being or that is corrupted or generated, so does truth change, not so as that no truth remains, but because that truth does not remain which was before. A proposition not only has truth, as other things are said to have it, in so far, that is, as they correspond to that which is the design of the divine intellect concerning them; but it said to have truth in a special way, in so far as it indicates the truth of the intellect, which consists in the conformity of the intellect with a thing. When this disappears, the truth of an opinion changes and consequently the truth of the proposition. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
So therefore thus proposition, “Socrates sits,” is true as long as he is sitting, both with the truth of the thing, in so far as the expression is significative, and with the truth of signification, in so far as it signifies a true opinion. When Socrates rises, the first truth remains, but the second is changed. The sitting of Socrates, which is the cause of the truth of the proposition, “Socrates sits,” has not the same meaning when Socrates sits, after he sits, and before he sits. Hence the truth which results, varies, and is variously signified by these propositions concerning present, past, or future. Thus it does not follow, though one of the three propositions is true, that the same truth remains invariable. The third aspect of mental life is named the active intellect, or the agent intellect. It is that which renders the actual the potential. Passivity, possibility, and potentiality are states or conditions of mind which set up a readiness to act; the agent intellect is the mind acting. The agent intellect is like light, for it is as essential to mental activity as light is to vision. Mind is what it is, said by Aristotle, “by virtue of becoming all things,” and “by virtue of making all things”; and the power of making things is “a sort of positive state like light; for in a sense light makes potential colours into actual colours.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
The active intellect appears to have been called in Latin, ingenium, and in English, wit or intelligence. One notes, in passing, that grammarians, knowing that words and speech are of the mind, referred to language behaviour as having an active voice and a passive vice. The agent is that which is called the wit of humans, acumen or subtlety, sharpness of invention, when one doth invent of oneself without a teacher, when one learns anew, which abstracts those intelligible species from the phantasy, and transfers them to the passive understanding. That which the imagination hath take from the sense, this agent judgeth of, whether it be true or false; and being so judged one commits it to the passible [passive intellect?] to be kept. The agent is a doctor or teacher, the passive a scholar; and one’s office [id est, the passive intellect’s office] is to keep and farther judge of such things as are committed to one’s charge: as a bare and raised table at first, capable of all forms and notions. As passive understanding grows and develops, its contents are thought of as states or conditions. Memory plays its part in maintaining the, Five states are usually recognized: Intelligence, Wisdom (sapientia), Knowledge (scientia), Prudence (prudential), and Art (ars). #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
Fully developed in the mature human who has been properly educated, the produce, under proper stimulation, statements marked by truth rather than falsehood, and as a result yield acts accepted as good rather than bad. Hence these states of mind, Intelligence, Wisdom (sapientia), Knowledge (scientia), Prudence (prudential), and Art (ars), are often called the intellectual virtues, or intellectual habits. Two additional states are sometimes identified, Opinion (opinio) and Suspicion or Doubt (suspicio), which are thought of as sources of false statement and bad conduct. The two are occasionally called habits, but never virtues. The states taken together constitute the possibility and potentiality for thinking and acting. An intellect act involves intelligence (the doing of what only intellect can do). It carries the certainty of sensory-derived materials, and the certainty or “acceptance” of the intellectual act itself, as in apprehension, when the species of a thing embedded in an image is recognized as human, or ox, and reflected by the common concrete noun. Involved, also, is the generalization of intellectual acts into the idea reflected by the abstract noun, exempli gratia, animal, or animalness; and the discursive action of the intellect, seen when intellectual objects are combined, as in the proposition and the syllogism. #RandolphHaris 16 of 22
Ratiocination or reasoning is distinguished from understanding and assigned to a separate power or ability, the reason. Nevertheless, understanding continued to carry three meanings. It means the state or condition of the human built up as a result of rational acts and experience. It means the power of abstracting and of forming apprehensions and conceptions. It means the power of supplying both intellectual materials and first principles with which reason works. Involved more or less prominently are all actions of the passive, potential, and active aspects of the mind. The two modes of activity are labeled invention and judgment. They comprise searching, exploring, and finding on the one hand, and judging, accepting, and rejecting on the other. The mind will consider what it invents, comparing the product with its criteria of truth and goodness. Invention and judgment thus embraces the mind creative and the mind critical. Another distinct activity of the intellect is called “interpretative.” It holds a special interest for modern students of the communication process. The intellect starts interpreting the moment humans communicate. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
In communication there are two acts, excogitatio and significatio. The former is related to the configuratio or the confirmatio of knowledge, and is the act of expressing outwardly the inner experience. Signification carries the sign and symbol aspect of utterance and reveals the speaker’s knowledge and meaning. The intellect refers to the working intellect, specifically to two chief modes of activity recognizable when the understanding and reason, either alone or in concert, engage in sustained endeavour. An intellect thus constituted has a characteristic function—that of abstracting. It abstracts qualities from the experience supplied by imagination, memory, and the sense, and combines them into forms. The process of abstracting and forming is said to make experience intelligible. A particular act of the senses produces, in contrast, sensible species. Using modern terms, we speak of conceiving and perceiving. “And verily, verily, I say unto you that I have other sheep, which are not of this land, neither of the land of Jerusalem, neither in any parts of that land round about whither I have been to a minister. For they whom I speak and they who have not as yet heard my voice; neither have I at any time manifested myself unto them. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
“However, I have received a commandment of the Father that I shall go unto them, and that they shall hear my voice, and shall be numbered among my sheep, that there may be one fold and one shepherd; therefore I go to show myself uno them. And I command you that ye shall write these sayings after I am gone, that if it so be that my people at Jerusalem, they who have seen me and been with me in my ministry, do not ask the Father in my name, that they may receive a knowledge of you by the Holy Ghost, and also of the other tribes whom they know not of, that these sayings which ye shall write shall be kept and shall be manifested unto the Gentiles, that through the fulness of the Gentiles, the remnant of their seed, who shall be scattered forth upon the face of the Earth because of their unbelief, may be brought in, or may be brought to a knowledge of me, their Redeemer. And then will I gather them in from the four quarters of the Earth; and then will I fulfil the covenant which the Father hath made unto all the people of the house of Israel. And blessed are the Gentiles, because of their belief in me, in and of the Holy Ghost, which witnesses unto them of me and of the Father. Behold, because of their belief in me, saith the Father, and because of the unbelief of you, O house of Israel, in the latter day shall the truth come unto the Gentiles, that the fulness of these things shall be made known unto them. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
“However, wo, saith the Father, unto the unbelieving of the Gentiles—for notwithstanding they have come forth upon the face of this land, and have scattered my people who are of the house of Israel; and my people who are of the house of Israel have been cast out from among them, and have been trodden under feet by them; and because of the mercies of the Father unto the Gentiles, and also the judgments of the Father upon my people who are of the house of Israel, verily, verily, I say unto you, that after all this, and I have caused my people who are of the house of Israel to be smitten, and to be afflicted, and to be slain, and to be cast out from among them, and to become hated by them, and to become a hiss and a byword among them—and thus commandeth the Father that I should say unto you: At that day when the Gentiles shall sin against my gospel, and shall reject the fullness of my gospel, and shall sin against my gospel, and shall reject the fulness of my gospel, and shall be lifted up in pride of their hearts above all nations, and above all the people of the whole Earth, and shall be filled with all manners of lyings, and of deceits, and of mischiefs, and all manner of hypocrisy, and murders, and priestcrafts, and whoredoms, and of secret abominations. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
“And if they shall do all those things, and shall reject the fulness of my gospel, behold, saith the Father, I will bring the fulness of my gospel from among them. And then will I remember my covenant which I have made unto my people, O house of Israel, and I will bring my gospel into them. And I will show unto thee, O house of Israel, that the Gentiles shall not have power over you; but I will remember my covenant unto you, O house of Israel, and ye shall come unto the knowledge of the fullness of my gospel. However, if the Gentiles will repent and return unto me, saith the Father, behold they shall be numbered among my people, O house of Israel. And I will not suffer my people, who are of the house of Israel, to go through among them, and tread them down, saith the Father. However, fi they will not turn unto me, and hearken unto my voice, I will suffer them, yea, I will suffer my people, O house of Israel, that they shall go through among them, and shall tread them down, and they shall be as salt that hath lost is savour, which is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of my people, O house of Israel. Verily, verily, I say unto you, thus hath the Father commanded me—that I should give unto this people this land for their inheritance. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
“And then the words of the prophet Isaiah shall be fulfilled which say: Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the voice together shall they sing, for they shall see eye to eye when the Lord shall bring again Zion. Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem. The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the Earth shall see the salvation of God,” reports 3 Nephi 16.1-20. You have mounted to your throne in the roof of Heaven, you have achieved the eights. In the midpoint of the day, you rule from the midpoint of the Sky. Lord of Light, I praise you as you shine! Our Fathers’ shield, God’s word has ever been; He giveth life eternal to the dead. Holy is He; no other can compare with Him who giveth rest each Sabbath day unto His people whom He loves. With veneration and with awe we serve Him; we praise Him every day and bless His name. To God all thanks are due, the Lord of peace, He hallowth the Sabbath and doth bless the seventh day; He giveth rest unto a people knowing its delight, in remembrance of creation. The great shinning eye that sees all things will see that my deeds are done justly. I place myself under your gaze at the high point of the day. Praise to the Sun, at the roof of the World. Praise to the Lord, at His point of great power. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
Cresleigh Homes
Tucked away behind that door is a laundry room equipped with plenty of space and storage for all your laundry items! And tucked inside that pantry is all the tomato soup you’ve been saving for this colder weather. Ergo, it’s time to settle in with a cozy cardigan and hot soup once the clothes are in the wash. 🥣🧺 // #MillsStation Residence 1
How Long Must I Remain in Jeopardy of Blank Amazements that Amaze No More?
The pain of leaving those you grow to love is only a prelude to an understanding of yourself and others. Finding out what your real desires and characteristics are, and being able to live in a way that expresses them is how one finds one’s identity. One learns to be authentic, to be honest in the sense of allowing one’s behaviour and one’s speech to be the true and spontaneous expression of one’s inner feelings. Survey of efforts at self-analysis, self-therapy and self-growth uncovered that dreams are psychological symbols; peak, spiritual and psychedelic experience; archaic and prerational cognition. Recovery of the preconscious. That is why it is important to become an expert on one’s self. Think of yourself as a collaborator in an enterprise in which one wants to learn as much as one can learn so that one can pass this on to other people. The goal of therapy and self-discovery is the recovery of experiences—in particular, the recovery of feelings, emotions, subtle impulses and inner voices. They are believed to be the essential part of human nature and yet are so easily forgotten, denied or suppressed in the course of socialization. To be experientially alive means to renew a contact with our essential nature, and the first step in that direction is to pay greater attention to the concrete, pre-abstract, preverbal and the unconscious. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
There are two aspects of the unconscious. The unconscious is said to be the seat of drives and needs—especially irrational needs—whereas the preconscious has more to do with the ways of sensing (id est, primary process cognition). It has often been said that a map is not a territory and a label (words and concepts) must not be confused with the reality it stands for. However, if we can use the map in the exploration of an external environment, why cannot we use words and concepts for the discovery of inner space? We find that thoughts, feelings, and affects are alive in us which would never have believed possible. Naturally, possibilities of this sort seem utterly fantastic to anyone who had not experienced them oneself, for a normal person “knows what one thinks.” Such an immature attitude on the part of the “normal person” is simply the rule, so that no one without experience in this field can be expected to understand the real nature of their being. With these reflections one gets into an entirely new World of psychological experience, provided of course that one succeeds in realizing it in practice. Those who do succeed can hardly fail to be impressed by all that the ego does not know and never has known. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
This increase in self-knowledge is still very rare nowadays and is usually paid for in advance with a neurosis, if not something worse. The tension that arises from lack of self-understanding is so profound that it can be harmless until it is confronted in the conscious mind in personified form and behaves rather like systems split off from the personality, or like part souls. The most important tasks of psychic hygiene is to pay continual attention to the symptomatology of unconscious contents and processes, for the good reason that the conscious mind is always in danger of becoming one-sided, of keeping to well-worn paths and getting stuck in blind alleys. The complementary and compensating function of the unconscious ensures that these dangers, which are especially great in neurosis, can in some measure be avoided. It is only under ideal conditions, when life is still simple and unconscious enough to follow the serpentine path of instinct without hesitation or misgiving, that the compensation works with entire success. The more civilized, the more unconscious and complicated living conditions and the influence of one’s environment are so strong that they drown the quiet voice of nature. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
Opinions, belief, theories, and collective tendencies appear in its stead and back up all the aberration of the conscious mind. Deliberate attention should then be given to the unconscious so that the compensation can set work. Hence it is especially important to picture the archetypes of the unconscious not as a rushing phantasmagoria of fugitive images but as constant, autonomous factors, which they indeed are. The archetypes are universal symbols such as The Great Mother (a mother goddess who is a personification of the natural World), the Wise Old Man (a profound philosopher distinguished for wisdom and sound judgment), the Shadow (everything of which a person is not fully conscious of, the unknown side), the Tree of Life (representing sacred life, religion, spirituality, the divine), the Tower (an extension of consciousness achieved in maturity), and Water (valley of the spirit). This is why education is a lifelong process. There is evidence that the materials we learn and insight we gain are not likely to dissipate easily, since participation in gaining lifelong knowledge involves a change in attitude, beliefs, values, and even a radical change in the fundamental outlook on life. The goal of education is to refocus itself on the joy of personal discovery, the sense of awe and mystery in life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
When education regains an accurate objective, the process of learning can then become as meaningful and exhilarating as those moments wen we are having peak-experiences. Do you remember how exciting it was as a kid in elementary when at the beginning of the school year, the teacher handed out those big, colourful, glossy books. How they made you feel excited and curious to know what was inside. Well, that is how learning is supposed to be for adults also. Many of those authors are writing as communication to future generations. It is an expression of love for them, giving them the tools required to improve their lives and the World. In effect, the textbooks are affectionate notes, bits of counsel, lessons others have learned that might help us. Imaginative activity is joined with belief of that which is to come. Take the case of two images, one involving the idea that humans will cause their own destruction and the other the idea that Zeus hurled thunderbolts when he was displeased with human’s doings. Both images, one purely verbal, the other pictorial, are due to the power of imagination. However, does the pictorial image more readily secure or enhance belief than the verbal image? If it does, what property or feature of it is responsible? #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
The phenomenon is referred to as the power and act imagination intensive, and is also called by a more intriguing name, Fascination. Belief in the imagination intensive is rational because there is an observed phenomenon and these participate in the power of things in fact. According, those effects which are wrought by the percussion of the sense, and by things in fact, are produced likewise in some degree by the imagination. The image of a man eating a sour pickle may be just as effective in setting one’s teeth on edge as does the act of eating the pickle itself. The effect is due not only to the figure but to the force and intensity of it. This is very close to an ideo-motor theory of voluntary movement and to the role imagination plays in it. Indeed, the imagination is as it were the director and driver of this motion [voluntary motion], insomuch that when the image which is the object of the motion is withdrawn the motion itself is immediately interrupted and stopped (as in walking, if you begin to think eagerly and fixedly of something else, you immediately stand still). Again, stamping, and bending of the fist, are caused by an imagination of the act of revenge. If the image thus affects action, why should it not be a belief? And would not a striking feature of the experience be responsible for its impact? Indeed it would. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Force or intensity are recognized as a special property or dimension of the image and this is nowhere more evident than when we talk of strengthening or exalting or fortifying the imagination. To strengthen the imagination is not to help in the making of images but to increase the effectiveness of them. Authority, for example, will fortify an image, whether verbal or pictorial, but it will do nothing to produce the image. If a person believes that a ring or charm will bring one good luck, one may hold to that belief—and act upon it—because of one’s faith in the art of magic, or a practitioner thereof, not because of experience or of logic. Authority carries weight, as it were, and impart weight. Various kinds of objects enhance imagery in the same way, and one can form a list of them drawn from natural magic. Rituals and ceremonies are not only imageful but they carry the authority of their sources. Scriptural words have the authority of God. Words of similitude—that is, pictorial images produced through words—are stronger than verbalizations without pictures. There is another quality of the image, possibly associated with intensity and certainly contributing to the strength of imagery. It is called a binding or limiting effect. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
When speculating about the ways of strengthening the memory, we find in the art of memory, that images visible work better than other conceits; as if you would remember the word philosophy, you shall more surely do it by imagining that such a human (for humans are best places) is reading upon Aristotle’s Physics; than if you could imagine one to say, I will go study philosophy. The reasons are two: the more lustrous the imagination is, it filleth and fixeth the better, and there is a binding of thoughts. One has to aim to prepare the way and clear the ground, and one would uncover directions and hints for systematic and experimental investigation into the phenomenon of the imagination. If serious study undertaken the chief problem would be that of disentangling a maze of cause and effect. It would be proper to focus on two matters: the effects of imagery on the imaginant oneself, and the effect of one human’s imagery on another. However, the whole enterprise has been confounded and confused by those who merely desire to exploit it for the end of magic, witchcraft, myth and mystery, dreams and visions. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
If they would, three established studies could make contributions, for those sciences which have had been intelligence and confederacy with the imagination of humans than with their reason, are three in number: Astrology, Natural Magic, and Alchemy; of which sciences the ends or pretenses are noble. The imagination may become hyperactive in eloquence. It is no small dominion which imagination holds in persuasions that are wrought by eloquence; for when by arts of speech human’s minds are soothed, inflamed, and carried hither and hither, it is all done by stimulating the imagination till it becomes ungovernable, and not only sets reason at nought, but offers violence to it, partly by blinding, partly be incensing it. Such effects may be due in part to the agitation of the spirit or of the affections. There is no doubting that both imagination and vehement affection work greatly upon the body of the imaginant. Emissions of the spirits and their affects is connected to the operations of the spirits of the mind of humans upon other spirit. Imagination may be the instigator of both spirit activity and emotional behaviour. Such a monstrous imagination was attributed to the school of Pythagoras for it was cultivated by Platonists, and made the basis of Paracelsian magic that exalting the imagination with the power of miracle-working faith. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
If there be communication between the spirit of the World and the spirit of humans, it is probably directly from spirit to spirit. An imaginant can be primarily influencing oneself: If a person carrying a planet’s seal, or a ring, or some part of a beast, believing strongly that it will help one to obtain more active and industrious, and again more confident and persisting than one would otherwise be. Imagination is the power of representing thought. It is the power of reproducing and creating images, verbal, and pictorial, from the products of sensory experience and the products of the understanding and reason. Its images have a kind of force or strength that can stir the human spirit and rouse the affections. By and large, the imagination serves rational life. It illuminates and illustrates abstract thought in much the same way it lights up divine spirit and grace in moments of revelation and inspiration. If understanding and reason may be said to form experience, imagination may be said to give it shape. “If this World were mine, I’d make you a king with wealth untold, you could have anything. If this World were mine, I’d give you each day so sunny and blue. If you wanted the moonlight, I’d give you that too. If this World were mine, I’d give you anything.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
