All wealth consists of desirable things; that is, things which satisfy human want directly or indirectly: but not all desirable things are reckoned as wealth. If we are honest we have to admit that we will never fully know what happened to our ancestors in their journey towards modern humanity. To be governed by appetite alone is slavery, while obedience to a law one prescribes to oneself is freedom. Instrumental aggression is a biologically adaptive type of aggression, which has the aim of obtaining that which is necessary or desirable. The aim is not destructive as such; this serves only as an instrument for attaining the real aim. In this respect it is similar to defensive aggression, but in other important aspects it is different. It does not seem to have a phylogenetically programmed neuronal basis such as that which programs defensive aggression; among mammals, only animals of prey, whose aggression is instrumental to obtaining food, are endowed with an innate neuronal pattern that impels them to attack their prey. The hunting behaviour of hominids and Homo is based on learning and experience, and does not seem to be phylogenetically programmed. The difficulty with instrumental aggression lies in ambiguity of the terms “necessary” and “desirable.” It is easy to define necessary in terms of an unquestionable physiological need, as, for instance, warding off starvation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 27

Capital is part of wealth which is devoted to obtaining further wealth. In December of 2020, 30 million Americans needed food assistance and/or could not feed themselves and their families. Simultaneously, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk made headlines for overtaking each other as the richest person in the World with more than $160 billion each. If a human steals or robs because he or she and his or her family do not have even the minimal amount of food they need, the aggression is clearly an act motivated by physiological necessity. The same would hold true for a primitive tribe on the verge of starvation which attacks another tribe that is better off. However, these clear-cut examples of necessity were once relatively rare, but are becoming increasingly common. Other more complicated cases are also becoming much more frequent. The leads of a nation realize that their economic situation will be seriously endangered in the long run unless they can conquer territory having the raw materials they need, or unless they defeat a competing nation. Although frequently such reasons are merely an ideological cover for the desire for increasing power or the personal ambition of the leaders, there are wars which do respond to a historical necessity, at least in a broad, relative sense. However, what is desirable? #RandolphHarris 2 of 27

In a narrow sense of the word desirable, one could answer: The desirable is what is necessary. In this instance “desirable” is based on the objective situation. More frequently, however, desirable is defined as that which is desired. If we use the term in this sense, the problem of instrumental aggression assumes another aspect, and in fact the most important one in the motivation of aggression. The truth is that people desire not only what is necessary in order to survive, not only that which provides the material basis for a good life; most people in our culture—and in similar periods of history—are greedy: greedy for more food, drink, pleasures of the flesh, possessions, power, and fame. Their greed may refer more to one than to another of these objects; what all people have in common is that they are insatiable and hence never satisfied. Greed is one of the strongest noninstictive passions in humans, and it is clearly a symptom of psychical dysfunctioning, of inner emptiness and a lack of a center within oneself. It is a pathological manifestation of the failure to develop fully, as well as one of the fundamental sins in Buddhist, Jewish, and Christian ethics. #RandolphHarris 3 of 27

A few examples will illustrate the pathological character of greed: it is well-known that overeating, which is one form of greed, is frequently caused by states of depression; or that compulsive buying is one attempt to escape from a depressed mood. The act of eating or buying is a symbolic act of filling the inner void and, thus, overcoming the depressed feeling for the moment. Green is a passion—that is to say, it is charged with energy and relentlessly drives a person toward the attainment of one’s goals. In our culture greed is greatly reinforced by all those measures that tend to transform everybody into a consumer. Of course the greedy person does not need to be aggressive, provided one has enough money to buy what one desires. However, if one wants to satisfy one’s desires, the greedy person who does not have the necessary means must attack. The most drastic example of this is the drug addict who is possessed by one’s greed for the drug (although in one’s case increasingly reinforced by physiological sources). The many who do not have the money to buy drugs, rob, assault, or even kill in order to get the necessary means. Destructive as their behaviour is, their aggression is instrumental and not their goals. #RandolphHarris 4 of 27

On a historical scale greed is one of the most frequent causes of aggression and is probably as strong a motive for instrumental aggression as the desire for what is objectively necessary. The understanding of greed is obscured by its identification with self-interest. The latter is a normal expression of a biologically given drive, that for self-preservation, the aim of which is to obtain what is necessary for the preservation of life or of a customary, traditional standard of living. As Max Webber, R. H. Tawney, Heinrich von Brentano, Werner Sombart, and others have shown, humans in the Middle Ages were motivated by the desire to preserve one’s traditional standard of living, whether as a peasant or an artisan. The demands of the revolutionary peasants in the sixteenth century were not to have what the artisans in the cities had, nor did the artisans strive for the wealth of a feudal baron or a rich merchant. Even as late as the eighteenth century we find laws that forbid a merchant to try to take customers away from a competitor by making one’s own store look more attractive or by praising one’s wares to the disadvantaged of those of another merchant. #RandolphHarris 5 of 27

Only with the full development of capitalism—as earlier, in comparable societies like that of the Roman Empire—did greed become a key motive for an ever-increasing number of citizens. However, greed, perhaps because of a still-lingering religious tradition, is a motive to which hardly anyone dares to confess. The logic went: self-interest is a biologically given striving anchored in human nature; self-interest equals greed; ergo: greed is rooted in human nature—and not a character-conditioned human passion. In our phantasy World we are engaged with ideas which have the nature of dynamic structures, acting as “authority figures,” “goodies” and “baddies,” “persecutors,” “victims,” “rescuers,” and so on. Mostly we define these stagey figures in such a way that our way of dealing with them or relating with them is implied in the word itself. We love “goodies” and we try to be like them and feel bad when we are not. We strongly dislike “baddies” and persecute or feel persecuted by them. We identify and sympathize with “victims” (if we did not, it would be because they are “baddies”—their suffering serves them right!) and we welcome and cheer on the “rescuers” (if we did not, it is because we see them as “persecutors”). #RandolphHarris 6 of 27

We have learnt to relate to the World in an excited but frustrated way, or in an angry need-rejecting way, or, thirdly, in a spuriously calm matter-or-fact way. What is left after the libidinal and the anti-libidinal organizations of the self have been disowned? There still remains a self shorn of both enjoyable and painful components, but still capable of engaging in the survival functions, mainly perceiving, remembering, comparing, planning, and so on—the ego-functions. This is left-over is the Central Ego; it is almost entirely a monitor of events. It is an organized region of the self which registers that there has been arousal of need, and gratification or frustration of needs, wishes, impulses to approach or retreat, but it does not register the accompanying feelings. Though of necessity in touch, however, minimally, with whatever dynamic structures enable the organism to survive, there is not much contact with the arousing, gratifying, or frustrating sensations themselves (which have formed “libidinal” and “anti-libidinal” organizations). The Central Ego relates to the Ideal Object. The phantasy is that is an individual does not make a nuisance of itself, is not unjustifiably demanding, and avoids whatever makes its attachment figures reject one, if one does all this and maybe more…then the individual will be behaving in an ideal way and the attachment figures, who of course are ideal, will be able to respond in an ideal way. #RandolphHarris 7 of 27

This is called the Moral Defense (against the intolerable anxiety of living in the hostile World). Alas that is should sound so plausible a term. The World central might suggest that the Central Ego is somehow at the core of a person. However, the Central Ego is the monitor at the boundary between the self and other people and things. In this is closely resembles what Dr. Freud meant by “ego”—he also did not mean the self but only that monitoring process. It is also like Dr. Winnicott’s False Self, the Caretaker Self which protect more vulnerable feelings which are conceived of as deeper, further away, or further back. There are therefore circumstances when the Central Ego is divorced from much that is part of a person; there is only the sort of consciousness which is expressed in “I must get along somehow,” not feeling much or needing much or dreading much since all that is almost entirely split off. Being out of touch with most of the springs of action, the mode of speech is passive. This is how a withdrawn person does feel. The more personal pronouns are also removed: “That is life,” “It is what it is,” “That is how the cookie crumbles,” “No use complaining.” The Central Ego holds summarized abstracts of the environment: concepts not percepts. #RandolphHarris 8 of 27