The lyrics above are from a duet by Luther Vandross and Cheryl Lynn called If this World were Mine. They are singing a beautiful ballot and used imagery to express how in love they are with each other. The imagery is more powerful than say, “I love you,” because one had to put their thought and heart into those eloquent lyrics and they are more likely to have much more of an impact because it causes the imagination to ponder how much one is loved. Reason and imagination join in creative activity that bears the marks of both faculties, reason rendering the product plausible, imagination rendering it sensible. Together they give rise to the fitting and the appropriate. Yet in their creativity, neither reason nor imagination works independently. Imagination is not merely processing the work of reason; it is not translating. Rather, there is a sort of transmutation, perhaps transtantiation, going on between them. The colour of imagination and the colour of reason are present, but one sees neither distinctly; they are blended in any creative product that humans judge to be fitting and appropriate. In rhetorical and poetical creativity, as distinguished from scientific creativity, the imagination is responsible for, is the immediate cause of, that quality of argument, example, and style that we label “appropriateness.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Imagination always has something to work with, whether the sayable simply made the work of understanding and reason accessible to sense or was the product of reason and imagination’s creating something appropriate. What should be distrusted and feared are the imaginations of bad people, practitioners of artificial magic and alchemy. The content aspect of a sign or statement is due to the imagination and the formal aspect of the understanding. The denial of equal liberty, for example, can be defended only if it is necessary to raise the level of civilization so that in due course these freedoms can be enjoyed. The maximin rule uses the imagination, for a solution to the problem of social justice, tells us to rank alternatives by their worst possible outcomes: we are to adopt the alterative the worst outcome of which is the superior to the worst outcomes of the others. The original position is designed to be a fair and impartial point of view that is to be adopted in our reasoning about fundamental principles of justice. The persons in the original position do not, of course, assume that their initial place in society is decided by a malevolent opponent. However, if parties were forced to protect themselves against such a contingency, the maximum rule explains the sense in which this conception is the maximin solution. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
In business and life, decisions have to be made and they must be rational. The maximin rule is not, in general, a suitable guide for choices under uncertainty. However, it is attractive in situations marked by certain special features. The aim, then, is to show that a good case can be made for the two principles based on the fact that the original position manifests these features to the fullest possible degree, carrying them to the limit, so to speak. A gain-and-loss table represents the gains and losses for a situation which is not a game of strategy. There us no one playing against the person making the decision; instead one is faced with several possible circumstances which may or may not obtain. Which circumstances happen to exist does not depend upon what the person choosing decides or whether one announces one’s moves in advance. The numbers in the gain-and-loss table below are monetary values (in millions of dollars) in comparison with some initial situation. The gain (g) depends upon the individual’s decision (d) and the circumstances (c). Thus g = f (d, c). Assuming that there are three possible decisions and three possible circumstances, we might have this gain-and-loss table. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
#RandolphHarris 14 of 23
The maximin rule requires that we make the third decision. For in the case the worst that can happen is that one gains $5,000,000.00, which is better than the worse for the other actions. If we adopt one of these, we may lose either $8,000,000.00 or $7,000,000.00. Thus, the choice of d3 maximizes f (d, c) for that value of c, which for a given d, minimizes f. The terms “maximin” means maximum minimorum; and the rule directs our attention to the worst that can happen under any proposed course of action, and to decide in the light of that. Now there appear to be three chief features of situations that give plausibility to this unusual rule. First, since the rule takes no account of the likelihoods of the possible circumstances, there must be some reason for sharply discounting estimates of these probabilities. Offhand, the most natural rule of choice would seem to be to compute the expectation of monetary gain for each decision and then to adopt the course of action with the highest prospect. However, it must be, for example, that the situation is one in which a knowledge of likelihoods is impossible, or at best extremely insecure. In this case it is unreasonable not to be skeptical or probabilistic calculations unless there is no other way out, particularly if the decision is a fundamental one that needs to be justified to others. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
The second feature that suggest the maximin rule is the following: the person choosing has a conception of the good such that one cares very little, if anything, for what one might gain above the minimum stipend that one can, in fact, be sure of by following the maximin rule. It is not worthwhile for one to take a chance for the sake of a further advantage, especially when it may turn out that one loses much that is important to one. This last provision brings in the third feature, namely, that the rejected alternatives have outcomes that one can hardly accept. The situation involves grave risks. Of course these feature work most effectively in combination. A maxim, a rule of thumb comes into its own in special circumstances. Its application depends upon the qualitative structure of the possible gain and losses in relation to one’s conception of the good, al this against a background in which it is reasonable to discount conjectural estimates of likelihoods. The parties have no basis for determining the probable nature of their society, or their place in it. Thus they have strong reasons for being wary of probability calculations is any other course is open to them. They must also take into account that fact that their choice of principles should seem reasonable to others, in particular their descendants, whose rights will be deeply affected by it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Therefore, the objective is to limit loss and maximize gain, not gamble because the parties are unable to conjecture, they cannot say much about what the possible circumstances are, much less enumerate them and foresee the outcome of each alternative available. Finally, the third feature holds if we can assume that other conceptions of justice may lead to institutions that the parties would find intolerable. For example, it has sometimes been held that under some condition the utility principle justifies, if not slavery or serfdom, at any rate serious infraction of liberty for the sake of greater social benefit. We need not consider here the truth of this claim, or the likelihood that the requisite conditions obtain. For the moment, this contention is only to illustrate the way in which conceptions of justice may allow for outcomes which the parties may not be able to accept. And having the ready alterative of the two principles of justice which secure a satisfactory minimum, it seems unwise, if not irrational, for them to take a chance that these outcomes are not realized. We must make a distinction between a doctrinal principle and the human personality who serves as the vehicle for such principles. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
The principles will live when the personality is dead. Our absolute rationality and loyalty, therefore, must be bestowed on what is immortal, not on what is mortal, but we still have to make the most reasonable decisions while we are alive. The human disseminator of the principle should receive only a conditional allegiance. The pure Idea may incarnate itself in the human but only may sully, betray, or pollute it with one’s human error, prejudice, or selfishness. The embodies master, being human, will have some or other of the human imperfections. Sooner or later the disciple will note and become critical of them or disturbed by them. However, the inner Light is perfect and will rouse only admiration, devotion, and satisfaction. “And now it came to pass that when Jesus has spoken these words he turned again to the multitude, and did open his mouth unto them again, saying: Verily, verily, I say unto you, Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
“Or how wilt thou say to thy brother: Let me pull the mote out of thine eye—and behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast the mote of out thy brother’s eye. Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh, receiveth; and one that seeketh, findeth; and to one that knocketh, it shall be opened. Or what human is there of you, who, if your child ask bread, will give one a stone? Or what if your child ask a fish, will one give one a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father who is in Heaven give good things to them that ask him? Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that humans should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets. Enter ye in at the strait gate; for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, which leadeth to destruction, and many there by who go in threat; because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do humans gather grapes of thorns, of figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore, by their fruits ye shall know them. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of Heaven; but one that doeth the will of my Father who is in Heaven. Many will say to me in that day: Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name have cast out devils, and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them; I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity. Therefore, whoso heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them, I will liken one unto a wise human, who built one’s house upon a rock—and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
And every one that heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them shall be likened unto a foolish human, who built one’s house upon the sand—and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell, and great was the fall of it,” reports 3 Nephi 14.1-27. Now we ask, What does a will or heart look like that has been transformed into Christlikeness? How is it to be characterized? Jesus said himself—and of course he is always the pattern—“One who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him,” reports John 8.29. And Paul has this to say: “I haven been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the fait of the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me,” reports Galatians 2.20. The only haven of safety is to have no other will, no other wisdom, than to follow the Lord wherever he leads. Let this, then, be the first step, to abandon ourselves, and devote the whole energy of our minds to the service of God. So we have the answers to our question: Single-minded and joyous devotion to God and his will, to what God wants for us—and to service to him and to others because of him—is what the will transformed into Christlikeness looks like. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
That is the outcome of Christian spiritual formation with reference to the will, heart, or spirit. And when it has become the governing response of every dimension of our being, this outcome becomes our character. Then we can truly said to have “put on Christ.” However, how far this is from the usual human will and character we hardly need say! Instead of being simple and transparent through a constant and coherent devotion to God, the usual human will is a place of chaotic duplicity and confusion if not darkness, because it is the playing field of pride and fear and lack of confidence in God, shrouded in layer upon layer of destructive habits. Your blood is my blood, flowing out of past, through me, to the future. Through my actions, you live. Please guide me, then, in the decisions I face today, making clear to me the safe path between obstacles and keeping me from false steps along the way. Please grant lasting peace unto Israel Thy people, for Thou art the Sovereign Lord of peace; and may it be good in Thy sight to bless Thy people Israel at all times with Thy peace. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who blesses Thy people Israel with peace. O Lord, please guard my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking guile, and to those who slander me, let me give no heed. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
May my soul be humble and forgiving unto all. Please open Thou my heart, O Lord, unto Thy sacred Law, that Thy statutes I may know and all Thy truths pursue. Please bring to naught designs of those who seek to do me ill; speedily defect their aims and thwart their purposes for Thine own sake, for Thine own power, for Thy holiness and Law. That Thy loved ones be delivered, please answer us, O Lord, and save with Thy redeeming power. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable unto Thee, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Thou who establishest peace in the Heavens, please grant peace unto us and unto all Israel. Amen. May it be Thy will, O Lord our God and God of our Fathers, to grant our portion in Thy Torah, and may the Temple be rebuilt in our day. There we will serve Thee with awe as in the days of old. After the Sun has risen, I am here to pray long hours. While the day began, I was still asleep, still walking in the land of dreams. Know this, bright Sun, that though I slept, you were still in my heart. Now, when I am finally awake, I take up my daily responsibilities. First, though I will stand here and praise God and drink in your warmth and drink in all the light you give so freely to arm myself for the say’s struggles. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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It Keeps Eternal Whisperings Around Desolate Shores and with its Mighty Swell!
Nothing is quite as funny as the unintended humour of reality. Many lines of inquiry have demonstrated that that range of characteristics that are associated with creative productivity in a human being is very wide. These characteristics fall into almost all categories into which personal traits have been divided for purpose of study—abilities, interests, drives, temperament, and so on. To limit our discussion to scientific productivity, it is clear to start with that there are great variations in the amount of curiosity possessed by different people. Curiosity appears to be a basic drive. I suspect it may vary consistently with gender, on either a biological or a cultural basis, but we have as yet no idea how to measure such drives. No one becomes a scientist without a better-than-average amount of curiosity, regardless of whether one was born with it, was brought up in a stimulating environment, or just did not have it severely inhibited. Intelligence and creativity are not identical, but intelligence does play a role in scientific creativity—rather more than it may play in some other forms of creativity. In general, one my summarize by saying that the minimum intelligence required for creative production in science is considerably better than average, but that, given this, other variables contribute more to a variance in performance. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
It must also be noted that special abilities (numerical, spatial, verbal, and so on) play somewhat different roles in different scientific fields, but that ability must in no case be below average. A cultural anthropologist, for example, as little need for great facility with numbers. An experimental physicist, on the other hand, does require facility with number, although one need not have great facility with words. A number of studies have contributed to the picture of the personality patterns of productive scientists, and it is rather striking that quite different kinds of investigations have produced closely similar results. These can be briefly summarized in six different groups, as follows: 1. Truly creative scientists seek experience and action and are independent and self-sufficient with regard to perception, cognition, and behaviour. These findings have been expressed in various studies in such terms as the following: they are more observant than others and value this quality; they are more independent with respect to cognition and value judgments; they have high dominance; they have high autonomy; they are Bohemian or radical; they are not subject to group standards. 2. They have a preference for apparent but resolvable disorder and for an aesthetic ordering of forms of experience. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
They have high tolerance for ambiguity, but they also like to put an end to it in their own way—and in their own time. 3. They have strong egos (whether this derives from or is responsible for their independence and their tolerance for ambiguity is a moot question). This ego strength permits them to regress to preconscious states with certainty that they will return from these states. They have less compulsive superegos than others. They are capable of disciplined management of means leading to significant experience. They have no feeling of guilt about the independence of thought and action mentioned above. They have strong control of their impulses. 4. Their interpersonal relations are generally of low intensity. They are reported to be ungregarious, not talkative (this does not apply to social scientists), and rather asocial. There is an apparent tendency to femininity in highly original men, and to masculinity in highly original women, but this may be a cultural interpretation of the generally increased sensitivity of the men and the intellectual capacity and interest of the women. They dislike interpersonal controversy in any form and are especially sensitive to interpersonal aggression. 5. They show much stronger preoccupation with things and ideas than with people. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
They dislike introversive and affect-associated preoccupations, expect in connection with their own research. 6. They like to take the calculated risk, but it must involve nature, not people, and must not depend on simple luck. How do these personality characteristics relate to the creative process in science? An open attitude toward experience makes possible accumulation of experience with relatively little compartmentalization; independence of perception, cognition, and behaviour permit greater than average reordering of this accumulated experience (the behavioural eccentricities so often noted are consistent with this). The strong liking for turning disorder into order carries such individuals through the searching period which their tolerance for ambiguity permits them to enter. The strong egos, as noted, permit regression to prelogical forms of thought without serious fear of failure to get back to logical ones. Preoccupation with things and ideas rather tan with people is obviously characteristic of natural scientists, and even some of some social scientists. This characteristic is not directly related to creativity. I think, but rater to the content of it. I need not add tat such statements as these are generalizations and that any individual case may be an exception. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
We may go farther, however, and generalize differences among humans who follow different branches of science. That a human chooses to become a scientist and succeeds means that one has the temperament and personality as well as the ability and opportunity to do so. The branch of science one chooses, even the specific problems one chooses and the way one work on them, are intimately related to what one is and to one’s deepest needs. The more deeply engaged one is, the more profoundly is this true. To understand what one does, one must try to know what one’s work means to one. The chances are that one does not know or care to know. Indeed, one does not need to know. We do. In many ways the social scientist differs from the natural scientist in terms of personality and motivation. It has been found, for example, that social scientists are more interested in interpersonal relationships, while physical are less so. The apparent coldness, remoteness and objectivity of the physical scientists, however, might be related to the commonly accepted notion of science as a purely impersonal thing. If so, it would be interesting to speculate what possible effects a humanization of science might have upon the personality dynamics of future scientists. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
Now we ask, What does a will or heart look like that has been transformed into Christlikeness? How is it to be characterized? Jesus said of himself—and of course he is always the pattern—“He who sent Me is wit Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him” (John 8.29). And Paul has this to say: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me” (Galatians 2.20). We also recall John Calvin’s words: “The only haven of safety is to have no other will, no other wisdom, than to follow the Lord wherever he leads. Let this, then, be the first step, to abandon ourselves, and devote the whole energy of our minds to the service of God.” So we have the answer to our question: Single-minded and joyous devotion to God and his will, to what Gd wants for us—and to service to him and to others because of him—is what the will transformed into Christlikeness looks like. That is the outcome of Christian spiritual formation with reference to the will, heart, or spirit. And when it has become the governing response of every dimension of our being, this outcome becomes our character. Then we can truly be said to have “put on Christ.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
However, how far this is from the usual human will and character we hardly need say! Instead of being simple and transparent through a constant and coherent devotion to God, the usual human will and character we hardly need say! Instead of being simple and transparent through a constant and coherent devotion to God, the usual human will is a place of chaotic duplicity and confusion if not darkness, because it is the playing field of pride and fear and lack of confidence in God, shrouded in layer of destructive habits. We recall that our will (heart, spirit) is that dimension of our being by which we become an underivative presence and source in the World. What comes from it comes from nothing else but us. This radical creativity is what makes the individual person absolutely unique and irreplaceable, and therefore an “end in itself,” not just “another one of a certain kind.” In other words, it is what prevents a person from being a mere thing. Let us try to put this in other words, hoping thereby to make clearer something that really is very hard to grasp. Will is the ability to originate or refrain from originating something: an act or a thing. It brings things into existence. Sticks and stones do not have that ability. Will is the capacity for radical and underivative origination of events and things. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Therefore, will is the core of what and what we are as individuals, for what arises from it is from us alone. It is that aspect of personality in virtue of which we have a likeness to God or are “in His image.” We are created to be creators—of good. Our consents and non-consents are the measure of our worth as humans…the only strictly underivative and original contribution which we make to the World. And our will is simply our capacity for “consents” and “non-consents.” It is the core of our nonphysical being. It is, strictly speaking, our spirit—the human spirit, not divine—though it comes directly from God and it meant to be in his keeping through our trust in him. It is the nature of the spiritual to be self-determined. Such self-determination is absolute or unrestricted in God (“I AM THAT I AM.” Exodus 3.14. “For as the Father hath life in himself; so hat he given to the Son to have life in himself.” John 5.26). However, it is very limited, though still very real, in humans. Its primary exercise in the human, as we have already noted, is the power to select what we think on and how intently we will focus on it—from which our other decisions and actions then more or less directly flow. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Functionally, the will is the executive center of the human self. From it the whole self or life is meant to be directed and organized, and mist be if it is to be directed or organized at all. This is why we recognize the will to be the same as the biblical “heart” or center. It is also clear, then, that will is not the same thing as character, but character does develop from it, as specific willing become habitual and, to some extent, “automatic.” Character is revealed most of all in what we feel and do without thinking. However, to a lesser extent it is revealed in what we repent of after thinking and what we then do as a result of repenting. Thought, feeling, and will give rise to character. One is to keep the Ideal ever before one’s eyes, and to recognize that it overlimns the personality of the master. The picture of the Ideal is held in one’s subconscious mind all the time and become the pattern to be imitated, the invisible Master to be followed with faith and with love. It is affiliation to Christ, not propinquity to his body, that will bring these benefits. It will not be until a late stage that one will wake up to the realization that the real giver of Grace, the real helper along this path, the real master is not the incarnated master outside but God who is inside of one’s own heart. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
What the living God does for one is only to arouse one’s sleeping intuition and awaken one’s latent aspiration, to give one the initial impetus and staring to guidance on the new quest, to point out the obstructions to advancement in one’s individual character and to help one deal with them. What one feels about God’s power may be true but it is a sign of one’s elementary state that one places it outside oneself. The true meaning of God to the disciple’s understanding should be as the presence and force, the revelation and voice of one’s own inmost spiritual being. Let us be more concerned with the quest of right principles rather than impressive persons, for this will put our attitudes to all events on the right plane. Because tis simple truism was forgotten most of the religious and mystical movements have gone astray. The proper attitude is to regard God as the higher power, so that the veneration and devotion proffered are directed towards that power. We must learn to look in our own heart, mind, body, and soul for God because that is where we find the Lord. Why not go to the direct source? God is the ultimate spiritual guide whom we are to revere and the real spiritual helper on whom we are to rely. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
When disciples follow a teacher, what is it that they really follow? Suppose the teacher advocated cruelty, and preached selfishness—would the disciples still continue to follow one? Obviously, they would not. This is because their own inward feeling would reject the teaching. It shows that they are really following the teacher within themselves, the voice of God. It is God within them which makes them seek out and respond to a true teacher, for one is really an outward spiritual guide and we all can use guidance at times. However, only in our inner being can we meet and know God. Those who interest themselves in personalities take the wrong path. A teacher’s ideas are the best part of one. Let students take them and not trouble themselves about one’s appearance, career, traits, and habits. God alone is eternal. The truth of enunciations is n other than the truth of the intellect. For an enunciation resides intellect, and in speech. Now according as it is in the intellect it has truth of itself: but according as it is in speech, it is called in the enunciable truth, according as it signifies some truth of the intellect, not on account of any truth residing in the enunciation, as though in a subject. If no intellect were eternal, no truth would be eternal. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Now because the only divine intellect is eternal, in it alone truth has eternity. Nr does it follow from this that anything else but God is eternal; since the truth of the divine intellect is God Himself, as shown already. The nature of a circle, and the fact that two and three make five, have eternity in the mind of God. That something is always and everywhere, can be understood in two ways. In one way, as having itself the power of extension to all time and to all places, as it belongs to God to be everywhere and always. In the other way as not having in itself determination to any place or time, as primary matter is said to be one, no because it has one form, but by the absence of all distinguishing form. In this manner all universals are said to be everywhere and always, in so far as universals are independent of place and time. It does not, however, follow from this that they are eternal, expect in an intellect, if one exists that is eternal. That which now is, was future, before it (actually) was; because it was in its cause that it would be. Hence, if the cause were removed, that thing’s coming to be was not future. However, the first cause is alone eternal. Hence it does not follow that it was always true that what not is would be, expect in so far as its future being was in the sempiternal cause; and God alone is such a cause. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Because our intellect us not eternal, neither is the truth of enunciable propositions which are formed by us, eternal, but it has a beginning in time. Now before such truth existed, it was not true to say that such a truth did exist, expect by reason of the divine intellect, wherein alone truth is eternal. However, it is true now to say that that truth did not then exist; and this is true only by reason of the truth that is not in our intellect; and not by reason of any truth in the things. For this is truth concerning not-being; and not-being has not truth of itself, but only so far as our intellect apprehends it. Hence it is true to say that truth did not exist, in so far as we apprehend its not-being as preceding its being. The Christian affirmation is that the Trinitarian structure which can be shown to exist in the mind of a human and in all one’s works is, in fact, the integral structure of the Universe, and corresponds, not by pictorial imagery, but by necessary uniformity of substance, with the nature of God, in whom all that is exists. To think secularly is to think within a frame of reference bounded by the limits of our life on Earth: it is to keep one’s calculations rooted in this-Worldly criteria. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
To think Christianly is to accept all things with the mind as related, directly or indirectly, to human’s eternal destiny as the redeemed and chosen by God. It is important to see that apologetics is not an activity reserved for philosophers who also happen to be religious believers. Much that passes as philosophy of religion is really apologetics as practiced by individuals who reject tenets of religious belief. I do not say this to be critical of philosophers of religion who may also happen to be atheists. Philosophers who reject the Christian religion do not suddenly become, by virtue of this fact alone, more objective or rational or open-minded than philosophers who are Christians or Jews. Of course, we must wholeheartedly agree that without a saving relationship with Jesus Christ all is lost. However, we must not mistakenly reason that one’s relationship with Christ minimizes the importance of His Church. Yet this is precisely what multitudes of evangelicals assume and act out. Church attendance is infected with a malaise of conditional loyalty which has produced an army of ecclesiastical hitchhikers. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
The hitchhiker’s thumb says, “You buy the Ultimate Driving Machine, pay for repairs and upkeep and insurance, fill the car with gas—and I will ride with you. However, if you have an accident, you are on your own! And I will probably sue.” So it is with the credo of so many of today’s church attenders: “You go to the meetings and serve on the boards and committees, you grapple with the issues and do the work of the church and pay the bills—and I will come along for the ride. However, if things do not suit me, I will criticize and complain and probably bail out—my thumb is always out for a better ride.” This putative loyalty is fueled by a consumer ethos—a “McChristian” mentality—which picks and chooses here and there to fill one’s ecclesiastical shopping list. There are hitchhikers wo attend one church for the preaching, send their children to a second church for its dynamic youth program, and go to a third church’s small group. Church hitchhikers have a telling vocabulary: “I go to” or “I attend,” but never “I belong to” or “I am a member.” The average adult thinks that belonging to a church is good for other people, but represents unnecessary bondage and baggage for oneself. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
So today, in the twenty first century, we have a phenomenon unthinkable in any other century: churchless Christians. There is a vast heard of professed Christians who exist as nomadic hitchhikers without accountability, without discipline, without discipleship, living apart from the regular benefits of the ordinances. They have God as their Father, but reject the Church as mother and as a result are incomplete and stunted. The tragedy is compounded because statistics indicate that humans are far less committed to the Church than they used to be—inevitably producing a shriveled leadership. As to why the Church has fallen on such hard times, historians tell us that an overemphasis on the “invisible” Body of Christ by evangelical leaders produced an implicit disregard for the visible Church. However, membership in an invisible Church without participation in its local expression is never contemplated in the New Testament. Another reason for the de-churching of many Christians is historic individualism of evangelical Christianity and the grass-root American impulse against authority. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
The natural inclination is to think that one needs only an individual relationship with Christ and needs no other authority. Such thinking produces Christian Lone Rangers who demonstrate their authenticity by riding not to church, but out to the badlands, reference Bible in hand, to do battle single-handedly with the outlaw World. Such a cavalier disregard for the doctrine of the Church is eccentric, to say the least. It disregards not only Scripture, but the consensus of the doctors of the Church. St. Augustine in his Enchiridion holds up to the visible Church saying: “For outside the church they [one’s sins] have no remission. For it is the Church in particular which has received the earnest, the Holy Spirit, apart from whom no sins receive remission.” Augustine could not conceive of one being regenerated yet consciously separated from the visible Church. “The deserter of the Church,” he said, “cannot be in Christ, since one is not among Christ’s members.” Martin Luther similarly stated, “Outside this Christian Church there is no salvation or forgiveness of sins, but everlasting death and damnation; even though there may be a magnificent appearance of holiness.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
John Calvin echoed Cyprian’s though that the evidence of having God as your Father is having the Church as your mother. In fact, he subtitled chapter 1 of book 4 of his Institutes “The True Church with Which as Mother of All the Godly We Must Keep Unity.” And in his commentary on Ephesians he wrote, “The Church is the common mother of all the godly, which bears, nourishes, and governs in the Lord both kings and commoners; and this is done by the ministry. Those who neglect or despise this order want to be wiser than Christ. Woe to their pride.” The Swiss Second Helvetic Confession put the idea even more forcefully: For as there was no salvation outside Noah’s ark when the World perished in the flood; so we believe that there is no certain salvation outside Christ, who offers himself to be enjoyed by the elect in the Church; and hence we teach that those who wish to live ought not to be separated from the true Church of Christ. (Chapter 27). Finally, the Westminster Confession refers to “The visible church out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation” (Chapter 25.2). #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
So we conclude that church hitchhikers, ecclesiastical wanderers, spiritual Long Rangers, Christian who disdain membership, and aberrations in the history of the Christian Church and are in grievous error. “Verily, verily, I say that I would that ye should do alms unto the poor; but take heed that ye do not your alms before humans to be seen of them; otherwise ye have no reward of your Father who is in Heaven. Therefore, when ye shall do your alms do not sound a trumpet before you, as you will hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of humans. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. However, when thou doest alms let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth; that thine alms may be in secret; and thy Father who seeth in secret, himself shall reward thee openly. And when thou prayest thou shalt not do as the hypocrites, for they love to pray, standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of humans. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. However, thou, when thou priest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father who is in secret; and thy Father, who seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
“However, when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen, for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them, for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask him. After this manner therefore pray ye: our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen. For, if ye forgive humans their trespasses your Heavenly Father will also forgive you; however, if ye forgive not humans their trespasses neither your Heavenly Father will forgive your trespasses. Moreover, when ye fast be not as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance, for they disfigure their faces that they may appear unto humans to fast. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. However, thou, when thou fastest, anoint thy head, and wash thy face; that thou appear not unto humans to fast, but unto thy Father, who is in secret; and thy Father, who seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly. Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon Earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and thieves break through and steal. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
“However, lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and were thieves do not break through not steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. The light of the body is the eye; if, therefore, thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. However, if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If, therefore, the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! No human can serve two masters; for either one will hate one and love the other, or else one will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. And now it came to pass that when Jesus had spoken these words he looked upon the twelve who he had chosen, and said unto the: Remember the words which I have spoken. For behold, ye are they whom I have chosen to minister unto this people. Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
“Is not the life more than meat, and the body more than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap nor gather into barns; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto one’s stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, even so will he clothe you, if ye are not of little faith. Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we Eat? or, What shall we drink? or Wherewithal shall we be clothed? For your Heavenly Father knowth that ye have need of all these things. However, seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient is the day unto the evil thereof,” reports 3 Nephi 13.1-34. Bright youth, newly born, I pray to you. A fresh day has been given to me; may I be worthy of the gift. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
I stand in the morning and face east and greet the Sun and a new day. O Lord our God, please be gracious unto Thy people Israel and accept their prayer. Please restore the worship to Thy sanctuary and receive in love and favour the supplication of Israel. May the worship of Thy people be ever acceptable unto Thee. O may our eyes witness Thy return to Zion. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who restores Thy divine presence unto Zion. We thankfully acknowledge Thee, O Lord our God, our fathers’ God to all eternity. Our Rock art Thou, our Shield that saves through every generation. We give Thee thanks and we declare Thy praise for all Thy tender care. Our lives we trust into Thy wonders and Thy miracles are daily with us, evening morn and noon. O Thou who art all-good, whose mercies never fail us, Compassionate One, whose lovingkindness never cease, we ever hope in Thee. For all this, Thy name, O our King, shall be blessed and exalted for ever and ever. May all the living do homage unto Thee forever and praise Thy name in truth, O God, who art our salvation and our help. Blessed be Thou, O Lord, Beneficent One, unto whom our thanks are due. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
Cresleigh Homes
Your #CresleighRanch backyard is perfect in any season, but you can make it just right with some easy switches. 🍂 This fall, swap that coffee table for a firepit to create a cozy outdoor space for toasting marshmallows! // #BrightonStation Residence 4
Write on My Tablets All that was Permitted, All that was for Our Human Sense Fitted
The story of love is not important—what is important is that one is capable of love. Love is supreme and unconditional; like is nice but limited. Each society has a vested interest in maintaining a status quo; or, at the least, it will tolerate only a slow rate of social change. The entire socialization and training process, which includes our schools and universities, aims at producing a modal personality of some specified kind. This is a programmed person, interchangeable, a behaviour package; one who is stable, predictable, and want what one must want and does what one must do to keep the social system functioning. Once the person is ensconced in some group, everyone in the group get used to the individual for them. If one’s identity is an alienated one, if the only being one and they recognize is one’s being-for-others, one will not likely change. Any challenges or fascinations likely to jeopardize one’s identity-for-others will be experienced by one as a threat to one’s status, and even to one’s existence. So long as a person remains in one’s group, one is likely to accede to the pressures to conform to others’ definitions of one’s being. If the well-adjusted group member experiences in oneself a protest against one’s identity-for-others and attempts to change it, one encounters the barrage of resistance we talked about in the past. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
It takes courage of heroic proportions to redefine oneself in the face of such invalidation, and such courage is rare. So, apparently, is independent learning. However, when a teacher tells the candidate of some great truth, looking straight into one’s face, something may happen over and behind the mere words. A look from Jesus was enough to make some humans renounce their Worldly lives and follow Him. Such is initiation through the glance. The power which lies in a pen is only intellectual, thought carried from one mind to another. However, the power which sone out of His eyes was spiritual, beyond thought. Gaze met gaze throughout that period; mine blinking and flickering often, the saint’s never once faltering. There are some lines of an American Seer which I would like to wind around this evening of which I am writing. The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul. What inundation of life and thought is discharged from one soul into another, through them. The glance is natural magic. The mysterious communication established across a house between two entire strangers, moves all the springs of wonder. They eyes will not lie but make faithful confession what inhabitant is there. These words are true and verified. However, because some are still reaching towards enlightenment and face stunted growth, they are often overpowered. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
The aspirant who wishes to become the student of a particular teacher must remember that, should one be accepted, one will receive no formal outward acknowledgment of the fact. This is because the way to find a Master is invariably an inner process. When the student has developed the necessary moral qualification and mental receptivity, the Master’s presence will be inwardly felt and recognized. One this has been experienced, one will find that simple devotion and adherence to the path the Master points out—and to oneself as a symbol of that path—is all that is needed to ensure progress. Thus, the student finally realizes that all outer teachers, all paths and initiations are mere theatrics compared with this. I have spoken before of the commissars. In a sense, we can regard the existing personality structure of the individual as an internalized commissar. The introjected family, teachers, and others comprise a kind of portable Big Brother who watched what I do; and when I experience anything counter to his rules, I feel guilt and dread. These affects are unpleasant enough to steer me back into sameness so that I can recognize myself as the person I had always (desperately) believed, or at least hoped, I was. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
If I ignore my guilt and anxiety and persist in experiencing in the forbidden ways, I may feel, with horror, that I am becoming insane. The incipient birth of my unique possibilities is dreaded more than death itself, and so I kill myself (my possibilities) in order to live as a robot. I cling more desperately to my roles, my self-structure, and try to impersonate to myself and to others the one we though I was. However, I hope I have made it clear that, unless I let go, unless I follow my experiencing and enter right into it, I shall remain the same person, the one who has found one’s goals and values meaningless, one’s life a charade and a gesture. When the Other is in bad faith in one’s relationship to me, one confuses me. I never know what one is up to, because one does not mean what one says, and one’s actions belie one’s stated intentions. That same Other, if one is in a position of power over me, as a parent or teacher, may disconfirm my expressions of interests, of feelings, of intentions: “You do not really like to do that, now do you?”, or, “I know you must be glad to be here,” et cetera. If a child has been unsure of one’s own experience and its meaning, one may allow one’ being to be thus construed for one. One will eventually be mystified as to who one is and what one’s true interests are. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
These are replaced by a pseudo-self, a set of interests and habits and experiencings which may serve someone’s interests and habits and experiencings which may serve someone’s interests and freedom, but not the individual’s. Such a mystified person is hardly likely to discover the fascination which proclaim the beginning of independent learning. When a teacher, parent, or therapist is unaware of being a servant of some ideology or some social system, or when they deny that this is what in fact they are: when they insist that what they do to and with the child is “for your own good,” they confuse and mystify the child. They contribute to one’s sense of ontological insecurity, and certainly thereby impede independent learning. The true master does not call disciples to reside in any ashram but to unite with oneself. And one is, in one’s own sight, a mental and not a physical being. Hence they can find and meet one in thought anywhere. The necessity of living in an ashram with one is an illusory one. All that is requisite is a single meeting between one and the disciple. Physically such a meeting can achieve its purpose in a few minutes. Thereafter both may remain permanently apart physically and yet the inner work can continue to develop all the same. For the relation between them is primarily a mental, not a physical one. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Even in ordinary life we see that true friendship and true love is mental affinity and not a mere neighbourhood of fleshly bodies. The disciple’s intense faith in and emotional veneration for the master, however far distant they may be from each other, plus the necessary mystical ripeness, will telepathically create true association. However, without them, one’s grace is like a spark falling on stone, not on tinder. Furthermore, by the higher powers of one’s mind, the adept can really help devotees at a distance even though they may never attend one’s ashram. Those who live in an ashram can get from one only what they can absorb in their inner being. However, precisely the same can be done by those who do not live in one. One’s thought-presence will be found by them to be just as effectual as one’s bodily presence. As the disciple is slowly lead onwards along this difficult path, confidence in the teacher is replaced by consciousness of the teacher, that is, one finds as an inner presence the mental atmosphere of the teacher and thus comes to know one much better. The bond with such a master sustains one in many dark experiences. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
A wise teacher imposes no dogmas upon one’s pupils; the latter may believe or doubt as they wish, so long as they follow the path one has pointed out. Discipleship is really spiritual union. It is not academic remembrance of words. It is a placing of oneself in such a receptive attitude that the spirit of the master may enter in. No speech is necessary to effect this and in silence it is more readily achieved; anything else is only giving instruction, which is not the same as proffering discipleship. In the end, the only way the earnest seeker can find a teacher is to find oneself. The deeper one penetrates int the mysterious recesses of one’s own spiritual being, the closer one comes to the ever-present master within—the higher self. The longer one looks, the more powerful will be its attraction, the more magnetic its spell over one. This is true for all students generally, but it is especially true for those students who have had the good fortune of coming into personal contact with a living teacher. It is not by their physically seeing one or personally speaking to one or corresponding with one that they enter into real contact with such a teacher, but rather by finding one’s presence within their hearts in thought, feeling, and imagination, by responding passively to the intuition of presence, and by accepting the guidance of its prompting to a more spiritual existence. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Thus not only is a human’s soul within one, too, and must be found there, but even one’s living embodied teacher is within one, too, and must be found there likewise. It is not by living in the same house with a teacher that discipleship becomes a fact. It is not by sitting year after year in the same ashram with one that devotion is show or the path is followed, but by seeking one intuitively and obeying one’s inward leading away from the surface of the ego to the deep center of the soul. When this is realized, it will be realized that a distance of seven or seven thousand miles will not be long enough to separate a pupil from one’s master. An absence of seven years will not be enough to weaken the sense of one’s presence and of inner contact with one. The sooner the aspirant recognizes this truth, the quicker will one make progress. Once the meeting, however, brief, with the master and the parting from one have taken place, the candidate’s next and hardest task will be set one. And this is to learn to accept the Idea of the master as being not less real than the body of the master. The disciple must learn to dwell mentally in the sacred presence as satisfying as if one were dwelling physically in it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