In these circumstances, the environment, too, is shorn of anything that might make for strong feelings. An Ideal object, it is stripped of its exciting or rejecting aspects, bland. Sometimes this is called the Accepted Object, since everything is experienced as acceptable: “My family is just ordinary,” “We get on well,” “We do not have problems,” What is anything to do with anything?” A person who represents the extreme condition in this mood, might say, “I have no wishes; I do not care about anything or anyone.” Such people have a simple system of guidance—pleasure—seeking/pain-avoiding, or survival, or a cause, or a set of values—by the light of which they manage their lives, rather as managers of industrial organizations may impersonally manage the organization on lines laid down by others. They manage; they do not enjoy. They may think of this matter-of0fact region as their real and most central self. It is a region of thoughts and calculations—an entrepreneurial self-region, or a managerial one, individualistic. #RandolphHarris 9 of 27

The extent to which it is cut off and isolated from other self-regions varies of course—people differ. If it varied from social classes to social class in systematic ways which would be shown up by research, I would not be surprised. I certainly think that it varies between the genders, by and large, the men’s Central Ego being on average more pronounced and more isolated, and also more highly valued than women’s. Personality-structures here, as so often, reflect the institutional structures of our society. So, perhaps to an even greater degree, do the theories we construct, since they are constructed by those of us who have done well by our institutional arrangements. There are people whose Central Ego is the most conscious and valued aspect of their self-imagery. They seem to be conscious of themselves mainly as thinkers, believing themselves to be most uniquely themselves when thinking. It is interesting to note how often philosophers are like this. Dr. Descartes wrote, “I think therefore I am—Cogito ergo sum”; Dr. Pascal called himself a mere fragile reed but, he added quickly, “un roseau pensant”: a thinking reed. Perhaps professional thinkers, academics, and theory-writers are particularly prone to this kind of personality structure, which they thus believe to be characteristic of the whole human race. #RandolphHarris 10 of 27

Being thinkers, they are good at words, and get themselves into print. However, they may not be accurately describing how it is for all of us.  Welfare economics is often defined as a conception of political economy, that is, as standards by which to assess economic arrangements and politics, and their background institutions. (“Welfare” suggest that the implicit moral conception is utilitarian: the phrase “social choice” is far better although I believe its connotations are still too narrow.) A doctrine of political economy must include an interpretation of the public good which is based on a conception of justice. It is to guide the reflections of the citizen when one considers questions of economic and social policy. One is to take up the perspective of the constitutional convention or the legislative stage and ascertain how the principles of justice apply. A political opinion concerns what advances the good of the body politic as a whole and invokes some criterion for the just division of social advantages. Justice as fairness applies to the basic structure of society. It is a conception for ranking social forms viewed as closed systems. Some decision concerning these background arrangements is fundamental and cannot be avoided. #RandolphHarris 11 of 27

In fact, the cumulative effect of social and economic legislation is to specify the basic structure. Moreover, the social system shapes the wants and aspirations that its citizens come to have. It determines in part the sort of persons they want to be as well as the sort of persons that are. Thus an economic system is not only an institutional device for satisfying existing wants and needs but a way of creating and fashioning wants in the future. How humans work together now to satisfy their present desires affects the desires they will have later on, the kind of persons they will be. These matters are, of course, perfectly obvious and have always been recognize. They were stressed by economist as different as Alfred Marshall and Karl Marx. Since economic arrangements have these effects, and indeed must do so, the choice of these institutions involves some view of human good and of the design of institution to realize it. This choice must, therefore, be made on moral and political as well as on economic grounds. Considerations of efficiency are but one basis of decision and often relatively minor at that. Of course, this decision may not be openly faced; it may be made by default. #RandolphHarris 12 of 27

We often acquiesce without thinking in the moral and political conception implicit in that status quo, or leave things to be settled by how contending social and economic forces happen to work themselves out. However, if the conclusion is reached that it is best left to the course of events to decide, political economy must investigate this problem. One might think that this conception of justice relies upon the aims of existing individuals and regulates the social order by principles that persons guided by these aims would choose. We must not overlook the very special nature of that situation and the scope of the principles adopted there. Only the most general assumptions are made about the aims of the parties, namely, that they take an interest in primary social goods, in things that humans are presumed to want whatever else they want. A just system must generate its own support. This means that it must be arranged so as to bring about in its member the corresponding sense of justice, an effective desire to act in accordance with its rules for reasons of justice. Thus the requirement of stability and the criterion of discouraging desires that conflict with the principles of justice put further constraints on institutions. They must be not only framed so as to encourage the virtue of justice in those who take part in them. #RandolphHarris 13 of 27

In this sense, the principles of justice define a partial ideal of the person which social and economic arrangements must respect. Finally, as the argument for embedding ideals into our working principles has brought out, certain institutions are required by two principles. They define an ideal basic structure, or the outlines of one, toward which the course of reform should evolve. The upshot of these considerations is that justice as fairness is not at the mercy, so to speak, of existing wants and interests. It sets up an Archimedean point for assessing the social system without invoking a priori considerations The long range aim of society is settled in its main lines irrespective of the particular desires and needs of its present members. And an ideal conception of justice is defined since institutions are to foster the virtue of justice and to discourage desires and aspirations incompatible with it. Of course, the pace of change and the particular reforms called for at any given time depend upon the current conditions. However, the conception of justice, the general form of a just society and the ideal of the person consistent with it are not similarly dependent. There is no place for the question whether human’s desires to play the role of superior or inferior might not be so great that autocratic institutions should be accepted. #RandolphHarris 14 of 27

Also, there is no question whether human’s perception of the religious practice of others might not be so upsetting that liberty of conscience should not be allowed. We have no occasion to ask whether under reasonably favourable conditions the economic gains of technocratic but authoritarian institutions might be so great as to justify the sacrifice of basic freedoms. Of course, these remarks assume that the general assumptions of which the principles of justice were chosen were chosen are correct. However, if they are, this sort of question is already decided by these principles. Certain institutional forms are embedded within the concept of justice. This view shares with perfectionism the feature of setting up an ideal of the person that constrains the pursuit of existing desires. In this respect justice as fairness and perfectionism are both opposed to utilitarianism. The utilitarian can always say tat given social conditions and human’s interests as they are, and taking into account how they will develop under this or that alternative institutional arrangement, encouraging one pattern of wants rather than another is likely to lead to a greater net balance (or to a higher average) of satisfaction. On this basis the utilitarian selects between ideals of the person. #RandolphHarris 15 of 27

Some attitudes and desires, being less compatible with fruitful social cooperation, tend to reduce the total (or the average) happiness. Roughly speaking, the moral virtues are those dispositions and effective desires that can generally be relied upon to promote the greatest sum of well-being. Thus, it would be a mistake to claim that the principle of utility provides no grounds for choosing among ideals of the person, however difficult it may be to apply the principle in practice. Nevertheless, the choice does depend upon existing desires and present social circumstances and their natural continuations into the future. These initial conditions may heavily influence the conception of human good that should be encouraged, The contrast is that both justice as fairness and perfectionism establish independently an ideal conception of the person and of the basic structure so that not only are some desires and inclinations necessarily discouraged but the effect of the initial circumstances will eventually disappear. With utilitarianism we cannot be sure what will happen. Since there is no ideal embedded in its principle, the place we start from may always influence the path we are to follow. #RandolphHarris 16 of 27