To take these great master’s into one’s life merely to worship them outwardly and not to worship them deep in one’s heart as the Ideal to be faithfully imitated, it to fail in becoming their disciple. It is not merely that knowledge is passed on or instruction is memorized. The student is required to do something more. One has to introvert one’s attention earnestly and keep oneself passive to the subtler feelings which now tend to form themselves within one, to submit resignedly to their sway and to merge into union with them. The capacity to become fascinated anew after old fascinations have worn out, is abetted by numerous factors; but it is the interpersonal factor I shall focus upon. Since each of us is an Other to somebody, we can perhaps do something to foster independent learning in the others for whom we are the Other. The basic factors in fostering independent learning, including the process that underlie it and make it emerge as a response to invitation and challenge, are the human responses of challenge and invitations, stimulation of imagination, confirmation, “letting be,” honest disclosure, and willingness to enter into dialogue. Each human wishes to be confirmed by one’s fellow, and each has the capacity to confirm one’s fellow. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
To confirm the other in one’s being means to stand back and let one’s being “happen,” let I disclose itself, and to view it with respect, to acknowledge its reality and authenticity. Confirmation does not mean wishy-washy, insincere permissiveness; because often the most direct confirmation is to take a stand in opposition to the disclosure of the others. However, the confirmation, the meeting, even in opposition, confirms for the other that one is the one one is. It lets one know that one exists. Confirmation means that I recognize the other person as the author of one’s acts and one’s utterances. I attribute them to one and one’s freedom. I confirm one as a free agent who chooses one’s existence and is responsible for it. The opposite of confirmation is invalidation and disconfirmation. There are many ways to invalidate another person, and they all have the net effect of weaking one’s sense of one’s own identity and worth, one’s sense of being a source of experience and action. One can ignore the other—pretend one does not exist, expect as a doll a thing, a nobody, or just another body. One can attribute one’s actions and utterances to some source other than one’s free intentionality; exempli gratia, “You do not mean that; it is your illness that is speaking to you.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
One can disconfirm all action and utterances save those that are compatible with one’s concept of the other. Everything else that does not fit these expectations “is not one.” Under a sufficiently sustained regime of such disconfirmation, a person will indeed come to doubt one’s own experience and conduct only to that range consistent with one’s experience and conduct only to that range consistent with one’s identity-for-the-other. Confirmation is, in a sense, an act of love. One is acknowledging that other as one who exists in one’s own peculiar form, with the right to do so. One recognizes that one’s concept of one’s being is only that—a concept, and not of one’s being. One recognizes that it is for one to reveal and define oneself to us in this way, at one’s pace, thus reinforming and altering our experience and concept in one. It is not only out duty, it is an outright sin to definite another’s being. Our concept of each other is always out of date. Yet, if one as a weak sense of one’s identity for oneself, if one is ontologically insecure, one may let us do this, or even ask us to. When I let the other person be and confirm one in one’s being as one discloses it to me, I am creating an ambience within which one can dare to let go of one’s previous concepts and presentations of oneself. They are not binding upon one. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
My suspension of my preconceptions of one’s being invites one to let go while one is in my presence. One can drop yesterday’s self-presentation, commitment, interest and goals, and explore the possibilities of a new one. One can weep, regress, enter into oneself while one is with me, and feel assured that I am waiting and perhaps with a hand holding one’s hand, until one emerges to tell me who one is. And I confirm one, at each instant of the journey, as being the one one is—Harvey searching; Harvey in despair; Harvey emerged, with new goals and values. There are extreme seriousness of feelings for spiritual formation. Understanding the role of feelings in life and in the process of spiritual formation is absolutely essential if that process is to succeed as it should. There are many ways we can go wrong with reference to feelings. They are extremely influential on all that we are and do—much more so than they should be for our own good, and mainly because we accord them greater significance than they deserve. They, more than any other component of our nature, are the “trigger” of sinful action. If you consider all of the Ten Commandments after the first two, for example, you will see that it is feeling out of control that lead to their violation. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
In His own magnificent treatment of the moral life, Jesus makes a point of putting anger, contempt, and lust in their place. “You have heard that was said to people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ However, I tell you that anyone who is angry with one’s sibling (or fellow human) will be subject to judgment,” reports Matthew 5.21-22. Until that is done, nothing else works. We have noticed how we go wrong in trying to manipulate feelings themselves without regard to their underlying condition. It is often done with good intent, but it is nearly always harmful to the deeper interests of the soul. That is especially true when we try to stir up feelings as a means of getting people to do what we think is good in the course of efforts at Christian ministry. Feelings have a crucial role in life, but they must not be taken as a basis for action or character change. That role falls to insight, understanding, and conviction of truth, which will always be appropriately accompanied by feeling. Feelings are not fundamental in the nature of things but become so if we assign them that role in life, and then life will not go as it should. Many sincere processing Christians suffer in their walk with God because they made a commitment prompted by a feeling of “need” and not by insight into how things are with God and their soul. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Partly because of this faulty basis of commitment, the area of feeling is, I suspect, the most likely place of defeat for those sincerely seeking to follow Christ today. Satan uses feelings to captivate us today by making them more important to our life than they really are, as well as by inducing much false guilt about what we do and do not feel. Nowhere is this more obvious than in marriage and divorce as now practiced (or mis-practiced). However, at all stages of adult life, feelings are among Satan’s primary instrument. They are used to devastate the soul in the processes of aging, sickness, and death among Christians and nonChrisitians alike. This need not be the case. Appropriate spiritual formation in Christ will prevent it. We must understand how love, joy, and peace can be our portion in every state of life and can lead us into a radiant eternity with God. Think of the great and direct power of feeling (sensation, emotion) over human life. How do you see this at work in daily life? For good? For evil? In yourself? In others? What has been your experience with controlling feeling directly or head on? Can it be reliably done? What have you seen with respect to this in lives near you? Say with anger, lust or addiction? #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Did it make any sense to you that love, hated, and so one are not just feelings but conditions of the will, body, and so on, which have feelings linked to them? Do you see any problems with trying to manage feelings directly, without changing the underlying condition? What is your experience with feelings spreading? Over different part of your life and activity? Over groups? What are some of the problems you see wit basing decisions on feelings? Can we decide without feelings? How can one cultivate peace, or joy, or love or hope? What are some specific ways you have found to be helpful? How does faith fit in? If the truth of a message is important, apologetical reasoning will be a crucial part of evangelism because it places the emphasis where it should be—on the truth of the message. None of this means you must have a Ph.D. before you can share the faith with an unbeliever. In the gospels, people touched by Jesus bore testimony to him immediately without training. However, these gospel examples are not there to teach us how to do evangelism—the book of Acts does that. They are there to show that all manner of people were coming to faith in Jesus and to provide testimony about who Jesus was. Clearly, a new Christian should witness for Christ as opportunity presents itself, irrespective of the amount of training acquired. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
However, it does not follow that a maturing Christian, five, ten, or twenty years old in Lord, should still be unskilled in reasoning on behalf of the gospel. Will this approach to evangelism take work? You bet it will. We have to do a lot of reading, studying, and thinking. However, if someone can spend several hours a day learning to swing a golf club, at least the same effort would not be inappropriate for someone who wants to be more effective witness for Christ. A life of study and intellectual growth enhances one’s effectiveness in personal evangelism in may ways. Yesterday, my friend Donna Paulson reminded me of one of those ways. Many times we want to communicate the gospel to friends, coworkers, or relatives. However, tis can create tension and a certain unnaturalness when we are with them, because we feel pressured to find some seam in the conversation from which we can artificially redirect the discussion to our testimony or something of the sort. If a person has a secular/sacred dichotomy in one’s life due to a lack of carefully thought-out, integrated Christian Worldview, then the gospel will have to be forced into an otherwise secular discussion. However, if a person has developed a Christian mind, one can relax because one has an understanding of and a Christian view about a number of secular topics. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
In such a situation, it would be hard to have a normal conversation without Christianity coming up naturally and, in a way, relevant to the topic of discussion. Moreover, a well-developed mind can see connections between what a friend is saying and other issues of which the friend may not be aware. For example, a friend may be espousing moral relativism yet inconstantly hold that we all have an absolute duty to save the environment. If a person sees the connections, one can simply ask well-placed questions that naturally lead to a discussion of broader Worldviews issues, including God and our relationship to Him. In such a case, the pressure is off because a person has the intellectual categories necessary to make natural connections between Christianity and a host of regular conversation topics. There is no need to try to find a crack in the discussion to insert a gospel presentation utterly unrelated to the flow of conversation. What a joyful fruit of the intellectual life this is! “And now behold, it came to pass that all the people of the land did hear these sayings, and did witness of it. And after these sayings there was silence in the land for the space of many hours; for so great was the astonishment of the people that they did cease lamenting and howling for the loss of their kindred which had been slain; therefore there was silence in all the land for the space of many hours. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
“And it came to pass that there came a voice again unto the people, and all the people did hear, and did witness of it, saying: O ye people of these great cities which have fallen, who are descendants of Jacob, yea, who are the house of Israel, how oft have I gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and have nourished you. And again, how oft would I have gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, yea, O ye people of the house of Israel, who have fallen; yea, O ye people of the house of Israel, ye that dwell at Jerusalem, as ye that have fallen; yea, how often would I have gathered you as a hen gathered her chickens, and ye would not. O ye house of Israel whom I have spared, how oft will I gather you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, if ye will repent and return unto me with a full purpose of heart. However, if not, O house of Israel, the places of your dwellings shall become desolate until the time of the fulfilling of the covenant to your fathers. And now it came to pass that after the people had heard these words, behold, they began to weep and howl again because of the loss of their kindred and friends. And it came to pass that thus did the three days pass away. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
“And it was in the morning, and the darkness dispersed from off the face of the land, and the Earth did cease to tremble, and the rocks did cease to rend, and the dreadful groadings did cease, and all the tumultuous noises did pass away. And the Earth did cleave together again, that it stood; and the mourning, and the weeping, and the wailing of the people who were spared alive did cease; and their mourning was turned into joy, and their lamentation into the praise and thanksgiving unto the Lord Jesus Christ, their Redeemer. And thus far were the scriptures fulfilled which had been spoken by the prophets. And it was the more righteous part of the people who were saved, and it was they who received the prophets and stoned them not; and it was they who had not shed the blood of the saints, who were spared—and they were spared and were not sunk and buried up in the Earth; and they were not drowned in the depths of the sea; and they were not burned by fire, neither were they fallen upon and crushed to death; and they were not carried away in the whirlwind; neither were they overpowered by the vapour of smoke and of darkness. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“And now, whoso readeth, let one understand; one that hath the scriptures, let one search them, and see and behold if all these deaths and destructions by fire, and by smoke, and by tempests, and by whirlwinds, and by the opening of the Earth to receive them, and all these things are not unto the fulfilling of the prophecies of many of the holy prophets. Behold, I say unto you, Yea, many have testified of these things at the coming of Christ, and were slain because they testified of these things. Yea, the prophet Zenos did testify of these things, and also Zenock spake concerning these things, because they testified particularly concerning us, who are the remnant of their seed. Behold, our father Jacob also testified concerning a remnant of the seed of Joseph. And behold, are not we a remnant of the seed of Joseph? And these things which testify of us, are they not written upon the plates of brass which our father Lehi brought out of Jerusalem? And it came to pass that in the ending of the thirty and fourth year, behold, I will show unto you that the people of Nephi who were spared, and also those who had been called Lamanites, who had been spared, did have great favours shown unto them, and great blessings poured out upon their hears, insomuch that son after the ascension of Christ into Heaven he did truly manifest himself unto them. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
“Showing his body unto them, and ministering unto them; and an account of his ministry shall be given hereafter. Therefore for this time I make an end of my saying,” reports 3 Nephi 10.1-19. The Earth rolls forward with silent thunder, turning toward the Sun in the false dawn. I stand on the wet grass, anticipating the Sunrise. While, far away, at the edge of vision, God opens his pearl gates and the Sun enters the day. Please open wide the gates of Heaven, youthful one, do not old back. Please open your gates, God and stride forth, so the morning prayers might start and the day’s business begin. In the morning, everything is new. The day’s blank slate lies before me, ready for my writing. May it be words of beauty I write. May it be deed of grace I do. May it be thoughts of joy I think. All the Holy Ones, please listen: this is what I pray. And Thou hast given us in love, O Lord our God, [Sabbaths for rest,] holidays for gladness, festivals and seasons for rejoicing. Thou hast granted us [this Sabbath day and] this Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Season of our Freedom, this Feast of Weeks, the Season of the Giving of our Torah, this Feast of Tabernacles, the Season of our Gladness, this Eighth Day Feast of Assembly, the Season of our Gladness, as a holy convocation, commemorating our liberation from Egypt. Our God and God of our fathers, may our remembrance and the remembrance of forefather come before Thee. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
MILLS STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH
Rancho Cordova, CA |
Now Selling!
Residence Four at Mills Station boasts 2,692 square feet in the largest home in the community. The open concept design includes four bedrooms, three and one half bathrooms and a two car garage plus workshop.
The Home Hub, located off the entry, can be used as a study, office, or kids play room. The kitchen comes fully equipped with a large eat-in island, stainless steel appliances, and quartz counters and opens onto the spacious great room.
Upstairs you’ll find the Owner’s retreat, two bedrooms, and the loft perfect for a game room or TV lounge. The Owner’s retreat is spacious and inviting with a large bedroom and spa like bathroom featuring a free-standing soaking tub, walk-in shower, dual vanities, and large walk-in closet.
Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier.
Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we will gift you a Google Home Hub and Google Mini to help connect everything together! https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/residence-4/
We have all the best decor tips for tomorrow’s festivities live on our blog now! Link in bio. 🎃👻 https://cresleigh.com/blog/
#HappyHalloween from your friends at #CresleighHomes!
Mysteries Whispered in their Presence–A Person Clamoured for Love and Attention but I Did Not Hear!
No one knows what to say in the loser’s room. Divulging any client’s financial secrets is a criminal act and bank officers or employees can be punished by up to five years imprisonment and a fine of up to $5000.00. This secrecy requirement does not end with bank employment but goes with the employee to one’s grave. One study shows that only 30 percent of U.S. employers believe school graduates are literate and numerate; but 70 percent of students and 60 percent of parents think their schools are fine. This points to the core problem with U.S. education: low intensity, in all but sport, and low expectations, for all but the brightest students in honours classes. Also, the cost of private health insurance, mostly borne by industry, is doubling every seven years. What is more significant is that health is now a common-middle class headache for the first time. Employers are forcing their employees to contribute more and take less generous benefits; the high cost of insurance squeezes wages; people who have a poor health history, even if fully cured, find themselves locked into their jobs, because prospective new employers refuse to take them on. Many believe this added government control of an industry which comprises one fifth of the American economy has only meant higher taxes and reduced quality of medical care for everyone. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Now, a hypothesis. I believe that independent learning, the embodiment of the state of being fascinated, involves six stages. The first is the experience of the impasse. The next stage we will provisionally call the stage of detachment, a kind of dying. The third is immersion in oneself—an entry into one’s center, one’s source of experiencing. Next is an emergence, or rebirth. Fifth is the experience of new possibilities. Sixth is the selection and pursuit of one of these. I shall attempt to illustrate this hypothesis with examples from several realms: religious conversion, brainwashing, research in psychedelic drugs, psychotherapy, and dialogue. I base my hypothesis upon personal experience, buttressed by reading that has seemed related, and the reported experience of others. It appears to me that fascination-with-something, the process of being turned on, has a certain “natural” history in adults. It is the natural state with healthy children who have not yet been “turned off.” The “turning off” begins with the experience of despair, boredom, or meaninglessness as one continues one’s habitual way of life—acting in one’s roles, doing one’s work, being one’s public self. Friendships grow stale. Work becomes meaningless and pointless. One feels dead, or deadened. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
The World looks stale, and music loses its savour. Nothing changes. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. I am doing something for everybody, and nothing for me. One feels trapped. No way out seems apparent. Each step out of the circle encounters dread or a sense of hopelessness, and futility. One tries new hobbies, new friends, new within which one feels like a robot. The depression deepens. One becomes afraid one is losing one’s mind. It is at this point that one’s friends, family, conventional psychiatry, and religion may enter. They try, and in this state gradually “loses interest,” “stops caring about thing.” One is regarded as sick, in need of “treatment” to stop one from going out of one’s mind. Actually, the “not-caring” is a self-initiated process of detachment from previous concerns, a phase in the death-rebirth process we are concerned with. If nothing stops the process, the person gradually enters one’s own experience more and more. One’s self-structure dissolves. One detaches oneself from one’s image of oneself, from previous friendships—which, after all, have been stabilizing one, keeping one in sameness, which is not the same as sanity. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
This person may become panicky, as the process of detachment continues; and one finds oneself experiencing emotions, fantasies and memories, that ordinarily have been repressed. One surely needs reassurance here, to let the process unfold rather than shut it off. One is encountering one’s possibilities. If one lets go enough, one will fully enter the realm of experiencing that mystics have described as “transcendental,” like a homecoming, a visit to the course, rather than a hell to be avoided. It is, in fact, the way of experiencing that we all shared as children, before we were wholly engulfed by the culture. One cannot, and does not long stay in this realm. One re-enters one’s ego, but with a new perspective. The self-structure is redefined. I choose a new identity for myself and present it to others who may confirm it or not. The World does not look the same now. It is not the same because I am not the same, and it is my World. I look at the old things and the old people; and new features, new possibilities disclose themselves to me. I commit myself to some of these, and I am renewed, until some later time; when the new fascinations, values, and projects go stale, I must begin the process again. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
When I am reborn and awakened, I experience the World and the people in it as a constant and varied calling, a constant source of invitations to become involved. The calls and invitations that were always there, but I never heard them before. The sky called to be looked at. A person clamoured for love and attention but I did not hear. Mysteries whispered their presence, but I did not notice; I thought what was mysterious was actually known and understood. In short, I begin once again to encounter the World, and the people in it. In the encounter, I let myself experience the varied reality of the World, a reality that I did not experience the varied reality of the World, a reality that I did not experience so richly, or in so many dimensions, as I do. Renewed by the plunge into the depths of my own experiencing, I survey the World that I am encountering. Some invitation, some call, some challenge, fascinates me more than the others. Nobody can predict what will now fascinate or repel me, not even me. I commit myself to this one, and off I go until I become deadened once again by a new set of habits. It has just occurred to me, after completing a year of sabbatical leave in England, that the process I just described is a sabbatical leave of one’s mind, of one’s personality structure. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
The academic sabbatical is a removal from one’s usually surroundings, but I discovered it is easier to get out of one’s surroundings than to get them out of oneself so that new surroundings can invite one into encounter. Many of my American colleagues in England successfully shielded themselves from fascination with and involvement in the English experience, because of the panic they felt when invited to let go their usual preoccupations. They carried America with them. Indeed, the phenomenon of “culture shock,” long noted by anthropologists, is another dimension of the experience of leaving, not just one’s country, but one’s mind. One has to let the American in one die in order to become a participant in a new experience, to be reborn. Indeed, initiation ceremonies of all kinds recognize the, like fraternity initiation rites or Marine boot-camp training. The hazing, in whatever form, is a symbolic killing-off of a previous incarnation, to abet the reincarnation in the way of being. However, we are as afraid of dying as we are of leaving our minds. We equate habitual ways of valuing, construing, and acting with life itself. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
Therefore, to stop these, even when they cease to yield satisfaction and meaning, is experienced as the end of life. It is equated with death. We are afraid to explore the possible experience beyond the tether. In the act of love, the climax is frequently experience as a “dying.” And after the successful act of love, a person feels oneself reborn, ready to respond anew to new dimensions of the World that suddenly, magically, have disclosed themselves to the person. However, many acts of love are climaxed not by ego-shattering orgasm; but only by localized, pleasurable twitching. Evidently one has to be ready to go out of one’s mind to make love the love that renews and revivifies. In the psychedelic-drug experience a person ingests a substance; and then, if one lets go, one commences a voyage into depth of experiencing of which one never would have dreamed oneself capable. However, taking one dose or consistent and frequent doses of any drug, especially one as potent as LSD or PCP, is by no means safe for all individuals and may put certain people at high risk of a psychotic episode they may never recover from or cause one to develop a drug addiction. People may believe the marijuana is a safe drug, but it is not. It is bad your lungs and could cause schizophrenia, or lead to the use of more dangerous and addictive drugs. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
It may cause one to feel as if one is looking through a fogged-up window with only a tiny spot wiped clean. With religion, however, a rebirth is caused and the whole window is wiped clean; and the World stands forth. The World will disclose itself to one in different dimensions than it had disclosed itself hitherto, and one will select some aspects of it with which to involve oneself. Brainwashing is a corruption of the death and rebirth theme. There, the commissars, who know what they want a person to do and be, convince one that one (one’s old self) is dead. Under the regime of torture, a person may indeed enter the transcendental realm, but one re-enters a new “robot,” into new roles that have been ready-made for one. Doubtless, they seem as real and meaningful to the brainwashee as did one’s previous incarnation which had been made untenable and unlivable for one by one’s captors. In religious conversion, the common denominator seems to be the despair at continuing in the old way. The person enters one’s experience after leaving the World. If one’s background and present associates are appropriate, then, like the brainwashee, one enters a new way of being that is more or less ready-made for one. In good psychotherapy, the therapist lets one’s patient enter one’s experience deeply. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
One remains present to help the patient cope with the terrors that arise as one lets go and experiences feelings, memories, and the like that have been long suppressed. With one’s interpretations, the therapist may assist the process of symbolic dying and facilitate the onset of the therapeutic despair, or the therapeutic psychosis which is part of every effective psychotherapy sequence. Then the person is reborn, and one faces the World with the capacity to respond to its invitations in new ways. In good teaching, after the fashion of Sokrates, the skilled and compassionate dialectician will challenge every assertion and belief of one’s pupil until the pupil feels one is going to go out of one’s mind. One may balk at this point. However, one may also flip into a realization of infinite possibility, and be thus turned on. This is my hypothesis restated: independent learning entails the experience of fascination. Fascination is a response to an invitation or challenge disclosed by the World. The invitation and challenge were always there, but the person could not experience them so long as one remained “hung up” or fixated in one’s usual roles, self-structure, and preoccupations. It is necessary that the usual attachments be suspended, and raw experiencing be turned on. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
This disengagement from usual concerns is fostered by entrapment and despair (it can be fostered in dialogue); and it maybe experienced with dread, as a going out of one’s mind, or a dying, followed by rebirth or re-entry into an enlarged self-structure. In the reborn state, the person is now more open to one’s experience of the World. While one is in this “open” condition, a challenge appears, and the person responds. One may or may not be confirmed by others in one’s new being. I would propose that something like this happens repeatedly in those healthier personalities for whom independent learning is no problem. I would propose further that a variety of factors militate against this complete process of death and rebirth. And so, practically speaking, the renovation of the heart in the dimension of feeling is a matter of opening ourselves to and carefully cultivating love, joy, and peace: first by receiving them from God and from those already living in Him, and then as we grow, extending love, joy, and peace to others and everything around us in attitude, prayer, and action. Following our VIM (Vision, Integrity, and Mission) pattern, we must intend this and decide that it shall be in all we are and do. Of course our thought life, as already described, will be focused upon God. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Then through grace we can translate this intention to dwell in love, joy, and peace into the fine texture of daily existence. Our walk with Jesus and the Father will teach us and show us the details of the means required to bring it to pass. The conscious personal mind of the teacher may know nothing of the help that is radiating from one to one who silently calls on one from a long distance, yet the reality of that help remains. If the requisite condition exist, only then can this internal quickening and intense telepathy between the master and the disciple can occur. Even at the beginning of probation (spiritual probation) the seeker will often be given a hint of what awaits one later through the spiritual experience resulting out of the contact with the teacher. However, whether one gets it or not, from the moment of acceptance there will come to every student a sense of peace, and above all, an inner stability and certitude which will become one of the greatest assets in one’s life. Again and again the novice falls into mistakes about the telepathic communications which one feels one is receiving from the master. One regains them as such when they are nothing of the sort, or one interprets them in too material or too egoistic a manner. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
The master sends a thought-current to one which is intended to lift one up to a diviner, hence more impersonal level. One, however, drags it down to a lower, more egocentric level. The telepathic impulses which one sends out to others during these times of prayer or meditation are most often received quite subconsciously. Only later is their effect felt or their origin suspected. One’s disciples may not be aware of any new reception of truth or beatitude at the time. However, increasing clarification or growing liberation may slowly change their course. It is also possible to take any revered person as a master and, in one’s own mind, make one the teacher. Even though no meeting on the physical level may occur, one’s attitude of attention and devotion in meditation will draw from one a reaction which will telepathically give whatever guidance is needed at the time. Just as the glance, the touch, or the spoken word may carry the ardour of mutual desire from to woman so may it also carry the initiatory blessing or the spiritual gift from master to disciple. Like the message of God to a praying spiritual person, the help which comes from such a teacher is above thinking but it translates itself into terms of thinking. In this process of translation, it is seized n by the ego and interfered with. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
The guide may send one’s blessing telepathically only once but if it is powerful enough it may work itself out through a hundred different experiences extending over several years. Because one identifies oneself with the timeless spaceless soul, one’s blessing may express itself out through a hundred different experience extending over several years. Because one identifies oneself with the timeless spaceless soul, one’s blessing may express itself anywhere in space and anywhen in time. Moreover one may formulate it in a general way but it may take precise shapes unconsciously fashioned by and suited to the recipient’s own mentality and degree of development. Here is some of the work to be done. For many of us, just coming to honest terms with what our feelings really are will be a huge task. Paul says in Romans 12.9, “Let love be without hypocrisy.” That is, let it be genuine or sincere. To do only this will require serious effort, deep learning, and quantities of grace. Our ordinary life and our religious associations are so permeated with insincere expressions of love, often alongside of contempt and anger, that it is hard not to feel forced into hypocrisy in some situations. However, we can learn to avoid it, and we shall immediately begin to see what a huge difference that alone makes. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
However, there is much more to do. Very few people are without deep negative feelings towards others who are or have been closely related to them. Wounds carried steadily through the years have weighed us down and prevented spiritual growth in love, joy, and peace. They may have seeped over into our identity. We would not know who we are without them. However, they can be healed or dismissed, if we are ready to give them up to God and receive the healing ministry of His Word and Spirit. This applies similarly to hopelessness over not achieving things long sought or long lost. In general, the task, once we have given ourselves to Christ, is to recognize the reality of our feelings and agree with the Lord to abandon those that are destructive and that lead us into doing or being what we know to be wrong. This one will then help us with. We may need to write out what those feelings are in a “letter to the Lord,” or perhaps confer about them with wise Christian friend who knows how to listen to us and to God at the same time. Perhaps individuals or our fellowship group can have a prayer ministry to us. Journaling about progress with feelings can also help. It can bring to light the ideas and images or past events on which destructive feelings are based. Those, too, will need to be replaced or revised. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Many such details may play a role as we progress toward predominance of love, joy, and peace in that dimension of our mind and our self that is our feelings. We can be very sure that this is our feelings. We can be very sure that this is God’s intent for us. Thus Paul prayed for his friends in Ephesus that they would be “rooted and grounded in love” and “know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God,” reports Ephesians 3.17-19. And we have seen the intent of Jesus: “That My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full,” reports John 15.11. Also his, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the World gives, do I give you. Let not your heart be troubled nor let it be fearful,” reports John 14.27. And here is Paul’s benediction to the Romans: “Now may the God of hope fill you with al joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit,” Romans 15.13. There are the same dispositions of things in being and truth. As good has the nature of what is desirable, so truth is related to knowledge. Now everything, in as far as it has being, so far is it knowable. The soul is in some manner all things through the senses and the intellect. And therefore, as good is convertible with being, so is the true. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
However, as good adds to being the notion of desirable, so the truth adds relation to the intellect. “And it came to pass that there was a voice heard among all the inhabitants of the Earth, upon all the face of this land, crying: Wo, wo, wo unto this people; wo unto the inhabitants of the whole Earth except they shall repent; for the devil laugheth, and his Angels rejoice, because of the slain of the fair sons and daughters of my people; and it is because of their iniquity and abominations that they are fallen! Behold, that great city Zarahemla have I burned with fire, and the inhabitants thereof. And behold, that great city Moroni have I caused to be sunk in the depths of the sea, and the inhabitants thereof to be drowned. And behold, that great city Moronihah have I covered with Earth, and the inhabitants thereof, to hide their iniquities and their abominations from before my face, that the blood of the prophets and the saints shall not come any more unto me against them. And behold, the city of Gilgal have I caused to be sunk, and the inhabitants thereof to be buried up in the depths of the Earth; yea, and the city of Onihah and the inhabitants thereof, and the city of Mocum and the inhabitants thereof, and the city of Jerusalem and the inhabitants thereof. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
“And water have I caused to come up in the stead thereof, to hide their wickedness and abomination from before my face, that the blood of the prophets and the saints shall not come up any more unto me against them. And behold, the city of Ganiandi, and the city of Gadiomnah, and the city of Gimgimno, all these have I caused to be sunk, and made hills and valleys in the places thereof; and the inhabitants thereof have I buried up in the depths of the Earth, to hide their wickedness and abominations from before my face, that the blood of the prophets and the saints should not come up any more unto me against them. And behold, that great city Jacobugath, which was inhabited by the people of the king Jacob, have I caused to be burned with fire because of their sins and their wickedness, which was above all the wickedness of the whole Earth, because of their secret murders and combinations; for it was they that did destroy the peace of my people and the government of the land; therefore I did cause them to be burned, to destroy them from before my face, that the blood of the prophets and the saints should not come up uno me any more against them. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
“And behold, the city of Laman, and the city of Josh, and the city of Gad, and the city of Kishkumen, have I caused to be burned with fire, and the inhabitants thereof, because of their wickedness in casting out the prophets, and stoning those whom I did send to declare unto them concerning their wickedness and their abominations. And because they did cast them all out, that there were none righteous among them, I did send down fire and destroy them, that their wickedness and abomination might be hid from before my face, that the blood of the prophets and the saints whom I sent among them might not cry unto me from the ground against them. And many great destructions have I caused to come upon this land, and upon this people, because of their wickedness and their abominations. O all ye that are spared because ye were more righteous than they, will ye not now return unto me, and repent of your sins, and be converted, that I may heal you? Yea, verily I say unto you, if ye will come unto me ye shall have enteral life. Behold, mine arm of mercy is extended towards you, and whosoever will come, one will I receive; and blessed are those who come unto me. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
“Behold, I am Jesus Christ the Son of God. I created the Heavens and the Earth, and all things that in the are. I was with the Father from the beginning. I am in the Father, and the Father in me; and in me hath the Father glorified His name. I came unto my own, and my own received me not. And the scriptures concerning my coming are fulfilled. And as many as have received me, to them have I given to become the sons of God; and even so will I to as many as shall believe on my name, for behold, by me redemption cometh, and in me is the law of Moses fulfilled. I am the light and the life of the World. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. And ye shall offer up unto me no more the shedding of blood; yea, your sacrifices and your burnt offerings shall be done away, for I will accept none of your sacrifices and your burnt offerings. And ye shall offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heart and a contrite spirit. And whoso cometh unto me with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, one will I baptize with fire and with the Holy Ghost, even as the Lamanites, because of their faith in me at the time of their conversion, were baptized with fire and with the Holy Ghost, and they knew it not. Behold, I have come unto the World to bring redemption unto the World, to save the World from sin. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
“Therefore, whoso repenteth and cometh unto me as a little child, one will I receive, for of such is the kingdom of God. Behold, for such I have laid down my life, and have taken it up again; therefore repent, and come unto me ye ends of the Earth, and be saved,” reports 3 Nephi 9.1-22. Some critics reject the idea of Grace and declare its impossibility in a World governed by strict cause and effect. The meaning of the word suggests something or anything of an immaterial moral or material nature. That is given to humans. Why should not the Master who has attained a higher strength wisdom and moral character than that which is common to the human race, give assistance freely out of one’s beneficent compassion for others struggling to climb the peak one has surmounted? One certainly cannot transmit one’s own inner life to another person in its fullness. However, one can receptive, sensitive, and in inward affinity with one. If this too is denied then let the objector explain why both the feeling of and the sense of the Master’s presence pervade the disciple’s existence for many years after one’s initiation, if not the rest of one’s life. The master, by process of telepathic transfer, enables the disciple to get a glimpse of what the realization of one’s own spiritual possibilities can lead to. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
The pupil who has been allowed to sit in deep conversational prayer with God should be able to carry on with this impetus, even though it happened only once. It is really an initiation. During this intercession, the disciple may actually feel a stream of power flowing out to one from the master, but it is not essential that one do so. What the master reflects and radiates into the disciple’s deeper mind at this sitting, will necessarily incubate for a period of time which may be measurable in minutes, days, months, or even years. No one can predict how long it will be, for not only are the disciple’s readiness, capacity, and affinity determining factors but also one’s destiny. Nor can anyone predict whether the result will appear slowly, gently, little by little, or suddenly, with violent jolting force. The master is forever after present in the disciple’s heart, whether the disciple see one again or not. From the hour of this initiation the master will be much in one’s thoughts and the sense of affinity will be often in one’s heart. The experience which the candidate has at the initiatory intercession with the master is often (but not always) a herald and token of one’s possibilities of later attainment under this particular master. One must work harder than ever on one’s character and, by crushing one’s ego, sensitize one’s mind for the reception of the spiritual Grace that is to come during initiation. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
It seems as if the Master has come into one’s consciousness and thereby changed its quality and area. If the change is necessarily for a brief while only, it is still a memorable one. Father of All, Father of All: as I go through the day, keep my eyes open wide. May I not miss beauty. May I not miss joy. May I not miss wonder. Please keep me away and aware of the World. Thou hast made known unto us, O Lord our God, Thy righteous judgments, and hast taught us to perform Thy statutes. Thou hast given us, O Lord our God, ordinances that are just and true, statutes and commandments that are good. Thou hast enriched our lives with joyous seasons and holy days and festivals to bring free will offerings, giving us as a sacred possession the Sabbath Day and Holy Days, and the joyous delight of the Three Festivals. Thou hast made distinction, O Lord our God, between the sacred and the secular, between light and darkness, between Israel and the heathens, between the seventh day of rest and the six days of work. Thou hast set a distinction between the higher sanctity of the Sabbath and the lesser sanctity of the Festival, and hast hallowed the seventh day above the six days of work. Thus hast Thou distinguished and sanctified Thy people Israel through Thy holiness. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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No Special Privileges are to be Given to those Exactly Six Feet Tall or Born on a Sunny Day!
Mind is like an ocean. The surface layers of the mind function actively while the deeper levels remain silent. We assume that persons in the original position, which is designed to be a fair and impartial point of view that is to be adopted in our reasoning about fundamental principles of justice, are rational. In choosing between principles each tries as best one can to advance one’s interests. However, we also have assumed that the parties do not know their conception of good. This means that while they know that they have some rational plan of life, they do not know the details of this plan, the particular ends and interests which it is calculated to promote. How, then, can they decide which conceptions of justice are most to their advantage? Or must we suppose that they are reduced to mere guessing? People assume that they would prefer more primary social goods rather than less. Primary social goods generally include rights, liberties, opportunities, income, and wealth. Of course, it may turn out, once the veil of ignorance is removed, that some of them for religious or other reasons may not, in fact, want more of these goods. The veil of ignorance is a method of determining the morality of issues. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
The veil of ignorance asks a decision-maker to make a choice about social or moral issues and assumes that they have enough information to know the consequences of their possible decisions for everyone but would not know, or would not take into account, which person they are. The theory contents that not knowing one’s ultimate position in society would lead to the creation of a just system, as the decision-maker would not want to make decisions which benefit a certain group as the expense of another, because the decision-maker could theoretically end up in either group. However, from the standpoint of the original position, it is rational for the parties to suppose that they do want a larger share, since in any case they are not compelled to accept more if they do not wish to, nor does a person suffer from a greater liberty. Thus even though the parties are deprived of information about their particular ends, they have enough knowledge to rank the alternatives. They know that in general they must try to protect their liberties, widen their opportunities, and enlarge their means for promoting their aims whatever these are. Guided by the theory of the good and the general facts of moral psychology, their deliberations are no longer guesswork. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
The primary goods are the all-purpose social means that are necessary to the exercise and development of the moral powers and to pursue a wide variety of conceptions of the good. Justice is a good-for the just person in a just society and life in a just society is good. Therefore, the theory of good states that any rational person should want, whatever one’s rational plan of life is. Rational people can make a rational decision in the ordinary sense. The concept of rationality invoked here, with the exception of one essential feature, is the stand one familiar in social theory. Thus in the usual way, a rational person is thought to have a coherent set of preferences between the options open to one. One ranks these options according to how well they further one’s purposes; one follows the plan which will satisfy more of one’s desires rather than less, and which has the greater chance of being successfully executed. The special assumption made here is that a rational individual does not suffer from envy. If only others have less as well, one is not ready to accept a loss for oneself. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
One is not downcast by the knowledge or perception that others have a larger index of primary social goods. Or at least this is true as long as he differences between oneself and others do not exceed certain limits, and one does not believe that the existing inequalities are founded on injustice or are the result of letting chance work itself out for no compensating social purpose. The assumption that the parties are not moved by envy raises certain questions. Perhaps we should also assume that they are not liable to various other feelings such as shame and humiliation. Now a satisfactory account of justice will eventually have to deal with these matters, too, but for the present I shall leave these complications aside. Another objection to our procedure is that it is too unrealistic. Certainly humans are afflicted with these feelings. How can a conception of justice ignore this fact? I shall meet this problem by diving the argument for the principles of justice into two parts. In the first part, the principles are derived on the supposition that envy does not exist; while in the second, we consider whether the conception arrived at is feasible in view of the circumstances of human life. One reason for this procedure is that envy tends to make everyone worse off. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
In this sense envy is collectively disadvantageous because of the tendency it has to make condition acrimonious. Presuming its absence amounts to supposing that in the choice of principles humans should think of themselves as having their own plan of life which is sufficient for itself. They have a secure sense of their own worthy so that they have no desire to abandon any of their aims provided others have less means to further theirs. I shall work out a conception of justice on this stipulation to see what happens. Later I shall try to show that when the principles adopted are put into practice, they lead to social arrangements in which envy and other destructive feelings are not likely to be strong. The conception of justice eliminated the conditions that give rise to disruptive attitudes. It is, therefore, inherently stable. The assumption of mutually disinterested rationality, then, comes to this: the persons in the original position try to acknowledge principles which advance their system of ends as far as possible. They do this by attempting to win for themselves the highest index of primary social goods, since this enables them to promote their conception of the good most effectively whatever it turns out to be. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