In order to find an Archimedean point it is not necessary to appeal to a priori or perfectionist principles. By assuming certain general desires, such as the desire for primary social goods, and by taking as a basis the agreements that would be made in suitably defined initial situation, we can achieve the requisite independence from existing circumstances. The original position is so characterizes that unanimity is possible; the deliberations of any one person are typical of all. Moreover, the same will hold for the considered judgments of the citizens of a well-ordered society effectively regulated by the principles of justice. Everyone has a similar sense of justice and in this respect a well-ordered society is homogeneous. Political arguments appeal to this moral consensus. There is another resemblance to idealism: justice as fairness has a central place for the value of community. The essential idea is that we want to account for the social values, for the intrinsic good of institutional, community, and associative activities, by a conception of justice that in its theoretical basis is individualistic. For reasons of clarity among others, we do not want to rely on an undefined concept of community, or to suppose that society is an organic whole with a life of its own distinct from and superior to that of all its members in their relations with one another. #RandolphHarris 17 of 27

Thus the contractual conception of the original position is worked out first. It is reasonably simple and the problem of rational choice that it poses is relatively precise. From this conception, however individualistic it might seem, we must eventually explain the value of community. Otherwise the theory of justice cannot succeed. To accomplish this we shall need an account of the primary good of self-respect which relates it to the parts of theory already developed. Since we see so many forms in Nature which are gloriously beautiful, and yet at the same time so many which are repulsively ugly, we may rightly conclude that both beauty and ugliness, the opposites, are present in the World-Idea and hence in the World-Mind. The same may be said of loving-kindness and merciless cruelty. For these attributes are merely human conceptions. The Infinite Mind is infinitely larger and more impersonal in outlook that is the human mind. It will be fund by experience that preoccupation with such questions as “Why does God allow evil in the World?” will fall away under the influence of the Witness Self. The question is relative to and relevant only in the sphere of the personal self in interaction with other personal selves, and in that sphere it has no answer. #RandolphHarris 18 of 27

In the sphere of God the question does not exist. “Come unto Me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest” is still as true as when spoken by the Christ over two thousand and twenty years ago. It is the outward appearance of their environment and the inward reality of their egoism which make so many thinkers doubt whether God is perfectly great. God has not the kind of limited five-sense conscious to which most human beings are limited. One trouble is that it is ordinarily believed that a God who is not a Person is no God at all because He will not be a thinking, intelligent being. It is so customary to associate consciousness with individual consciousness that it seems almost impossible to grasp the concept of omnipresent, everywhere-diffused, all-inclusive Mind which is not a mind. What we deny is the limited kind of being which is the only kind of God most human faculties can imagine. The Real, as the ultimate source of all knowing and feeling beings, cannot itself be unknowing and unfeeling. We could not deny consciousness to God without denying consciousness to humans. However, being absolute and infinite God does not know and feel in the same limited way which confines the knowledge and feelings of finite humans. #RandolphHarris 19 of 27

It is more correct to speak of Mind as the All-Conscious than as the unconscious. What we may rightly say is that, viewed from the side which alone is know to us, a certain phase of it appears to be unconscious. The higher teachings state that all the phases of Mind are consciousness ones. There is a curious and mysterious statement that God can gain nothing more by making Himself known to Himself, since He is already all-knowledge. Friendship cannot exist except towards rational creatures, who are capable of returning love, and communicating one with another in the various works of life, and who may fare well or ill, according to the changes of fortune and happiness; even as to them is benevolence properly speaking exercised. However, irrational creatures cannot attain to loving God, nor to any share in the intellectual and beatific life that He lives. Strictly speaking, therefore, God does not love irrational creatures with the love of friendship; but as it were with the love of desire, in so far as He orders them to rational creatures, and even to Himself. Yet this is not because He stand in need of them; but only on account of His goodness, and of the services they render to us. For we can desire a thing for others as well as for ourselves. Nothing prevents one and the same thing being loved under one aspect, while it is hated under another. #RandolphHarris 20 of 27

God loves sinners in so far as they are existing natures; for they have existence and have it from Him. In so far as they are sinners, they have not existence at all, but fall short of it; and this in them is not from God. Hence under this aspect, they are hated by Him. There is in fact an inner affinity between the law and the soul. That is why rebellion against the law makes the soul sick and distances it from God. That is why love of the law restores the soul. Law is god for the sou, is an indispensable instrument of instruction and a standard of judgment of god and evil. Walking in the law with God restores the soul because the law expresses the other of God’s kingdom and of God’s own character. That is why it converts and restores the soul. Grace is also essential, but not grace as formless spurts of permissiveness that thrust the law aside. The correct order that the soul requires for its vitality and proper functioning is found in the “royal law” of love (James 2.8), abundantly spelled out law, which he fulfilled and enables us to fulfill through constant discipleship to Him. One whose aim is anything less than obedience to the law of God in the Spirit and power of Jesus will never have a soul at rest in God and will never advance significantly in spiritual transformation into Christlikeness. #RandolphHarris 21 of 27

Finally, then, transformation of our soul requires that we acknowledge its reality and importance, understand scriptural teachings about it, and take it into the yoke of Jesus, learning from one humility and the abandonment of “outcomes” to God. This brings rest to the soul. Then our soul is reempowered in goodness by receiving the law and the Word into it as the structure of our covenant fellowship with God in grace. The law is the structure of a life of grace in the kingdom of God. Other things maybe required for soul recovery in some people: perhaps special acts of deliverance or ministries of inner healing or psychological counseling. Always, the good news of Jesus is presupposed. However, the most powerful force for transformation of the soul born “from above” is to walk in righteousness upheld by grace. “The soul is deep.” What do you understand that to mean? How does it relate to intellectual and cultural tendencies of the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries? To biblical teachings. How does “failure of good intentions” relate to the disorders of the soul? Why does fanaticism have such an attraction for the broken soul? What are some way you can acknowledge your own soul? How is law and obedience to law an expression of grace? #RandolphHarris 22 of 27

Does the idea of an affinity between law and the soul make sense to you? Everything, be it person, news, government, celebrity, chatter or gossip, that you set up in the place of God is an idol. In every act of such worship you commit idolatry. If divinity cannot be represented by any idol, any graven image, nether can it be described by any word. All verbal descriptions are non-descriptions. What Jesus Christ called “the only true God” is the ultimate formless reality, not the thoughts about it or the pictures of it created in human imaginations. It is an object of insight, not of sense of thought. Try as much as you can, but in the end you will find God is not something imaginable. Nobody can tell us what God looks like, for God has no form at all. God must be found as He is in reality, not as He has been in human imagination. We feel the presence of a divine power, but we are baffled by its motives. Neither thinking nor any kind of human activity can grasp the full truth about the World-Mind. Not even at the height reached by the self-actualized or adept is this possible. If God were not a mystery, He would not be God. Humans who claim to know Him need semantic correction; this said, their experience may yet be exceptional, elevating, and immaterialist. However, let God remain God, incomprehensible and untouchable. #RandolphHarris 23 of 27

God is a mystery which no human can truly understand, no language can really express, and no idea can fully embody. The one infinite life-power which reveals itself in the cosmos and manifests itself through time and space, cannot be named. It is something that is. For a name would falsely separate it from other things when the truth is that it is those things, all things. Nor would we know what to call it, since we know nothing abouts its real nature. The consciousness and nature of the World-Mind is utterly beyond the capacity and power of any human being to understand, much less to explain. “A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: ‘If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, one, too, will drink from the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. One will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of holy angels and of the lamb. And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name.’ This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints who obey God’s commandments and remain faithful to Jesus. #RandolphHarris 24 of 27