The parties do not seek to confer benefits or to impose injuries on one another; they are not moved by affection or rancor. Nor do they try to gain relative to each other; they are not envious or vain. Put in terms of a game, we might say: they strive for as high an absolute score as possible. They do not wish a high or a low score for their opponents, nor do they seek to maximize or minimize the difference between their success and those of others. The idea of a game does not really apply, since the parties are not concerned to win but to get as many points as possible judged by their own system of ends. There is one further assumption to guarantee strict compliance. The parties are presumed to be capable of a sense of justice and this fact is public knowledge among them. This condition is to insure the integrity of the agreement made in the original position. It odes mean that in their deliberations the parties apply some particular conception of justice, for this would defeat the point of the motivation assumption. Rather, it means that the parties can rely on each other to understand and to act in accordance with whatever principles are finally agreed to. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
Once principles are acknowledged the parties can depend on one another to conform to them. In reaching an agreement, then, they know that their undertaking is not in vain: their capacity for a sense of justice insures that the principles chosen will be respected. It is essential to observe, however, that this assumption still permits the consideration of human’s capacity to act on the various conception of justice. The general facts of human psychology and the principles of moral learning are relevant matters for the parties to examine. If a conception of justice is unlikely to generate it own support, or lacks stability, this fact must not be overlooked. For then a different conception of justice might be preferred. The assumption only says that the parties have a capacity for justice in a purely formal sense: taking everything relevant into account, including the general facts of moral psychology, the parties will adhere to the principles eventually chosen. They are rational in that they will not enter into agreements they know they cannot keep, or can do so only with great difficulty. Along with other considerations, they count the strains of commitment. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
Thus in assessing conceptions of justice the persons in the original position are to assume that the one they adopt will be strictly complied with. The consequences of the agreement are to be worked out on this basis. With the preceding remarks about rationality and motivation of the parties the description of the original position is for the most part complete. We can summarize this description with the following list of elements of the initial situation and their variation. (The asterisks mark the interpretations that constitute the original position.) 1. The Nature of the Parities: *a. continuing persons (family heads, or genetic lines), b. single individuals, c. associations (states, churches, or other corporate bodies). 2. Subject of Justice: *a. basic structure of society, b. rules of corporate associations, c. law of nations. 3. Presentation of Alternatives: *a. shorter (or longer) list, b. general characterization of the possibilities. 4. Time of Entry: *a. any time (during age of reason) for living persons, b. all actual persons (those alive at some time) simultaneously, c. all possible persons simultaneously. 5. Circumstances of Justice: *a Hume’s conditions of moderate scarcity, b. the above plus further extremes. 6. Formal conditions on Principles: *a. generality, universality, publicity, ordering, and finality, b. the above less publicity, say. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
7. Knowledge and Beliefs: *a. veil of ignorance, b. full information, c. partial knowledge. 8. Motivation of the Parties: *a. mutual disinterestedness (limited altruism), b. elements of social solidarity and good will, c. perfect altruism. 9. Rationality: *a. taking effective means to ends wit unified expectations and objective interpretation of probability, b. as above but without unified expectation and using the principle of insufficient reason. 10. Agreement Condition: *a. unanimity in perpetuity, b. majority acceptance, or whatever, for limited period. 11. Compliance Condition: *a. strict compliance, b. partial compliance in various degree. 12. No Agreement Point: *a. general egoism, b. the state of nature. We can turn now to the choice of principles. However, first I shall mention a few misunderstandings to be avoided. First of all, we must keep in mind that the parties in the original position are theoretically defined individuals. The grounds for their consent are set out by the description of the contractual situation and the preference for primacy goods. Thus to say that the principles of justice would be adopted is to say how these persons would decide being moved in ways our account describes. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
Of course, when we try to conduct ourselves in moral argument as its constraints require, we will presumably find that our deliberations and judgments are influenced by our special inclinations and attitudes. Surely it will prove difficult to correct for our various preopensites and aversions in striving to adhere to the conditions of this idealized situation. However, none of the affects the contention that in the original position rational persons so characterized would make a certain decision. This proposition belongs to the theory of justice. It is another question how well human beings can assume this role in regulating their practical reasoning. Since the persons in the original position are assumed to take no interest in one another’s interests (although they may have a concern for third parties), it may be thought that justice as fairness is itself an egotistic theory. It is not, of course, one of the three forms of egoism mentioned earlier, but some may think, as Schopenhauer thought of Kant’s doctrine, that it is the egoistic nevertheless. Now this is a misconception. For the fact that in the original position the parties are characterized as not interested in one another’s concerns does not entail that persons in ordinary life who hold the principles that would be agreed to are similarly disinterested in one another. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
Clearly the two principles of justice and the principles of obligation and natural duty require us to consider the rights and claims of others. And the sense of justice is a normally effective desire to comply with these restrictions. The motivation of the persons in the original position must not be confused wit the motivation of persons in everyday life who accept the principles that would be chosen and who have the corresponding sense of justice. In practical affairs an individual does have a knowledge of one’s situation and one can, if one wises, exploit contingencies to one’s advantage. Should one’s sense of justice move one to act on the principles of right that would be adopted in the original position, one’s desires and aims are surely not egoistic. One voluntarily takes on the limitations expressed by this interpretation of the moral point of view. This conclusion is supported by a further reflection. Once we consider the idea of a contract theory it is tempting to think that it will not yield the principles we want unless the parties are to some degree at least moved by benevolence, or an interest in one another’s interests. Perry, as I mentioned before, thinks of the right standards and decisions as those promoting the ends reached by reflective agreement under circumstances making for impartiality and good will. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
Now the combination of mutual disinterest and the veil of ignorance achieves the same purpose as benevolence. For this combination of conditions forces each person in the original position to take the good of others into account. In justice as fairness, then, the effects of good will are brought about by several conditions working jointly. The feeling that this conception of justice is egoistic is an illusion fostered by looking at but one of the elements of the original position. Furthermore, this pair of assumptions has enormous advantages over that of benevolence plus knowledge. As I have noted, the latter is so complex that no definite theory at all can be worked out. Not only are the complications caused by so much information insurmountable, but the motivational assumption requires clarification. For example, what is the relative strength of benevolent desires? The combination of mutual disinterestedness plus the veil of ignorance has the merits of simplicity and clarity while at the same time insuring the effects of what are at first sight morally more attractive assumptions. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
And if it is asked why one should not postulate benevolence with the veil of ignorance, the answer is that there is no need for so strong a condition. Moreover, I would defeat the purpose of grounding the theory of justice on weak stipulation, as well as being incongruous with the circumstances of justice. Finally, if the parties are conceived as themselves making proposals, they have n incentive to suggest pointless or arbitrary principles. For example, none would urge that special privileges be given to those exactly six feet talk or born on a sunny day. Nor would any one put forward the principle that basic rights should depend on the colour of one’s skin or the texture of one’s hair. No one can tell whether such principles would be to one’s advantage. Furthermore, each such principle is a limitation of one’s liberty of action, and such restrictions are not to be accepted without a reason. Certainly we might imagine peculiar circumstances in which these characteristics are relevant. Those born on a sunny day might be blessed with a happy temperament, and for some position of authority this might be a qualifying attribute. However, such distinctions would never be proposed in first principles, for these must have some rational connection with the advancement of human interests broadly defined. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
The rationality of the parities and their situation in the original position guarantees that ethical principles and conceptions of justice have this general content. Inevitably, then, racial and gender discrimination presupposes that some hold a favoured place in the social system which they are willing to exploit to their advantage. From the standpoint of persons similarly situated in an initial situation which is fair, the principles of explicit racist doctrines are not only unjust. They are irrational. For this reason we could say that they are not moral conceptions at all, but simply means of suppression. They have no place on a reasonable list of traditional conceptions of justice. Of course, this contention is not all a matter of definition. It is rather a consequence of the conditions characterizing the original position, especially the condition of the rationality of the parities and the veil of ignorance. That conceptions of right have a certain content and exclude arbitrary and pointless principles is, therefore, an inference from the theory. The way of discipleship means that there is to be constant endeavour to live in the master’s mental atmosphere. Of course this can be done very feebly and only occasionally at first. Success depends not only on the pressure of perseverance but also on the sensitivity to thought-transference. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
The aspirant who comes into the presence of someone who functions on a high moral and spiritual or philosophical level—and feels the attraction, charm, spell, influence, or force of one’s personality—can, after a sufficient time or association, be stimulated in development quite markedly. It is the case not only of benefiting by the other human’s words and copying one’s example, but also of directly experiencing the telepathic working of mind upon mind. If they believe in the genuineness and reality of telepathy—as they must if they believe philosophy at all—then they must accept our declaration that inner communion renders unnecessary the outer communion, that the sense of inner presence of the guide renders unnecessary one’s letters, visits, and other external signs. We know hat the mind can both project and receive thoughts. Telepathy becomes more and more a scientifically recognized fact. Where affinity harmony and preparation exist, the spiritual guide can project calming, uplifting, and spiritualizing mental waves to the spiritual aspirant. The silent wordless and unprepared hypnosis of a subject is factual pointer to the understanding of the silent wordless and telepathic influence of a disciple by one’s guide. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
As the power of suggestion becomes dynamic in the hypnotist, so its higher octave, the power of grace, becomes dynamic in the spiritual guide. The mental waves can be transmitted from master to disciple, that spiritual peace can be reflected from the mind of one to the mind of the other, is not merely a new theory but really an old practice. It has been known and done in the Old World for thousands of years. The master’s work is carried on by word-of-mouth, by written statement, and by personal example. However, it cannot end with these methods, for they are all external ones. So it is continued by telepathic impulses, by inspirational impact, and by mental osmosis. These are internal ones. Such communication between the teacher and student might be called “Telementation.” Now I no longer believe that there are dimensions of personality that exist “in-themselves.” Id, ego, super-ego; self-concept, self-ideal, public selves; traits; derives and needs—these are the terms in which we have long thought of and described “personality”: “This individual is highly authoritarian or egalitarian; one has a strong ego or a weak one; one’s Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI is the most widely used and researched clinical assessment tool used by mental health professionals to help diagnose mental health disorders) scores are thus and such, et cetera.” #RandolphHaris 16 of 25
This way of conceptualizing a person, whether as a whole or just some part of one, is no longer relevant or valid for me. After having tried out psychoanalytic, trait-theory, self-theory, and other kinds of theoretical models of humans, I have opted for a model that is no model or is a meta-model. It is one implicit in the philosophical tradition of existential phenomenology. According to this perspective, humans are the being that in one’s being, one being is in question. One’s being is inextricably linked with the World one experiences as real. Other people are part of this World. The being one discloses, shows to me, when I am in one mode of my being—impersonality, formality, and distant, reserved, playing the role of hard-nosed scientist—is different from the being one will show me when I am with one in the mode of invitational dialogue. One’s experience of one’s being and the being that one disclosed will differ with the context. One’s being-for-me will differ from one’s-being-for-oneself, one’s being-for-one’s bird, one’s teacher, one’s mother, the experimenter who studies one, and the guru whose help one may seek to transcend one’s personality traits or structure. There is a problem here: to dimensionalize and discover hierarchy here, a hierarchy of being. I suspect it is measurable objectively and subjectively in terms of “degrees of freedom.” #RandolphHarr is 17 of 25
That is, a person may experience one’s being-for-one’s-bird as a freer, more authentic and expressive being than one’s being-for-one’s boss, or one’s spouse. A person chooses all modes and manifestations of one’s being. One cannot choose the initial impact on one’s experiential field of a shout, a blow, a promise, a sunset, a caress—all these things just affect one. However, one can effect various actions upon one’s experience once it has happened. One can blot it out, reconstrue it, project it, distort it, try to preserve it, or let it flow. One’s personality-for-others and one’s personality-for-oneself can embody a resolve to confine one’s experience and action to the limits of a procrustean mold. One can regard one’s experience as being without value and importance or as rich in value. If so, one is impersonating a robot; and one may experience oneself as such. A person can choose what of one’s experience one will disclose in words our behaviour (behaviour is meaningful disclosure too) to whoever is nearby. Indeed, we have begun to explore what one chooses to disclose to others, in words, behavior, or even in physiological messages; under what conditions; and to which others. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
In light of this research, I now suspect and challenge the validity (or at least generalizability) of all published psychology, including the psychology of human learning and of human personality. I suspect their validity, because the original data (which after all are disclosures) may have been gathered under conditions in which the person being studied neither knew nor trusted the experimenter to whom one showed one’s learning or traits. The experimenter does not know what experience of the subjects is embodied in the subjects’ behaviour. What the psychological scientist calls “data” is actually one mode in which the subjects disclose part of their being. There is a growing body of empirical data now to confirm the assertion that a person’s being for psychologist A may differ from one’s being for psychologist B. Perhaps we should subtitle each report of research: “S’s disclosure of learning, of traits, et cetera, for Dr. So-and-So.” In what follows, we shall actually be talking more about interpersonal conditions of independent learning, then about personality factors. The capacity to “go out of one’s mind” (to transcend one’s personality) seems to be one of the necessary conditions for independent learning, for learning-for-oneself. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
And so we are interested in who is able to invite a person out of one’s mind: who are the “psychedelic people,” and who is willing to accept the invitation? There may be a stable trait that could be isolated, that we might call “transcendence-readiness,” or “readiness to leave one’s personality.” Perhaps it persists in people, beyond childhood, through failures on the part of the commissars to get the child fully socialized. This is referred to as resistance to enculturation as one of the general traits of self-actualizing subjects, in whom peak experiences are not a rare occurrence. The peak experience, of course, entails a leaving of one’s mind, one’s usual personality. “Now behold, I will show unto you that they did not establish a king over the land; but in this same year, yea, the thirtieth year, they did destroy upon the judgment-seat, yea, did murder the chief judge of the land. And the people were divided one against another; and they did separate one from another into tribes, every human according to one’s family and one’s kindred and friends; and thus they did destroy the government of the land. And every tribe did appoint a chief or a leader over them; and thus they became tribes and leaders of tribes. Now behold, there was no man among them save he had much family and many kindreds and friends; therefore their tribes became exceedingly great. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
“Now all this was done, and there were no wars as yet among them; and all this iniquity had come upon the people because they did yield themselves unto the power of Satan. And the regulations of the government were destroyed, because of the secret combination of friends and kindreds of those who murdered the prophets. Ans they did cause a great contention in the land, insomuch that the more righteous part of the people had nearly become wicked; yea, there were but a few righteous humans among them. And thus six years had not passed away since the more part of the people had turned from their righteousness, like the dog to his vomit, or like the sow to her wallowing in the mire. Now this secret combination, which had brought so great iniquity upon the people, did gather themselves together, and did place at their head a man whom they did call Jacob; and they did call him their king; therefore he became a king over this wicked band; and he was one of the chiefest who has given his voice against the prophets who testified of Jesus. And it came to pass that they were not so strong in number as the tribes of the people, who were untied together save it were their leaders did establish their laws, every one according to one’s tribe. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
“Nevertheless they were enemies; notwithstanding they were not a righteous people, yet they were united in the hated of those who had entered into a covenant to destroy the government. Therefore, Jacob seeing that their enemies were re numerous than they, he being the kind of the band, therefore he commanded his people that they should take their light into the northernmost part of the land, and there build up unto themselves a kingdom, until they were joined by dissenters, (for he flattered them that there would be many dissenters) and they become sufficiently strong to content with the tribes of the people’ and they did so. And so speedy was their march that it could not be impeded until they have gone forth out of the reach of the people. And thus ended the thirtieth year; and thus were the affairs of the people Nephi. And it came to pass in the thirty and first year that there were divided into tribes, every human according to one’s family, kindred and friends; nevertheless they had come to an agreement that they would not go to war one with another; but they were not untied as to their laws, and their manner of government, for they were established according to the minds of those who were their chiefs and their leaders. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
“However, they did establish very strict laws that one tribe should not trespass against another, insomuch that in some degree they had peace in the land; nevertheless, their hearts were turned from the Lord their God, and they did stone the prophets and did cast them out from among them. And it came to pass that Nephi—having been visited by Angels and also the voice of the Lord, therefore having seen Angels, and being eye-witness, and having had power given unto him that he might know concerning the ministry of Christ, and also being eye-witness to their quick return from righteousness unto their wickedness and abominations; therefore, being grieved from the hardness of their hearts and the blindness of their minds—went forth among them in that same year, and began to testify, boldly, repentance, and remission of sins through faith on the Lord Jesus Christ. And he did minister many things unto them; and all of them cannot be written, and a part of them would not suffice, therefore they are not written in this book. And Nephi did minister with power and with great authority. And it came to pass that they were angry with him, even because he had great power than they, for it were not possible that they could disbelieve his words, for so great was his faith on the Lord Jesus Christ that Angels did minister unto him daily. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
“And in the name of Jesus did he cast out devils and unclean spirits; and even his brother did he raise from the dead, after he had been stoned and suffered death by the people. And the people saw it, and did witness of it, and were angry with him because of his power; and he did also do many more miracles, in the sight of the people, in the name of Jesus. And it came to pass that the thirty and first year did pass away, and there were but a few who were converted unto the Lord; but as many as were converted did truly signify unto the people that they had been visited by the power and Spirit of God, which was in Jesus Christ, in whom they believed. And as many as had devils cast out from them, and were healed of their sickness and their infirmities, did truly manifest unto the people that they had been wrought upon by the Spirit of God, and had been healed; and they did show forth signs also and did do some miracles among the people. Thus passed away the thirty and second year also. And Nephi did cry unto the people in the commencement of the thirty and third year; and he did preach unto them repentance and remission of sins. Now I would have you to remember also, that there were none who were brought unto repentance were not baptized with water. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
“Therefore, there were ordained of Nephi, men unto this ministry that all such as should come unto them should be baptized with water, and this as a witness and a testimony before God, and unto the people, that they had repented and received a remission of their sins. And there were many in the commencement of this year that were baptized unto repentance; and thus the more part of the year did pass away,” reports 3 Nephi 7.1-26. Hail to You, God, as you rise the Sun in the East, scattering before You the terrors of the night as a shark among fish. No mere shark you are, though: a young Divine Being, roaring through the sky, blazing eagerly int the tasks of the day. Enshrine me, young Lord; suit me for the task ahead. O Lord, open Thou my lips and my mouth shall declare Thy praise. Praised art Thou, O Lord our God and Gd of our fathers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, mighty, revered and exalted God. Thou bestowest lovingkindness and possesses all things. Mindful of the patriarchs’ love for Thee, Thou wilt in Thy love bring a redeemer to their children’s children for the sake of Thy name. O King, Thou Helper, Redeemer and Shield, be Thou praised, O Lord, Shield of Abraham. Thou, O Lord, art mighty forever. Thou callest the dead to immortal life for Thou art mighty in deliverance. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
Cresleigh Homes
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Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears a Crown for He Hath Eaten Me Out of House and Home!