“Then I heard a voice from Heaven say, ‘Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. Yes,’ says the Spirit, ‘they will rest from their labour, for their deeds will follow them,’” reports Revelation 14.9-13. Father, I choose faith! I choose Your unlimited grace and favour. I choose to believe that You have good things in store for me. You use me for Your glory in Jesus’s name. Amen. You must continue to bear in mind that the temporal and spiritual are blended. They are not separate. One cannot be carried on without the other, so long as we are here in mortality. We do not feel that it is possible for people to be really good and faithful Chrisitian people unless they can also be good and faith, honest and industrious people. Self-reliance implies the individual development of skills and abilities and then their application to provide for one’s own needs and wants. If further implies that one will achieve those skills through self-discipline and then, through self-restraint and charity, use those skills to bless oneself and others. The Lord expects all his children of sound mind and body to thus perform in this second estate is made clear in many scriptural passages whose central thought focuses on work—personal, earnest, life-sustaining work. #RandolphHarris 25 of 27

The Lord sets free the captives. The Lord opens the eyes of the blind; the Lord raises up them that are humble; the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord protects the strangers, God upholds the fatherless and the widow; but the way of the wicked God does confuse. The Lord shall reign forever, eternally and always. Thy God, O America, shall be Sovereign unto all generations. Hallelujah. Just as each individual is accountable for one’s choices and actions in spiritual matters, one is also accountable in temporal matters. Father, my finances belong to you. I thank You in advance for my financial prosperity. Lord, I know that everything that comes from You is good, so I know that by placing my finances in Your hands, You will come through for me and I will become financially stable and secure. I know that in this new year, You will bless me with my dream house and guide me to stable grounds. Dear Lord, keep me in mind of my blessings no matter how much or little I may have. Please give me the patience to save and the will power to make wise choices. Please help me see the value in building a savings for retirement and a college fund for my children. Please, God, grant me the patience and tolerance necessary to calm my spirit and bring peace and love into my home and silence. I know that you are in control of everything. #RandolphHarris 27 of 27

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A new idea is a light that illuminates presences which simply had no form for us before light fell on them. The individual differentiated itself out of the infinite ocean of Mind into a distinct individuality after a long development through the diverse kingdoms of Nature. Having thus arrived at consciousness of what it is, having travelled the spiral of growth from germ to human, the result of all this effort is certainly not gained only to be throw away. Were this to happen then the entire history of the human race would be a meaningless one, its entire travail a resultless one, its entire aspiration a valueless one. If evolution were merely the complementary return journey of an involuntary process, if the evolving entity arrived only at its starting point for all its pains, then the whole plan would be a senseless one. If the journey of humans consisted of nothing more than treading a circle from the time of one’s emergence from the Divine Essence to the time of one’s mergence back into it, it would be a vain and useless activity. It would be a stupendous adventure but also an unenlightened one. There is something more than that in one’s movement. Expect in the speculations of certain theorists, it simply does not happen. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25

The self-consciousness thus developed will not be dissolved, extinguished, or re-absorbed into the Whole again, leaving not a trace behind. Rather will it begin a new spiral of evolution towards higher altitudes of consciousness and diviner levels of being, in which it will co-operate as harmoniously with the universal existence as formerly it collided against it. It will not separate its own goo from the general good. Here is part of the answer to this question: What are the ultimate reasons for human wanderings through the World-process? That life matters, that the Universe possesses meaning, and that the evolutionary agonies are leading to something worthwhile—these are beliefs we are entitled to hold. If the cosmos is a wheel which turns and turns endlessly, it does not turn aimlessly. Evolution does not return us to the starting point as we were. The ascent is not a circle but a spiral. Evolution presupposes that its own possibility has always been latent within the evolving entities. Hence the highest form is hidden away in the lowest one. There is development from the blindly instinctive life of animals to the consciously thinking life of humans. The blind instinctive struggles of the plant to sustain itself are displaced in the evolutionary process by the self-conscious efforts of the human. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25

The blind instinctive struggles of the planet to sustain itself are displaced in the evolutionary process by the intelligent self-conscious efforts of the human being. Everywhere we find that evolution produces variety. There are myriads of individual entities, but each possesses some quality of uniqueness which distinguishes it from all others. Life ma be one but is multitudinous expressions do differ, as thought difference were inherent in such expression. Evolution as mentalistically defined by philosophy is not quite the same as evolution as materialistically defined by Dr. Darwin. With us it is simply the mode of striving, through rhythmic rise and fall, for an ever fuller expansion of the individual unit’s consciousness. However, the ego already possesses all such possibilities latently. Consequently the whole process, although apparently an ascending one, is really an unfolding one. Narcissism can be described as a state of experience in which only the person oneself, one’s body, one’s needs, one’s feelings, one’s thoughts, one’s property, everything and everybody pertaining to one are experienced as fully real, while everybody and everything that does not form part of the person or is not an object of one’s needs is not interest, is not fully real, is perceived only by intellectual recognition, while affectively without weight and colour. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25

A person, to the extent to which one is narcissistic to one has significance, while the rest of the World is more or less weightless or colorless, and because of this double standard the narcissistic persons shows severe defects in judgment and lacks the capacity for objectivity. Often the narcissistic person achieves a sense of security in one’s own entirely subjective conviction of one’s perfection, one superiority over others, one’s extraordinary qualities, and not through being related to others or through any real work or achievement of one’s own. One needs to hold on to one’s narcissistic self-image, since one’s sense of worth as well as one’s sense of identity are based on it. If one’s narcissism is threated, one is threatened in a vitally important area. When others wound one’s narcissism by slighting one, criticizing one, showing up when one has said something wrong, defeating one in a game or on numerous other occasions, a narcissistic person usually reacts with intense anger or rage, whether or not one shows it or is even aware of it. The intensity of this aggressive reaction can often be seen in the fact that such a person will never forgive someone who has wounded one’s narcissism and often feels a desire for vengeance which would be less if one’s body or one’s property had been attacked. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25

“Splitting an object” refers to what happens when a person experiences more than one object where other people may be sure that there is only one. For instance, I might have split my experiences in which a way that I sometimes relate to a perfectly good mother, and sometimes bad. Where the point of a sentence is that a person’s experience of something or someone is not being shared by other people, is called a phantasy object or inner object. Phantasy, in psychodynamics, is also called expectancy. We may think of a person as passively undergoing experiences over which one has little control. However, from the experience of some regularly recurring routines, one will come to expect that the first stages of such a routine lead to the rest of a sequence. This is one way in which an organization of memory-traces becomes a dynamic structure. The experience of many individuals is that the emergence of a need—say, hunger—will lead to an expectation or an imaginative anticipation or a phantasy of something or someone coming to gratify that need: a complex concept of a gratifying person or a gratifying thing. This phantasy, once it is constructed, remains. The memory-traces persist. Even when the satisfaction does not come, the concept—the phantasy—is not wiped out. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25

   So one can keep thinking about this phantasy, making up stories about it, and so on. This does not depend directly on how often the god thing actually happens. If it does not happen so very regularly, the individual can build up two phantasies of a significant object (person)—of one who is good and satisfying, and of one who is uncontrollable and is sometimes satisfying and sometimes not. The fact that the latter is sometime satisfying, helps to maintain the phantasy of a satisfying good object, and the fact that the object sometime does not being satisfaction helps to maintain the phantasy of a bad object. It, too, persists Once a nasty or frightening concept has been established, it can keep alive and dynamic, independent of whatever good experiences may also be taking place. Objects are bad by virtue of having been experienced as painful, or as not-there when they should have been there, or as there when they were not wanted, or generally causing too much tension. If an individual is not frustrated, they will register what is going on. If the transition from feeling a need to having it met was smooth and without pain, the individual may not register it, at least in the very early stages of psychic development. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25

Howling, it seems clear to me that people do register pleasant sequences of exactment and gratification as well as unpleasant ones of excitement and gratification as well as unpleasant ones of excitement and frustration. I believe these pleasant sequences to be important in the development of a strong, realistically trusting and optimistic personality. However, in most cases bad objects are the first to be internalized. Still instincts are the motivating power because they have built-in drives toward objectives. The super-ego is a parental image created by a mixture of the individual’s experience of one’s own anxieties and one’s experience of one’s parents’ prohibitions and threats. The super-ego is a motivating power in so far as the individual took over the parental threats and prohibitions as part of its imagery (internalization). This made the super-ego an inner object with motivating power because the individual’s instinctual drive is thought to be directed to what the parent had; the energy of this drive, should not reach its target, was thought somehow to be diverted and deflected back to the individual. Thereafter the energy was available to the individual and reinforced the individual’s acceptance of parental prohibitions and threat. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25