The rules seem to be these: if you have written a successful novel, everyone invites you to write short stories. If you have written some good short stories, everyone wants you to write a novel. However, nobody wants anything until you have already proved yourself by being published somewhere else. Western civilization is for the first time in its history in danger of dying. The reason is spiritual. It is losing its life, its soul; that soul is the Christian faith. If the means used to achieve it ultimately contribute to the marginalization of the church and her message, the Devil will allow short-term success in evangelism and church growth. By eschewing the role of reason in evangelism, and substituting in its place an overemphasis on a simple gospel appeal directed at felt needs, short-term gains are to be expected in a culture of empty selves. However, who can deny that while our numbers have grown, our impact has not been proportionate to our numbers? There is too much at stake for this situation to continue. What is needed is a rethinking of the very nature of evangelism, more specifically, of the role of reasoning and argument in the way we do evangelism. First Peter 3.15 commands us to be ready to give a reasoned defense to someone who asks us for a credible reason why we believe what we do. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Jude 1.3 admonished us to “contend earnestly” for the faith. “Contend earnestly” carries with it the idea of engaging in a contest, a struggle, a conflict, or a debate by the pious in the heroic struggle for religious truth, justice, and virtue. The term clearly includes the idea of an intellectual struggle, an idea also expressed by Paul when he said spiritual warfare involves “destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ,” reports 2 Corinthians 10.5. Spiritual warfare is a struggle with persons, demonic and human, and the primary way persons influence other persons is through the ideas they get other to accept. Thus, intellectual tools and reasoning are an important part, though not the whole of spiritual warfare. The other primary components are spiritual preparedness, discernment, courage, and wisdom. We see examples of apologetics everywhere in the Scriptures. In Acts, Paul argued, reasoned, presented evidence, and tried rationally to persuade others to become Christians. “People, why are you doing this? We too are only human, human like you. We are brining you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made Heaven and Earth and sea and everything in them. In the past, he let all nations go their own way. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
“Yet, he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from Heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy,” reports Acts 14.15-17. “As his custom was, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead. ‘This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ,’ he said. Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and not a few prominent women,” reports Acts 17.2-4. “They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household,” reports Acts 16.31. “Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade the Jews and Greeks,” reports Acts 18.4. “Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three months, arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God. However, some of them became obstinate; they refused to believe and publicly maligned the Way. So Paul left them. He took the disciples with him and has discussions daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus. This went on for two years, so that all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord. God did extraordinary miracles through Paul,” reports Acts 19.8-11. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
Paul brought to center stage the truth and reasonableness of the gospel, not the fact that it addresses felt needs. Though both are important, there is a clear Pauline emphasis placed on the former. Jesus Christ Himself regularly engaged in logical debate and rational augment with false, destructive ideologies in His culture, and on several occasions He told people to believe in Him, not simply on the basis of His words, but because of the evidence of His miracles. In this way, Jesus and Paul were continuing a style of persuasion peppered throughout the Old Testament prophets. Regularly, the prophets appealed to evidence to justify belief in the Biblical God or in the divine authority of their inspired message: fulfilled prophecy, the historical fact of miracle, the inadequacy of finite pagan deities to be a cause of such a large, well-ordered Universe compared to God of the Bible, and so forth. They did not say, “God said it, that settles it, you should believe it!” They provided a rational defense for their claims. It is sometimes said that Genesis does not try to “prove” the existence of God, it merely assumes it. However, this is inaccurate. True, Genesis does not argue against atheism because atheism was not a major ideology among the pagan nations surrounding Moses and Israel. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
However, those nations did believe in fickle, finite, immoral deities. In fact, a widespread pagan belief was the idea that each spring the gods copulated, their seed fell to the ground, and that was why crops sprouted and grew each year. Based on that belief, yearly pagan rituals included frenzied orgies to induce the gods to copulate and insure a new season of crops. Genesis takes this view to task and presents a testable claim: The God of Israel delegated to living things the intrinsic power to reproduce after their own kinds, an odd and foreign idea to the nations of the ancient Mideast. However, this claim carried with it a test. If the pagans ceased their orgies, then no crops would grow if their view were correct and the gods needed inducement to copulate. However, if the biblical view were correct, crops would continue to arise. The secret to the peace of God, as great apprentices of Jesus have long known, being abandoned to God, the person who is heartily abandoned to God knows that all shall be well because God is in charge of one’s life. My peace is the greatness of God. Because He, who not only loves me but is Love, is so great, I live beyond harm in His hands; and there is nothing that can happen to me that will not turn out to my good. Nothing. That is what Romans 8.28 really means. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
Because of this, “Thu wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee,” the ancient texts read in Isaiah 26.3. It makes supreme sense, therefore, that I should accept Paul’s instruction to “be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus,” reports Philippians 4.6-7. The greatness and love of Gd forms my peace, and at the same time, my love and joy. Job had many worrisome questions in the midst of his troubled life. However, when he beheld God, they simply did not matter and no longer seemed to need answering. He did not raise a single one of the questions he earlier had wanted to press upon God. “I know that you can do all things; no plans of your can be thwarted. You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’ My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes,” reports Job 42.2-6. Job was not bullied into silence by God coming to him, but really saw the all-sufficiency of God to his life and his soul. And this brought love, joy, and peace to him at one stoke. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
The original position is a central feature of John Rawl’s social contract account of justice. The original position is designed to be a fair and impartial point of view that is to be adopted in our reasoning about fundamental principles of justice. In taking up this point of view, we are to imagine ourselves in the position of free and equal persons who jointly agree upon and commit themselves to principles of social and political justice. The main distinguishing feature of the original position is “the veil of ignorance”: to insure impartiality of judgment, the parties are deprived of all knowledge of their personal characteristics and social and historical circumstances. They do know of certain fundamental interests they all have, plus general fact about psychology, economics, biology, and others social and natural sciences. The parties in the original position are presented with a list of the main conceptions of justice drawn from the tradition of social and political philosophy, and are assigned the task of choosing from among these alternatives the best conception of justice that best advances their interests in establishing conditions that enable them to effectively pursue their final ends and fundamental interests. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
The only particular facts which the parities know is that their society is subject to the circumstances of justice and whatever this implies. It is taken for granted, however, that they know the general facts about human society. They understand political affairs and the principles of economic theory; they know the basis of social organization and the laws of human psychology. Indeed, the parties are presumed to know whatever general facts affect the choice of the principles of justice. There are no limitations on general information, that is, on general laws and theories, since conception of justice must be adjusted to the characteristics of the system of social cooperation which they are to regulate, and there is no reason to rule out these facts. Given the principles of moral learning, humans develop a desire to act in accordance with its principles. In this case a conception of justice is stable. The veil of ignorance insures not only that the information available is relevant, but that it is at all times the same. We can, to make the circumstances more vivid, imagine that the parties are required to communicate with each other through a referee as intermediary, and that one is to announce which alternatives have been suggested and the reasons offered in their support. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
One forbids the attempt to form coalitions, and one informs the parties when they have come to an understanding. However, such a referee is actually superfluous, assuming that the deliberations of the parties must be similar. Justice between generations is resolved by altering the motivation assumptions. However, with this adjustment no one is able to formulate principles especially designed to advance one’s own cause. Whatever one’s temporal position, each is forced to choose for everyone. The right course of action is characterized as that which best advanced social aims as these would be formulated by reflective agreement given that the parties have full knowledge of the circumstances and are moved by a benevolent concern for one another’s interest. No effort s made, however, to specify in any precise way the possible outcomes of this sort of agreement. I do not wish here to criticize others; rather, I want to explain the necessity for what may seem at times like so many irrelevant details. If the original position is to yield agreements that are just, the parties must be fairly situated and treated equally as moral persons. The arbitrariness of the World must be corrected by adjusting the circumstances of the initial contractual situation. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
A conception of justice based on unanimity in these circumstances would indeed be weak and trivial. However, once knowledge is excluded, the requirement of unanimity is not out of place and the fact that it can be satisfied is of great importance. It enables us to say of the preferred conception of justice that it represents a genuine reconciliation of interests. We created the problem of independent learning by the way we taught and trained people to the social roles awaiting them in social structure that resists change. Pedagogues, parents, people in general, invalidated the experience of learners and shut down their capacity to experience wonder and fascination. We created the problem, and it haunts us because, not because “behavioral scientists have expanded our conceptions of human potential by recasting the image of human beings; no, the problem haunts us because we find ourselves at the end of our tether. We are running in circles at its limit. The tether is firmly fixed to a peculiar debasement of once magnificent image—the American Way of Life. Originally revolutionary and dynamic in conception, the American Way of Life is now a design for living that more and more Americans cannot live, without the assistance of tranquilizers and the threats of the ubiquitous commissars. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
Yet, all the time, we advertise this way of life abroad, and try to sell it as we sell bathroom hygiene paper and Buicks, with hidden persuaders. What is independent learning? No authoritative definitions are available. However, what an observer might call independent learning—learning for oneself—the learning experiences as fascinations with some aspect of the Word, envisioned in the mode of possibility, that is in imagination. Independent learning is the embodiment and implementation of imaginative fascination. Some aspect of the World discloses itself to a person. One flips from the experiential mode of perception to an imaginative consciousness; and one experiences oneself as beckoned, challenged, invited, fascinated, by the possibility. The transmutation of this possibility into an actuality then becomes the dominant project of one’s life. One lives it, and one lives for it. The person in who fascination has been turned on, or awakened, suffers a divine discontent, a magnificent obsession. If others live the individual alone, one will wallow in one’s obsession. One will forget to eat, sleep, play, socialize, or do anything else until one has brough one’s image of possibility into actuality, or lies nurturing the wounds from one’s fumbling, awaiting recovery to renew the onslaught. Then, one may again show an interest in other kinds doing. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
However, in the midst of one’s learning rampage, one is far from being well-rounded, socially adjusted; in fact one departs hugely from current images of how people should be. Indeed, the turned-on learner needs to be protected from other people, from self-consciousness, from the need to conform to images, from distractions, and from serious self-destructions as one contemplates and absorbs oneself in the encounter with one’s fetish—they mystery or the missing skill. When one is thus turned on, no badly-written text, no stuttering teacher can be an obstacle or a deterrent, so long as they embody some of the knowledge that has become the life quest just then. “This book or that teacher has something I want just now. I will get it out of them somehow!” Independent learning arises when our present existence has reached an impasse, when our experience has gone stale. The project of “staying the same” has lost its meaning, and so the person seeks “a new interest in life.” If one finds one, and one lets oneself be addressed by it, one become possessed of the divine madness. The burden and dilemma that were one’s existence have now been thrown off. One’s existence is now the quest. One is turned on. One will not be diverted. One may appear ruthless as one pursues one’s quest. One cannot be bored by it though one may bore others by one’s talk of it. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
This state of being, of being involved, of experiencing new possibilities of meaning of one’s life, of being engaged in their fulfillment—this is what I am construing as independent learning. It entails transcending the past—past involvements and interests, social pressure; in short, it is a matter of detachment and liberation from the momentum and inertia of previous ways of being, behaving, and experiencing. The fascinated questing of which I speak can be evoked in a number of ways. It may occur of itself in someone who is desperate enough, whose life has been enlightened. It seems to occur spontaneously in young children before they have been socialized. More commonly, when it does occur, it happens through a relationship between and entrapped person and some other who functions as one’s guru and exemplar—someone who offers a pseudo psychedelic encounter. Indeed, the guru may assist the process of liberation from previous attachments by helping the person experience more keenly the degree to which one feels trapped. The capacity to become fascinated may be impossible until some level of disengagement from usual concerns, ways, and commitments has been reached. Or, the one who is to be the guru may function as a tempter—one’s way of life may excite envy and admiration. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
One’s serenity or one’s enthusiasm may evoke curiosity. One may appear to be having more fun, living more fully, experiencing more. Or one may disclose images of possibility that attract the attention of the bored, unfulfilled seeker, who them becomes fascinated and subsequently experiences one’s previous involvements as obstacles to one’s pursuit of new meaning and experience. Whatever the occasion for being thus turned on, it is this fascinated engagement with an image of possibility that I define as independent learning. We might call it awakening or inspiration, but it is always intentional—that is, it is always related to something in the World; it is always awakening to something, being inspirited by and for something, fascinated with something. And it is embodied; that is, the person lives and acts one’s experience of awakening. In principle, the turned-on state, which is experienced by the person as different from one’s usual, repetitive experience, should appear different to the other person. We thus have the possibility of a psychology, a physiology, even an epidemiology and sociology, of being turned on. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
It is to part of this possibility, an exploration or relationships between personality factors and being turned on. Too many disciples commit the fault of being too demanding and too possessive in their attitude towards the teacher. In the end they become a burden, a liability, or even a nuisance to one. They ought to give one devotion, yes; they ought to think often of one for inspiration and guidance; but they ought not to turn themselves into emotional parasites who are unable to live on their own vitality at all. The eagerness to surrender every responsibility, every decision, every care to a spiritual guide—which is so prominent in the Old World—is only praiseworthy in some cases. In others, it is neurotic and infantile, an attempt to secure indulgent pity, protection, and gregarious support despite the fact that childhood has been physically outgrown. To take it as a sign of advancement, and to use it as an excuse to evade pressing work of self-reform and self-discipline, is deplorable. A calm trust in the human’s leadership is one thing, but a hysterical clinging devotion to one’s personality is another. So it is good for people to be independent learners. For one who turns oneself into a burden to one’s teacher by shrinking one’s own responsibilities and throwing them on one’s teacher, is being selfish as well as weak. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Whoever does not understand that the guide must lead one to where one will seek one’s own way, will go on endlessly looking for teachers, one after the other, or else become a spiritual hypochondriac, a semi-invalid needing the guru-doctor to dance constantly in attendance on one’s ego-centered symptoms. It may be that the effort to imitate one’s master will enable the disciple to excel oneself. If one is willing to accept the gift of Grace, which a true teacher is forever bearing, through your prior willingness to give one your faith and devotion, and to give it not because one want it or anything else for oneself but because one is a purified channel for God’s power, then you may expect to see the past wiped out as sins are forgiven and the future made brighter as new energies are born in you. “And now it came to pass that the people of the Nephites did all return to their own lands in the twenty and sixth year, every human, with one’s family, one’s flocks, and one’s herds, one’s horses, and one’s cattle, and all things whatsoever did belong unto them. And it came to pass that they had not eaten up all their provisions; therefore they did take with them all that they had not devoured, of all their grain of every kind, and their gold, and their sliver, and all their precious things, and they did return to their own lands and their possessions, both on the north and on the south, both on the land northward and on the land southward. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
“And they granted unto those robbers who had entered into a covenant to keep the peace of the land, who were desirous to remain Lamanites, lands, according to their numbers, that they might have, with their labours, wherewith to subsist upon; and thus they did establish peace in all the land. And they began again to prosper and to wax great; and the twenty and sixth and seventh years passed away, and there was great order in the land; and they had formed their laws according to equity and justice. And now there was nothing in all the land to hinder the people from prospering continually, except they should fall into transgression. And now it was Gidigiddoni, and the judge, Lachoneus, and those who had been appointed leaders, who has established this great peace in the land. And it came to pass that there were many cities built anew, and there were many old cities repaired. And there were many highways cast up, and many roads made which led from city to city, and from land to land, and from place to place. And thus passes away the twenty and eight year, and the people had continual peace. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
“However, it came to pass in the twenty and nineth year there began to be some disputings among the people’ and some were lifted up unto pride and boastings because of their exceedingly great riches, yea, even unto great persecutions; for there were many merchants in the land, and also many lawyers, and many officers. And the people began to be distinguished by ranks, according to their riches and their chances for learning; yea, some were ignorant because of their poverty, and others did receive great learning because of their riches. Some were lifted up in pride, and others were exceedingly humble; some did return railings for railing, while others would receive railing and persecution and all manner of afflictions, and would not turn and revile again, but were humble and penitent before God. And thus there became a great inequality in all the land, insomuch that the church began to be broken up; yea, insomuch that in the thirtieth year the church was broken up in all the land save it were among a few of the Lamanites who were converted unto the true faith; and they would not depart from it, for immovable, willing with all diligence to keep the commandments of the Lord. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
“Now the cause of this iniquity of the people was this—Satan had great power, unto the stirring up of the people to do all manner of iniquity, and to the puffing them up with pride, tempting them to seek for power, and authority, and riches, and the vain things of the World. And thus Satan did lead away the hearts of the people to do all manner of iniquity; therefore they had enjoyed peace but a few years. And thus, in the commencement of the thirtieth year—the people having been delivered up for the space of a long time to be carried about by the temptations of the devil whithersoever he desired to carry them and to do whatsoever iniquity he desired they should—and thus in the commencement of this, the thirtieth year, they were in a state of awful wickedness. Now they did not sin ignorantly, for they knew the will of God concerning them, for it had been taught unto them; therefore they did willfully rebel against God. And now it was in the days of Lachoneus, the son of Lachoneus, for Lachoneus did fill the seat of his father and did govern the people that year. And there began to be humans inspired from Heaven and sent forth standing among the people in all the land, preaching and testifying boldly of the sins and iniquities of the people. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
“And they were testifying unto them concerning the redemption which the Lord would make for his people, or in other words, the resurrection of Christ; and they did testify boldly of his death and sufferings. Now there were many of the people who were exceedingly angry because of those who testified of these things; and those wo were angry were chiefly the chief judges, and they who had been high priests and lawyers; yea, all those who were lawyers were angry with those who testified of these things. Now there was no lawyer nor judge nor high priest that could have power to condemn any one to death save their condemnation was signed by the governor of the land. Now there were many of those who testified of the things pertaining to Christ who testified boldly, who were taken and put to death secretly by the judges, that the knowledge of their death came not unto the governor of the land until after death. Now behold, this was contrast to the laws of the land, that any human should be put to death except they had a power from the governor of the land. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
“Therefore a complaint came up unto the land of Zarahemla, to the governor of the land, against these judges who had condemned the prophets of the Lord unto death, not according to the law. Now it came to pass that those judges had many friends and kindreds; and the remainder, yea, even almost all the lawyers and the high priests, did gather themselves together, and unite with the kindreds of those judges who were to be tried according to the law. And they did enter into a covenant one with another, yea, even into that covenant which was given by them of old, which covenant was given and administered by the devil, to combine against all righteousness. Therefore they did combine against the people of the Lord, and enter int a covenant to destroy them, and to deliver those who were guilty of murder from the grasp of justice, which was about to be administered according to the law. And they did set at defiance the law and the rights of their country; and they did covenant one with another to destroy the governor, and to establish a king over the land, that the land should no more be at liberty but should be subject unto the kings,” reports 3 Nephi 6.1-30. Dear Lord in Heaven, you have retuned the Sun, as I knew you would, for this is your part in the ways of things. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
God, you have your role, and you play it well. I ask that you please inspire me to do the same: to know the right thing to do and to do it with passion and joy and honour. Bless, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy whole Clergy, that they may handle Thy holy things with holiness, and be pleasing to Thee Whoa art our Priest for ever. O Lord, without Whom our labour is but lost, and with Whom Thy little ones go forth as the mighty; please be present to all works in Thy Church which are undertaken according to Thy will, (especially in Sacramento, California USA), and please grant to Thy labourers a pure intention, patient faith, sufficient success upon Earth, and the bliss of serving Thee in Heaven; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord Jesus Christ, our sympathizing Saviour, Who for humans didst bear that Agony and the Cross; please draw Thou near to Thy suffering servant, in their pain of body or trouble of mind (especially in Sacramento, California USA) please hallow all their crosses in this life, and crown them hereafter where all tears are wiped away; where with the Father we can sing praises. Merciful and faithful Most Priest, Who didst deign for us to be tempted of Satan; please make speed to assist Thy servants who are assaulted by manifold temptations; and as Thou knowest their several infirmities, let each one to find Thee mighty to save, Who livest, as a young God, a young warrior. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
God, please rise into the sky as into a battle, dispelling the darkness that has covered the World, putting to flight the fears of the night. Have mercy, O compassionate Father, on all who are hardened through the deceitfulness of sin; vouchsafe them grace to come to themselves, the will and power to return to Thee, and the loving welcome of Thy forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Almighty and everliving God, Who hast given us the Christian Faith of Christ for a light to our feet amid the darkness of this World; please have pity upon all who, by doubting or denying it, are gone astray from the path of safety; please bring home the Truth to their hearts, and grant them to receive it as little children; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. God has given birth to you again; again you climb the sky, again you reach for your glory, again I stand here to praise you. The sacred path is fulfilled, things are as they should be. Jesus Christ, herald of the right way, I praise you! Amazing! Wonderful! Every morning, again and again You make life amazing! Wonderful! #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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The Learner Has the Need and the Capacity to Assume Responsibility for One’s Own Continuing Learning!