The super-ego is the limbo of abandoned object-cathexes’, that is a collection of instinctive energies which had not been expended in gratification, because they had not reached the object(ive) to which they had been directed. Most persons are not aware of their own narcissism, but only of those of its manifestations which do not overtly reveal it. Thus, for instance, they will feel an inordinate admiration for their parents or for their children, and they have no difficulty in expressing these feelings because such behaviour is usually judged optimistically as filial piety, parental affection, or loyalty; but if they were to express their feelings about their own person, such as “I am the most wonderful person in the World,” “I am better than anyone else,” et cetera, they would be suspected not only of being extraordinarily vain, but perhaps even of not being quite sane. On the other hand, if a person has achieved something that finds recognition in the field of art, science, sports, business, or politics, one’s narcissistic attitude appears not only to be realistic and rational, but is also constantly fed by the admiration of others. In these cases one can give full rein to one’s narcissism because it has been socially sanctioned and confirmed. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25

The problem pf narcissism and creativity is a very complex one. In present-day Wester society there is a peculiar interconnection between the narcissism of the celebrity and the needs of the public. The latter wants to be in touch with famous people because the life of the average person is empty and boring. The mass media live from selling fame, and thus everybody is satisfied: the narcissistic performer, the public, and the fame merchants. Among political leaders a high degree of narcissism is very frequent; it may be considered an occupational illness—or asset—especially among those who owe their power to their influence over mass audiences. If the leader is convinced of one’s extraordinary gifts and of one’s mission, it will be easier to convince the larger audiences who are attracted by humans who appear to be so absolutely certain. However, the narcissistic leader does not use one’s narcissistic charisma only as a means for political success; one needs success and applause for the sake of one’s own mental equilibrium. The idea of one’s greatness and infallibility is essentially based on one’s narcissistic grandiosity, not on one’s real achievements as a human being. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25

However, that does not mean one is nothing but a bluff; this is true frequently enough, but not always. Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill, for instance, were very narcissistic persons, yet they did no lack in important political achievements. However, these achievements were not such as to justify their feeling of self-assurance and unquestionable rightness often manifested in arrogance; at the same time, their narcissism was limited in comparison with that of others. When he lost the election of 1948, that explains why Churchill did not suffer from severe mental consequences. If Roosevelt had experienced defeat, I assume the same would have been the case, although the fact must not be ignored that even after political defeat, they would have retained a great number of admirers. Wilson’s case may be somewhat different; it would be a subject for study whether his political defeat did not create serious psychic problems that interacted with one’s physical illness. Some leaders prefer to die rather than to face defeat. And yet some can do without the narcissistic inflation because of their human core—conviction, conscience, love, and faith—is not very developed. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25

Extremely narcissistic persons are often forced to become famous, since otherwise they might become depressed or insane. However, it takes much talent—and appropriate opportunities—to influence others to such a degree that their applause validates these narcissistic dreams. Even when such people succeed, they are driven to seek further success, since for them failure carries the danger of collapse. Popular success is, as it were, their self-therapy against depression and madness. In fighting for their aims, they are really fighting for their sanity. The precept that there is no offense without a law (Nullum crimen sine lege), and the requirements it implies, also follow from the idea of a legal system. This precept demand that laws be known and expressly promulgated, that their meaning be clearly defined, that statutes be general both in statement and intent and not be used as a way  of harming particular individuals who may be expressly named (bills of attainder), that least the more severe offenses be strictly construed, and that penal laws should not be retroactive to the disadvantaged of those to whim they apply. These requirements are implicit in the notion of regulating behaviour by public rules. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25

For if, say, statues are not clear in what they enjoin and forbid, the citizen does not know how one is to behave. Moreover, while there may be occasional bills of attainder and retroactive enactments, these cannot be pervasive or characteristic features of the system, else it must have another purpose. A tyrant might change laws without notice, and punish (if that is the right word) one’s subjects accordingly, because one take pleasure in seeing how long it takes them to figure out what the new rules are from observing the penalties one inflicts.  However, these rules would not be a legal system, since they would not serve to organize social behaviour by providing a basis for legitimate expectations. Finally, there are those precepts defining the notion of natural justice. These are guidelines intended to preserve the integrity of the judicial process. If laws are directives addressed to rational persons for their guidance, courts must be concerned to apply and to enforce these rules in an appropriate way. A conscientious effort must be made to determine whether an infraction has taken place and to impose the correct penalty. Thus a legal system must make provisions for conducting orderly trails and hearings; it must contain rules of evidence that guarantee rational procedures of inquiry. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25

While there are variations in these procedures, the rule of law requires some form of due process: that is, a process reasonably designed to ascertain the truth, in ways consistent with the other ends of the legal system, as to whether a violation has taken place and under what circumstances. For example, judges must be independent and impartial, and no human may judge one’s own case. The mayor, senator, governor, or majority owner of a sports team cannot influence a judge’s ruling. Trials must be fair and open, but not prejudices by public clamour. The precepts of natural justice are to insure that the legal order will be impartially and regularly maintained. Now the connection of the rule of law with liberty is clear enough. Liberty is a complex of rights and duties defined by institutions. The various liberties specify things that we may choose to do, if we wish, and in regard to which, when the nature of the liberty makes it appropriate, others have a duty not to interfere. However, if the precept of no crime without a law is violated, say by statues, being vague and imprecise, what we are at liberty to do is likewise vague and imprecise. The boundaries of our liberty are uncertain. And to the extent that this is so, liberty is restricted by a reasonable fear of its exercise. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25

The same sort of consequences follow if similar cases are not treated similarly, if the judicial process lacks its essential integrity, if the law does not recognize impossibility of performance as a defense, and so on. The principle of legality has a firm foundation, then, in the agreement of rational persons to establish for themselves the greatest equal liberty. To be confident in the possession and exercise of these freedoms, the citizens of a well-0rdered society will normally want the rule of law maintained. We can arrive at the same conclusion in a slightly different way. It is reasonable to assume that even in a well-ordered society the coercive powers of government are to some degree necessary for the stability of social cooperation. For although humans know that they share a common sense of justice and that each wants to adhere to the existing arrangements, they may nevertheless lack full confidence in one another. They may suspect that some are not doing their part, and so they may be tempted not to do theirs. The general awareness of these temptations may eventually cause the scheme to break down. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25

The suspicion that others are not honouring their duties and obligations is increased by the fact that in the absence of the authoritative interpretation and enforcement of the rules, it is particularly easy to find excuses for breaking them. Thus even under reasonably ideal conditions, it is hard to imagine, for example, a successful income tax scheme on a voluntary basis. Such an arrangement is unstable. The role of an authorized public interpretation of rules supported by collective sanctions is precisely to overcome this instability. By enforcing a public system of penalties government removes the grounds for think that others are not complying with the rules. For this reason alone, a coercive sovereign is presumably always necessary, even though in a well-ordered society sanctions are not severe and many never need to be imposed. Rather, the existence of effective penal machinery serves as human’s security to one another. Knowing what things the law penalizes and knowing that these are within their power to do or not to do, citizens can draw up their plans accordingly. One who complies with the announced rules need never fear an infringement of one’s liberty. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25

Unless citizens are able to know what the law is and are given a fair opportunity to take its directive into account, penal sanction should not apply to them. This principle is simply the consequence of regarding a legal system as an order of public rules addressed to rational persons in order to regulate their cooperation, and of giving the appropriate weight to liberty. I believe that is view of responsibility enables us to explain most of the excuses and defenses recognized by the criminal law under the heading of mens rea and that it can be serves as a guide to legal reform. The ideal theory requires an account of penal sanctions as a stabilizing device and indicates the manner in which this part of partial compliance theory should be worked out. In particular, the principle of liberty lead to the principle of responsibility. The moral dilemmas that arise in partial compliance theory are also to be viewed with the priority of liberty in mind. Thus we can imagine situations of an unhappy sort in which it may be permissible to insist less strongly on the precepts of the rule of law being followed. Any injustice in the social order is bund to take its toll; it is impossible that its consequences should be entirely canceled out. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25

In applying the principle of legality we must keep in mind the totality of rights and duties that defines the liberties and adjust its claims accordingly. If we are to mitigate the loss of freedom from social evils that cannot be removed, and to aim for the least injustice that conditions allow, sometimes we may be forced to allow certain breached. Now, it is always true from the beginning to the end of the Bible, as well as of human history, that human deliverance comes from a personal relationship with God established in God’s gracious love and power. However, the law is an essential part of that relationship. The inadequacy of human effort taken by itself is simply assumed. Still, the law was given as an essential meeting place between God and human beings in covenant relationship with him, where the sincere heart would be received, instructed, and enabled by God to walk in his ways. God is the only restorer of souls. When those walking in personal relationship with God take one’s law into their heart, that law, as a living principle, quickens and restores connection and order to the flagging soul. However, that never happens in the absence of the personal presence and gracious action of God with the person involved. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25

Thus some of the greatest assurances of God’s personal presence are found in the Old Testament. In the book of Isaiah, for example: “Do not fear, for I am with you; do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, surely I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. I will open rivers on the bare heights, and springs in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land fountains of water…that they may see and recognize, and consider and gain insight as well, that the hand of the Lord has done this, and the Holy One of Israel has created it,” reports Isaiah 41.10, 18, 20. Spirit, covenant, and law always go hand in hand within the path of spiritual formation, for it is the path of one who walks with God. Rational creatures are masters of their own acts; and for this reason certain special expressions of the divine will are assigned to their acts, inasmuch as God ordains rational creatures to act voluntarily and of themselves. Other creatures act only as moved by the divine operation; therefore only operation and permission are concerned with these. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25

All evil of sin, though happening in many ways, agrees in being out of harmony with the divine will. Hence with regard to evil, only one expression is assigned, that of probation. On the other hand, good stands in various relations to the divine goodness, since there are good deeds without which we cannot attain to the fruition of that goodness, and these are the subject of precept; and there are others by which we attain to it more perfectly, and these are the subject of counsel. Or it may be said that counsel is not only concerned with the obtaining of greater good; but also with the avoiding of lesser evils. Although the possibility of this discovery and awareness of God and establishment in it has always been with every human at every moment, the possibility is not. For one has to develop the equipment for maturing from the terrestrial being through human’s gathers experience to this full establishment in full union with one’s highest being. The savage may get the glimpse, and does, but this is only a beginning, not an end. We came from God and shall return to God, but that is an oversimplification which generally leads to misunderstanding. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25

If not on our part then on God’s if that is the case, then all this long pilgrimage with all its sufferings becomes a senseless waste of time and an idiotic expenditure of energy. It is like banging one’s head against a wall in order to enjoy the relief which follows when the actions ends. The Infinite Being, whose Consciousness and Power is behind the Universe of history, can itself have no history, for it is beyond time, evolution, change, development, can have no purpose which is gainful to itself, cannot be made the object of human thought correctly because it utterly transcends the limitations of such thought. However, all this is not to say that the World-Mind’s activity is meaningless, Idea-less, and fruitless. The very contrary is the case. However, because the causation is shown to be illusory, and the cosmos uncreated and unending, this does not mean that our cosmology denies the truth of evolution. It denies only the conventional attitude towards evolution. For it takes all change and hence all progress out of the realm of ultimate reality and relegated them to where they belong, to the realm of immediate appearance. Just as there have been misconceptions about the role played by the personal ego and the physical ego in the life of humankind—misconceptions which have arisen by holding on to ideas which are out of their time and place. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25

So the question must be asked, did these egos come by a process which launched them on a path where, the dew-drop slips into the shining sea, where the ego is utterly annihilated, where the personal self is completely dissolved in a sort of mass-consciousness, where all that it has gained from experience, all that it has learned from intelligence, is to be dissolved and thrown away as futile and useless although the ages upon ages have been taken for the process? Or will there unfold a higher type of individuality, one that is free because it has earned its freedom; free to exist in harmony with the universal harmony, with the Universal Mind. If anyone finds anything in this Universe which to complain, if one criticizes its defects and deficiencies, its evils and imperfections, let one remember that a Universe which is perfect in the sense that one means does not and could not exist. Only God is perfect. Anything else, even any Universe, being distinct from God, cannot also be perfect as Go without becoming God—when it would itself vanish. Nevertheless, even if they never attain it, its divine origin and sustenance are revealed in the fact that all things and all beings in its strive for perfection. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25

This is what evolution means and this is the secret spring being it—the quest for perfection. For in seeking to return to their source, they are compelled to seek its perfection too. That is, they are compelled to evolve from lower to higher states and forms, from evil conditions and characteristics to ideal ones. It is not a game of hide-and-seek that God is playing with humans, not a sport for God’s own amusement as some believe, but a process of evolvement intended to give humans insight into the Real and power for co-operative participation. It is a treasure-hunt through many Earthly lives. We murmur against the World’s obstructiveness to our aspirations: the body is our stumbling-block. Yet if we had to live always as disembodies spirits, our spiritual development would need an immeasurably longer time to accomplish itself. The sharper focus of physical consciousness quickens our pace. Humans, in their earlier phases of being, were connected with God and aware of it. However, this connection lacked one’s own control. Eventually, to fulfil the purpose of evolution, they lost this connection and reawaken this awareness by their own efforts and out of one’s own inner activity, through one’s own desiring and one’s own individual freedom. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25

What has one gained by this change to compensate the loss? One’s consciousness has become more sharply focused and consequently more clearly aware. Our source is in God; our growth is but a return to God, made fully conscious as we were not before. The immediate purpose of human incarnation and evolution is to develop a true and full self-consciousness at all levels from the lowest to the highest. The human who does not know oneself beyond the physical intellectual ego is still only half-conscious. As a human truly evolves, one is more guided more and more by intelligence and consciousness. It is a false evolvement which guides one into cunning and selfishness. The idea of human perfection would mean the attainment of a static condition, but nowhere in nature do we find such condition. Every thing is in a state of becoming. Reality is motion. Becoming and motion are processes, but Being, pure consciousness, is not. In the experience of a glimpse we discover this fact, Being transcends becoming, but it is only God who lives on the plane of Being; we humans many visit it, even for long periods, but we must return.  What a happy people we should be with the knowledge we have that this Earthly probation is not to prepare us to die, but to live; that the Father’s desire for us is that we may avoid every error and receive every truth. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25

By applying truth in out lives we become more like God, and become worthy to dwell with Him. We should think of it seriously because this is a serious matter. We must look into our own lives, not the lives of others, but out own lives and discover if we are prepared for the great future life, if we were called hence tomorrow whether we would be prepared to given an account for our Earthly deeds. Remember that it is the intelligence that you acquire that is eternal, the truth which you learn here and apply in your lives, the knowledge and experience you gain and profit by—these you will take with you when you go home. The thing that God has given to you that is worth more than all the rest is and the opportunity to obtain eternal life in the celestial kingdom and a gift far greater than silver and gold. God is not only of bliss, but of faithful and dedicated love, and may He be our model and our guide in our lives. Because of Jesus Christ’s righteous life, the Saviour is the perfect example to all, and His resurrection is the first assurance to humanity that, we, too, shall come forth from the tomb. At the end of my life, I put my trust in God. Ancient Wise Father, please cover me with your cloak as I walk in this valley that leads to you land. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25