The system has not failed—but some of us have failed the system. Do not become the problems instead of the solution to the problem. Recent insights from the behavioral sciences have expanded our conceptions of human potential through a re-casting of the image of the human—from passive, reactive recipient to an active, seeking, autonomous, and reflective being. What are the implications of this impelling new image for our concern with human the learner? Educators are giving increased attention to implementing in practice the recognition that the learner has both the capacity and the need to assume responsibility for one’s continuing learning. However, the real question is here is what do humans learn and for whom? Learning is not a task; it is a way to be in the World. Humans learn as they purse their goals and projects that have meaning for them. Humans are always learning something. Perhaps the key to the problem of independent learning lies in the phrase, “The learner has the need and the capacity to assume responsibility for one’s own continuing learning.” That is one phrase that will help wide unclasp the table of their thoughts. These same thoughts—people, the little World. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
It may well be that those who train young people in the ways of their group (a most necessary task) have overshot the mark; they have trained youngster to believe that they cannot, dare not, learn anything without a trainer close at hand. The only safe and good learning is learning-for-the trainer. And the youngsters, being human, independently learned something meaningful to them; namely, that it is dangerous or futile to become interested in something, to learn for oneself. It is only safe to learn for the teacher’s or for society’s approval. One set of image-molders, the teachers, have been commissioned by social leaders to shape youngsters to the acquiescent mode. They implement this commission by invalidating a child’s experience of spontaneous curiosity and fascination with aspects of the World. They insist one learn only when and what one is taught. One must learn for others. The teachers and parents have robbed children of their autonomy—their capacity to experience amazement, wonder, and fascination—by invalidating it whenever it appears. Then, they look at their product and find it wanting; they produced a Golem, a humanoid, a “dependent learning.” Now we are asked to breathe life into it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
We are caught on the horns of a dilemma. Children must be shown the ways of their group; they must be taught and trained. However, if they are to experience their lives as meaningful, and if the society in which they live is to grow and change, they must also be able to transcend this training and learn for themselves. The question is, how is it possible to reconcile the contradiction between teaching children for society and letting them learn for themselves, such that children can serve their society without a loss of freedom and capacity to go beyond what they have been taught? This is the same problem, write large, that every serious teacher—of piano, of art, of math, or English, of Science, of History, of woodshop, of psychotherapy, or even of teaching—faces: how can one teach a pupil in the fundamental techniques of this art without producing a mere technician? In any of these arts, we wish the learner to commit oneself, to be willing to struggle for objectives beyond mastery of exercises and technique (learning experienced as “for-the-teacher”) and even beyond current goals. We hope one will week to make actual one’s own image (not one’s teacher’s image) of beautiful music, pictures, woodworks, healthy personalities, or independent learners. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
If the teacher has been effective, one will have shown one’s pupil that techniques are no more than a beginner’s set of tools, to be used up to the point that an impasse is reached. Then, the trust scholar, the involved therapist, the committed teacher (committed to one’s own image of ultimate goals, not means), gropes and leaps into the unknown, exercising that courage that is not devoid of fear and trembling, to invent or discover new means to further one’s project of actualizing the image. If the old versions of the ultimate goals have lost meaning, the pupil will envision new embodiments of them. Your must play the teacher to yourself. One cannot tread the path for you: you must walk and work by your own effort. The mother cannot grow up on behalf of the child, no matter how greatly she loves it. The adept cannot do your growing-up for you. Nature’s laws must prevail. One has shown you the way; use your will to follow it. However, devote a little time each day to keeping open the channel of communication with your teacher and thus receive one’s impetus, one’s inspiration to help you. So although you must strive by your own use of free will, do not imagine that you need to strive unassisted. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
Working along the line that the teacher found suitable for oneself, slavishly and artificially trying to produce a copy of one, will in the end not even produce that but a caricature instead. For only the teacher’s bodily acts will be imitated; one’s Spirit is invisible and therefore cannot be imitated. Why should anyone copy another’s artwork? Why should Whistler paint pictures in the same way that Gainsborough did? Whistler remained loyal to one’s own conceptions. Why then, going further, copy another’s lifestyle? We may honour a master’s inspirations but yet express our own in our individual way. It is true that followers have no right to burden the teacher with their personal problems, that they should learn bravely to shoulder their difficulties and not pass them on to one. Yet human nature is weak, the teacher kindly. What they may do without taxing one’s strength is to place the problem before one in prayer, thought, or meditation silently, and nor in letter or interview. If they will keep their distresses, troubles, or indecisions to themselves in this way, such reticence will not be to their loss. When an aspirant plagues a teacher too frequently or on too trivial matters, it is indeed a sign of neuroticism. Such conduct is quite suited to children but not to adults. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
Every person must come to terms with who they are now. It reveals too egocentric a person, one who is unwilling to bring the stage of novice to an end because the dependence on another person is more comforting and much easier than endeavouring to settle one’s own little problems. One must learn to speak, move, and even experience the World in the given ways, those deemed right and sane where one lives. It is not easy. It takes a long time. The temptation to stary is strong. Commissars stand close, to insure each person conforms to one’s prescribed position and role. Once a human masters the rules of the social “games,” what then? One plays the games so long as they yield meaningful rewards and the rewards of meaning. Ultimately, the games become confining, boring, even strangling. The person may then wish to opt out, but one cannot—there re no other games to play. So one may become sick. Then, one is patched up by doctors who pronounce one healed, and they send one back into the game. If one seeks to transcend the given, for new realms of experience, one threatens the sleep of the unawakened. They condemn and invalidate one. So one gives up and becomes “normal,” or else seeks a richer experience in private, the while impersonating a typical person. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
It should be made clear that dramatic and directive dominance are dramaturgical terms and that performers wo have positions of visible leadership are often merely figureheads, selected as a compromise, or as a way of neutralizing a potentially threatening position, or as a way of strategically concealing the power behind the front and hence the power behind the power behind the front. So also, whenever inexperienced or temporary incumbents are given formal authority over experienced subordinates, we often find that the formally empowered person is bribed with a part that has dramatic dominance while the subordinates tend to direct the show. Since we all participate on teams we must all carry within ourselves something of the sweet guilt of conspirators. And since each team is engaged in maintaining the stability of some definitions of the situation, concealing or playing down certain facts in order to do this, we can expect the performer to live out one’s conspiratorial career in some furtiveness. A basic problem for many performances, then, is that of information control; the audience must not acquire destructive information about the situation that is being defined for them. In other words, a term must be able to keep its secrets and have its secrets kept. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
There are what are sometimes called “dark” secrets. These consist of facts about a team which it knows and conceals and which are incompatible with the image of self that the team attempts to maintain before its audience. Dark secrets are, of course, double secrets: one is the crucial fact that is hidden and another is the fact that crucial facts have not been openly admitted. There are also what might be called “strategic” secrets. These pertain to intentions and capacities of a team which it conceals from its audience in order to prevent them from adapting effectively to the state of affairs the team is planning to being about. Strategic secrets are the ones that businesses and armies employ in designing future actions against the opposition. So long as a team makes no pretense of being the sort of team that does not have strategic secrets, its strategic secrets need not be dark ones. Yet it is to be noted that even when the strategic secrets of a team are not dark ones, still the disclosure or discovery of such secrets disrupts the team’s performance, for suddenly and unexpectedly the team finds it useless and foolish to maintain the care, reticence, and studied ambiguity of action that was required prior to loss of its secrets. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
It may be added that secrets that are merely strategic tend to be ones which the team eventually discloses, performance, when action based upon secret preparations is consummated, whereas an effort may be made to keep dark secrets secret forever. It may also be added that information is often held back not because of its known strategic importance but because it is felt that it may someday acquire such importance. Thirdly, there are what might be called “inside” secrets. These are ones whose possession marks an individual as being a member of a group and help the group feel separate and different from those individuals who are not in the know. Inside secrets give objective intellectual content to subjectively felt social distance. Almost all information in a social establishment has something of the exclusion function and may be seen as none of somebody’s business. Inside secrets may have little strategic importance and may not be very dark. When this is the case, such secrets may be discovered or accidentally disclosed without radically disrupting the team performance; the performance need only shift their secret delight to another matter. Of course, secret that are strategic and/or dark serve extremely well as inside secrets and we find, in fact, that the strategic and dark character of secrets is often exaggerated for this reason. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Interestingly enough, the leaders of a social group are sometimes faced with a dilemma regarding important strategic secrets. Those in the group who are not brought in on the secret will feel excluded and affronted when the secret finally comes to light; on the other hand, the greater the number of persons who are brought in on the secret, the greater the likelihood of intentional or unintentional disclosure. The knowledge that one team can have of another’s secrets provides us with two other types of secrets. First, there re what might be called “entrusted” secrets This is the kind which the possessor is obliged to keep because of one’s relation to the team to which the secret refers. If an individual who is entrusted with a secret is to be the person one claims one is, one must keep the secret, even thought it is not a secret about oneself. Thus, for example, when a lawyer discloses the improprieties of one’s clients, two quite different performances are threatened: the client’s show of innocence to the court, and the lawyer’s show of trustworthiness to one’s client. It may also be noted that a team’s strategic secrets, whether dark or not, are likely to be the entrusted secrets of the individual members of the team, for each member of the team is likely to present oneself to one’s teammates as someone who is loyal to them. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Since time immemorial, each society had secretly harbored “gurus.” These wise humans have been sought by sufferers, who may have been rich in goods but poor in spirit. The gurus have taught the seekers to let go their attachments in this World, the better to concentrate on spiritual purification. The intimated rewards have not been wealth, fame, or power; but rather enlightenment and liberation, an enriched, more meaningful experience of oneself and one’s World. The gurus have helped seekers attain liberation from entrapment in the culture. They have invited the experience and disclosure of individuality that had hitherto been concealed under the trappings of conformity to roles. The society that would not fall must locate and treasure its gurus, protect them, and not deny seekers access to them. The gurus and their ways are not for everyone. Gurus cannot be hired or bought; they can only be deserved! A society without gurus is stagnant, and will perish as did the dinosaurs, unable to change ways to cope with changing conditions. In the New World, I think we are experiencing an absence in our midst, an absence of gurus. We have myriad commissars, but no one to lead beyond their ways. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
The commissars insure that everyone conforms to existing ways, to the image of humans that is current, that is synonymous with goodness and sanity. Commissars use bribery, guile, and threats of force to get people to follow their prescribed ways, the ways that keep the society and its existing power-structure intact. Who are the commissar? Most of our teacher are commissars. So are our parents. And law enforcement, judges, lawyers, congress, our psychiatrist and psychologist, and even our neighbours. Radio, TV, and the press function as commissars. All commissars collude with oner another to keep us wanting what we are supposed to want and doing what we are supposed to do. Conform, and be reward. However, we are discovering, we who have graduated from such institutes, that something is missing. The something was ourselves. Somewhere along the line, we have lost ourselves, our capacity to experience in new modes and qualities. If we are at all sensitive, we notice the absence and become concerned. We state to seek ourselves and our lost capacity for experiencing. I hope we find it. Our nation will sit stunned, the people having forgotten how to live for themselves, otherwise. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
If we do not get in touch with reality, people will know only how to live for the system of things. An era will have ended. Then, it will be the turn of the Asiatics and Africans to follow the American Way, until they too reach the end of their tether. Finally, people of Marts will land on Earth and have their turn. When you lose yourself your own experiences and their meanings are being denied, and you are developing a self that is different from your real experience self, which may be becoming increasingly unknow to you. Because so many people accept other’s meanings as their own experience, they will come to distrust their own organismic experience. As one beings to distrust more and more of one’s own experience, one’s sense of self-worth will steadily decline until one has very little use for one’s own experience or one’s self. Of course things will be well for those you are trying to please. This pseudoself is just what they want. It is only within oneself, at some deep and unknown level, that there is a vague uneasiness. When a person denies awareness to all of one’s own experiencing—one will get to a pint where one no longer really has a self and is trying to be a self wanted by someone else. Next, rebellion happens. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
One can only attribute this rebellion to the actualizing tendency that has been suppressed for so long but that finally asserts itself. However, often times, because one has distrusted one’s own experience for such a long period and because the self by which one is living is so sharply different from the experiences of one’s organism, one cannot reconstruct one’s true self without help. When there is such a great discrepancy, the need for help often exists. In contrast, however, when people have spent years and even decades trying to socially engineer you, and you do not adhere to their values, even though they do not know you, they will think you are acting weird because their sick and twisted and sadistic methods are not working on you. When people reclaim the value of their experience, they are the ones who decides what matters to them and how they want to live. The center of the valuing process, and the evidence is provided by one’s own sense. What is right for someone who is trying to indoctrinate and corrupt you, may not be what is right for you. One may have started off at a young age knowing the love of God and who one wants to be. Society may call a given experience bad, but when one trusts one’s own valuing of it, one will find that following the path to truth and the love of God is significant and worthwhile. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
When denied experience comes close to awareness, anxiety always results because these previously unadmitted experiences will have meanings that will change the structure of the self by which one as been living. Any drastic change in the self-concept is always a threatening and frightening experience. One may be dimly aware of this threat even though one does not yet know what would emerge. When the denied experienced break through the dam, they turn out to be hurts and angers that one has been completely unaware of. It is impossible for people to realize how completely an experience can be shut out of awareness until it does break through into awareness. Every individual is able to shut out and deny those experiences that will endanger one’s self concept. When the self-concept is so sharply changed that parts of it are completely shattered, it is a very frightening experience, and it is accurate to feel like an alien has take over you. That is why the law allows for mental competence to be called into question when some people are accused of crimes, for they may have been manipulated since they were too young to think for themselves and unaware of what they are doing is wrong. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
So, the system wants to give people who are victims of crimes, who have gone on to commit crimes, an opportunity for repentance and the chance to live a life as themselves, instead of being condemned for having been brainwashed. Some will realize that they are the alien because the submissive, malleable self by which they have been living, the self that has been guided by the statements, attitudes, and expectations of others, is no longer theirs. The new self that had seemed so alien is more than likely one that had experienced hurt and anger and feelings that society regards as bad, as well as wild hallucinatory thoughts—and love. As one goes further into self-discovery, it is likely that one will find out that some of one’s anger is directed against one’s parents. The hurts will have come from various sources; some of the feelings and experiences that society regards as bad but that one finds good and satisfying are experiences and feelings that probably have to do with pleasures of the flesh. Sometimes one has to let their experiences tell them what they mean instead of trying to impose a meaning on them. The more the individual’s self-concept is rooted in the spontaneously felt meanings of one’s experiencing, the more one is an integrated person. People who are learning to self-actualize will enjoy meet and making friend with their thoughts and feelings. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
Here is the dawning of the self-respect and self-acceptance of which one has been deprived for so long. One will even feel an affection for oneself. One of the curious but common side effects of this change is that now one will be able to give oneself more freely to others, to enjoy others more, to be more genuinely interested in them. As one becomes more expressive of one’s love one can also be more expressive of one’s anger and hurt, one’s likes and dislikes, and one’s “wild” thoughts and feelings (which will turn out to be creative impulses). One is in the process of changing from psychological maladjustment to a much healthier relationship to others and to reality. There is a peaceful harmony in being a whole person, but one will be mistaken if one thinks this reaction is permanent. Instead, if one is really open to one’s experience, one will find other hidden aspects of oneself that one has denied to awareness, and each such discovery will give one uneasy and anxious moments or days until it is assimilated into a revised and changing picture of oneself. One will discover that growing toward a congruence between one’s experiencing organism and one’s concept of oneself is an exciting, sometime disturbing, but neverending adventure. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
“And now behold, there was not a living soul among all the people of the Nephites who did doubt in the least the words of all the holy prophets who had spoken; for they knew that it must needs be that they must be fulfilled. And they knew that it must be expedient that Christ had come, because of the many signs which had been given, according to the words of the prophets; and because of the things which had come to pass already they knew that it must needs be that all things should come to pass according to that which had been spoken. Therefore they did forsake all their sins, and their abominations, and their whoredoms, and did sever God with all diligence day and night. And now it came to pass that when they had taken all the robbers prisoners, insomuch that none did escape wo were not slain, they did cast their prisoners into prison, and did cause the word of God to be preached unto them; ad as many as would repent of their sins and enter into a covenant that they would murder no more were set at liberty. However, as many as there were who did not enter into a covenant, and who did still continue to have those secret murders in their hearts, yea, as many as were found breathing out threatenings against their brethren were condemned and punished according to the law. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
“And thus they did put an end to all those wicked, and secret, and abominable combinations, in the which there was so much wickedness, and so many murders committed. And thus had the twenty and second year passed away, and the twenty and third year also, and they twenty and forth, and the twenty and fifth; and thus had twenty and five years passed away. And these had many things transpired which, in the eyes of some, would be great and marvelous; nevertheless, they cannot all be written in this book; yea, this book cannot contain even a hundredth part of what was done among so many people in the space of twenty and five years; but behold there are records which do contain all the proceedings of this people; and a shorter but true account was given by Nephi. Therefore I have made my record of these things according to the record of Nephi, which was engraven on the plates which were called the plates of Nephi. And behold, I do make the record on plates which I have made with mine own hands. And behold, I am called Mormon, being called after the land of Mormon, the land in which Alma did establish the church among the people, yea, the first church which was established among them after their transgression. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
“Behold, I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I have been called of him to declare his work among his people, that they might have everlasting life. And it hath become expedient that I, according to the will of God, that the prayers of those who have gone hence, who were the holy ones, should be filled according to their faith, should make a record of these things which have been done—yea, a small record of that which hath taken place from the time that Lehi left Jerusalem, even down until the present time. Therefore I do make my record from the accounts which have been given by those who were before me, until the commencement of my day; and then I do make record of the things which I have seen with mine own eyes. And I know the record which I make to be a just and a true record; nevertheless here are many things which, according to our language, we are not able to write. And now I make an end of my saying, which is of myself, an proceed to give my account of the things which have been before me. I am Mormon, and a pure descendant of Lehi. I have reason to bless my God and my Saviour Jesus Christ, that he brought our fathers out of the land of Jerusalem, (and no one knew it save it were himself and those whom he brought out of that land) and that he hath given me and my people so much knowledge unto the salvation of our souls. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
“Surely he hath blessed the house of Jacob, and hat been merciful unto the seed of Joseph. And insomuch as the children of Lehi have kept his commandments he hath blessed them and prospered them according to his word. Yea, and surely shall be again bring a remnant of the seed of Joseph to the knowledge of the Lord their God. And as surely as the Lord liveth, will he gather in from the four quarters of the Earth all the remnants of the seed of Jacob, who are scattered abroad upon all the face of the Earth. And as he hath covenanted with all the house of Jacob, even so shall the covenant wherewith he hath covenanted with the house of Jacob be fulfilled in one’s own due time, unto the restoring all the house of Jacob unto the knowledge of the covenant that he hath covenanted with them. And then shall they know their Redeemer, who is Jesus Christ, the Son of God; and then shall they be gathered in from the four quarters of the Earth unto their own lands, from whence they have been dispersed; yea, as the Lord liveth so shall it be. Amen,” reports 3 Nephi 5.1-26. We adore Thee, Blessed Jesus very God and very Man, the Same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever, our strong Salvation and our only Hope. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
Please take us, we pray Thee, into Thy keeping, both now and at the hour of our death; please make us faithful to Thee upon Earth, and blessed with Thee in Heaven, where the Father, Who raises in glory the World, piercer of darkness, illuminates our path as we go through our days. God, pleased continue to illuminate or paths as we go through life. O God, Who hast brought us near to an innumerable company Angels, and to the spirits of just human made perfect; please grant us during our pilgrimage to abide in their fellowship, and in our Country to become partakers of their joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. I pray Thee, good Lord Jesus, by the love which Thou hadst for him that lay on Thy heart, to make me thankful for all that Thou hast given men in this World and to bless this planet exceedingly abundantly, above all that I can ask or think. Please help us to love each other in Thee and for Thee, to be one in heart through all separations, and to talk as friends in the path of Thy service; and finally unite us for ever at Thy feet, where peace and love are perfect and immortal, and Thou with the Father Who is turning the World towards Him, as He has turned it since its very beginning, in infinite longing, in infinite love. And I, a child of Earth, take the Lord as my exemplar, and hold my heart out to Hum in the dawn. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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