Lord of Heaven, I greet you with arms wide open in trust as I learn to serve you in this realm. I will enter the World beyond Worlds with my eyes open and my head lifted, ready to experience its unique wonder, no loess beautiful than in this World I have known. I will go to your Land of Youth, to rest in your halls, O God of my people, to commune with the spirits of those who have gone this and who wait for me, there on the other side. The Lord has established His throne in the Heavens; and His kingdom rules over all. Let the Heavens be glad, and let the Earth rejoice; and let them say among the nations: “The Lord reigns.” The Lord is King, the Lord was King, the Lord shall be King forever and ever. The Lord is King for ever and ever; the heathens are perished out of His land. The Lord brings the design of the heathens to naught; He makes their thoughts of no effect. Many are the thoughts in a human’s heart; but it is the Lord’s counsel that shall stand. The counsels of the Lord stands forever, the thoughts of His heart to all generations. For God spoke, and the World came into being; God commanded, and it stood firm. For the Lord hath chosen America; He has desired it for His habitation. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25

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Sanity is expensive. Imperfection action is better than perfect inaction. There is no immediate guarantee that the good human may not become a vicious one. The evolutionary arc does not rise with utter smoothness; there are strayings aside, fallings down, and erratic jags. However, there is an ultimate guarantee that the experiences of life are so ordained as to open the eyes and direct the will of every human at some point, and to repeat this process at intervals until one does so of one’s own spontaneous accord. Easy hops about perpetual progress and shallow optimism about scientific improvement are alike going to be frustrated so long as the higher development of a human oneself is less valued. Things and information are accumulated. This is naively called progress, although the human who uses them is as bad as before—as one’s inability to stop warring clearly shows. The mere movement in time does not automatically bring progress. If left to their own capacity, many would fall back and fail to grow. However, life or Nature does not have them unassisted like that. For there is the World-Idea, the vital spark, the germ born of World-Mind, the mental picture held by the higher power, which pushes each living cell to fulfill itself. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

However, there is also ignorance, opposition, and deterioration. Humans must make their contribution and, in the end, does so. One has to. As the World-Idea unfolds, one gets more self-control and gains self-knowledge until one discovers God. There is no choice in the matter, ultimately, although there is immediately. The entire human race will have to traverse the course chalked out for it, will have to develop the finer feelings the concrete intellect, the abstract intellect, the balance between the different sides. If humans do not seek to do so now, it is only a question of time before they will be forced to do so later. Humans will be redeemed and saved. This is not mere pious wishful thinking but ineluctable destiny. If this redemption and this salvation were not eventually possible and inescapably certain, the divine World-Idea could not be realized. It is easier to transform a wilderness into a garden flourishing with plant and flowers than to transform humanity into a special race. I may seem a very extravagant attempt to the sceptics to destroy reason by argument and ratiocination; yet is this the grace scope of all their enquiries and disputes. They endeavour to find objections, both to our abstract reasonings, and to those which regard matter of fact existence. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

The chief objection against all abstract reasoning is derived from the ideas of space and time; ideas, which, in common life and to a careless view, are very clear and intelligible, but when they pass through the scrutiny of the profound sciences (and they are the chief object of these sciences) afford principles, which seem full of absurdity and contradiction. No priestly doctrines and covenants, invented on purpose to tame and subdue the rebellious reason of humankind, ever shocked commonsense more than the doctrine of the infinite divisibility of extension, with its consequences; as they are pompously displayed by all geometricians and metaphysicians, with a kind of triumph and exultation. A real quantity, infinitely less than any finite quantity, containing quantities infinitely less than itself, and so on in infinitum; this is an edifice so bold and prodigious, that it is too weighty for any pretended demonstration to support, because it shocks the clearest and most natural principles of human reason. However, time and life, evolution and experience will all combine to transform humanity int a spiritual race. The movement up to higher levels will be slow and painful, the maturation of human character retarded and halting, but they will be sure because they are written in the fate of humans. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Set, in the Egyptian religion, was the Destroyer, the leader of the powers of darkness, the opposer of Life and the adversary of aspiring humans; hence he was turned into Satan by the Christians, into Shai’tan by the Israelites. However, just as Set was defeated in the end, his power broken and his submission as a penitent accepted, so humans, the prodigal son, will return and will be saved, despite one’s sins. The covenant has been made: there is ultimate hope for all. The World-Idea is operative on ever level. It invites savage humans to outwit their fellow animals by beginning to use brain-power through arrows, slings, and primitive traps; at a higher level to compete with fellow humans and rise economically and socially by using the same power; at a still higher level to reduce sufferings and self-made miseries by practising control over self and avoidance of injury to others; then, at a still higher level, to discover and nurture their spiritual nature. Humans are what they are. We have only to look around and see how the great Avatars have not much saved the human species. It is still more or les what it was a thousand years ago. If those humans of light and power could not change the masses, how can others do so? Is this a doctrine of hopelessness? No! #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

Despite themselves, humans will have to change, but it will be under the inexorable pressure of the World-Idea, which will be their teacher, their guide, and their enlightener, because it is the expression of the World-Mind. As the two interact—the human purpose and the World-Idea—each human slowly unfolds one’s intelligence, which is the fusion of intellect with intuition, and this culminates in Enlightenment, the ultimate and revelatory Insight. The movement upward from the ego’s “me” to the real “I” consciousness is as sure as the movement of the planets themselves. Human life does not escape the working of divine law. Human though, feeling, and actin all fall within its circle. The law is unalterable and absolute, universal and sure. Even when its operation is quite unseen and unknown, it always operates because the development of human entities is a part of its own reason for existence. In the end, and whatever one’s heredity or environment may predetermine and irrespective of one’s own free choices, the development as well as the history of humans must move in obedience to the World-Idea. What that is is known in its completeness only to the World-Mind, but sudden or fleeting glimpses of some tiny part of it have come to a few seers. Yet these perceptions have been received, recorded, and handed down as tremendous revelations—and quite rightly. The affections are movers of the will as well as of the appetite. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

Indeed, their influence is at times so direct and so great as to overpower the will. This happens whenever the appetite wins imagination away from reason. Affective and emotional states furnish the materials for striking, irresistible images of desirable action. A human stirred up beyond reason is clearly “perturbed;” and the perturbations and distempers of the affections are regarded as the diseases and infirmities of the mind. It may be fitly said that if the affection, as winds, do not put it into tumult and perturbation, the mind in its own nature will be temperate and staid. If any, the affections, then, would seem to play a minor role in the life of the temperate, rational, and philosophic person. It is clear, however, that the affections play an essential role in the life of the human of action. They can be called upon to move the will quite properly and legitimately. For educated humans in the Elizabethan and Jacobean times, this point is well illustrated by Thomas Vicary: “acts of loving, fearing, et cetera, commonly called by the name of affections (I speak with submission to better Judgments) are only the motion [movers] of the will, by which it gorth forth to the embracing of its object which is good, which considers in the general nature is loved, considered as in the fruition is delighted in; considered in the future as attainable, if with ease is desired; if with difficulty, is hoped for; if the will or these affections be fixed on their proper object, there is no danger in the excesse. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

Whenever reason has had its chance to decide what is the right thing to do, when deliberation has taken place and the will must say yes or no, the affections may well unite with the imagination to urge the course of right reason, thus bringing to bear the full resources of the human being for the moving of the will. In fact, in the lives of practical humans the dry light of reason alone does not usually secure action, country to what Stoic disciples believe. When relied upon solely as an agent of action, for that matter, nor does virtue secure good conduct. In reality, their virtues are moderators: they restrain it, they limit it, they govern it, they amplify it not. They give excellent form to the mind, but they take away much of its natural vigour. However, the affections make the mind heroical, give it power to exceed itself, and fascinate and bind others. The affections are the motions [movers] of the mind, and the virtues need them. A rational prudence takes its vigour from fear and wonder; it finds temperance in modesty, fortitude in indignation. In general, all virtues take measure, power, and strength from the affections. It is probably that the affections, on their part, exert their influence through the spirits. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

The affections (no doubt) do make the spirits more powerful and active; and especially those affections which draw the spirits into the eyes: which are two, love and envy. The general physiological principle is that the spirits, in all passions, resort most to the parts that labour most, or are most affected. The physiological evidences of the passions, for example, fear causes paleness, trembling, the standing of the hair upright, starting, screeching. Joy, sorrow (grief and sadness), fear, anger, envy, compassion, shame, love, and hope are all emotions. However, fear and hope are the predominant affections. Laughter is intellectual, not emotional; it is scarce (properly) a passion, but hath one’s source from the intellect; for in laughing there ever precedeth a conceit of somewhat ridiculous; and therefore it is proper to humans. The impact of the affections upon the will—and upon human’s conduct—produce more good than harm. If a human could recognize the, know their natures, and learn their proper uses, the affections would become the servant of reason, not the master of reason. The compulsion exercised by the World-Idea is a secret obscure one, but it may become clearer and plainer as events unfold and experience increases. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

The achievement of these goals is not left to the effects of chance or the whims of humans. It is the half-hidden, half-declared purpose of Nature, and as such is quite compulsive. The mass of people are like blind worms wriggling through the Earth. They toil but do not know the real value of their labours is not in the passages they make for air and moisture or in the fertile mould they carry to the soil’s surface. No!—it is in the evolutionary consequences within themselves. They have tried and tried to find their own substitute for the higher-than-animal life, but it is ordained that satisfaction of the physical needs of the human species is not enough to give them fulfilment, and not that not even the satisfaction of their cultural needs can do so. They are forced in the end to push onward and upward. Life is governed by its own mysterious laws, driven in certain directions by it own mysterious momentum, conformed to a hidden scheme by its own mysterious quality. Nature is significant. The human entity is not just drifting. It will certainly arrive somewhere. Human beings are not only what their past births have made them but also, in the most popular and least accurate language, what God has made them. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

We have to pass from prattling about human’s long-past Fall to declaring their newly possible Rise. It is time to take a better view of humans, and certainly of their prospects. All good tings that exist, God wills to be. If therefore God’s will imposes necessity on things willed, it follows that all good happens of necessity; and this there is an end of free will, counsel, and all other such things. The divine will imposes necessity on some things willed but not on all. The reason of this some have chosen to assign to intermediate causes, holding that what God produces by necessary causes is necessary; and what God produces by contingent causes contingent. This does not seem to be a sufficient explanation, for two reasons. First, because the effect of a first cause is contingent on account of a second cause, from the fact that the effect of the first cause is hindered by deficiency in the second cause, as the sun’s power is hindered by a defect in the planet. However, no effect of a secondary cause can hinder God’s will from producing its effect. Secondly, because if the distinction between the contingent and the necessary is to be referred only to secondary causes, this must be independent of the divine intention and will; which is inadmissible. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

It is better therefore to say that this happens on account of the efficacy of the divine will. For when a cause is efficacious to act, the effect follows upon the cause, not only as to the thing done, but also as to its manner of being done or of being. Thus from defect of active power in the seed it may happen that a child is born unlike its father in accidental points, that belong to its manner of being. Since then the divine will is perfectly efficacious, it follows not only that thing are done, which God wills to be done, but also that they are done in the way the He wills. Now God wills some things to be done necessarily, some contingently, to the right ordering of things, for the building up of the Universe. Therefore to some effect God has attached necessary causes, that cannot fail; but to others defectible and contingent causes, from which arise contingent effects. Hence it is not because the proximate causes are contingent that the effects willed by God happen contingently, but because God prepared contingent causes for them, it being His will that they should happen contingently. By the words of Augustine we must understand a necessity in things willed by God that is not absolute, but conditional. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

For the conditional statement that is God wills a thing, it must necessarily be, is true. From the very fact that nothing resists the divine will, it follows that no only those things happen that God wills to happen, but that they happen necessarily or contingently according to His will. Consequents have necessity from their antecedents according to the mode of the antecedents. Hence things effected by the divine will have that kind of necessity that God wills them to have, either absolute or conditional. Not all things, therefore, are absolute necessities. Recognizing this, humanity will within a certain time—not in our time—humbly submit as it once did in prehistoric times to rulers guided by true self-actualized and adopt the higher forms of government inspired by the true facts of life. Philosophers will then not be merely the witnesses of their age but also its activators. Then only will humanity at last prevent outer war, even through its own moral nature will still need much more growth. With that recognition, Nature herself will grow kindlier and the area of other forms of human suffering will diminish noticeably. Even though we will reach a higher kind of civilization one day, human differences will continue to express themselves. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

Nobler and wiser types of humanity, standing at loftier altitudes of consciousness, will begin to emerge from the mass. If they are all too few today they will be more numerous tomorrow. We are very far from the true humans which are destined to become, the evolved masterpieces of Nature. We possess only rare inklings of the say when the ego’s “I” will be transformed into God’s I-ness. The waves of life have moved across other planets before arriving on this Earth and, when this has outserved its usefulness, will move on again. The inhabitants of each planet belong to different stages of evolution: some higher and some lower. This applies not only to the human inhabitants but also to the animal and even the plant inhabitants. They pass in great waves from one planet to another at certain stages of this evolution, going where they can find the most appropriate conditions either for expression of their present stage or for the stimulation of their next immediate stage. Consequently the stragglers and the laggards who fall behind pass to a planet where the conditions are of a lower nature, for there they are more at home. On the other hand, the pioneers who have outstripped the mass and can find no conditions suitable for their further development pass to a planet in a higher stage. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

Where life meaning is lacking, performance is at a premium. If it is successful, “performance”—in art or sports, for example—creates the illusion of meaning for a magical moment. Performance presupposes an artificial context in which some portions of life, action, or experience is present as a whole, meaningful, unique, flowing—transcendent to ordinary existence. This may be in some area of art, or in sports, or in politics. Unfortunately, it may also be in religion, or in the intimate relations of life. However, in these latter areas, performance is not really valued unless it deals effectively with life and reality as a whole and does not presuppose an artificial context. Otherwise the performance is a shame. Here performance really must mean competence and must eliminate illusion. Mere “acting” will not do. If we see how fanaticism comes in, it will further help us to understand the reality of soul in life. Fanaticism—in art, politics, sports, or religion, to names some of the main kinds—is the result of inherently meaningless lines becoming obsessed with performance and then trying to take all of their existence into it. Being a fan of…is treated as something deep and important. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

 Because those of us who do this do not have a whole soul directing their lives toward good, rooted in God, they allow a “flow” they find outside themselves to take over their thoughts, feelings, behaviour, and social relations. That flow intoxicates them. They absolutize the flow and no longer subject it to ordinary tests of truth, reality, and tried-and true human values. Thus winning of a championship by a city team can lead to looting, burning, and death. Romantic/pleasures of the flesh relationships can play the same obsessing role, as can “success,” leading to workaholic absorption. All of these are reflections of a nonfunctional or broken or recessive soul with inadequate resources to deal with the whole human life. The nonfunctioning soul falls easy pray to the mob and to pressures from others. It is the source of the “other-directed person” and “the lonely crowd” that are so prominent today. So it really does not matter what our theories are, or how “modern” we may be. If only by the shambles left behind when it departs, Soul will always reassert itself as a reality. What tyrants prey upon is the soul, as have all the great twenty-first century destroyers—or rather upon the loss of soul and the revenge that loss take upon the masses. Similarly for those who produce the wasteland of contemporary pop culture, for the local news to Jerry Springer. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

Those who deny the soul, perhaps for what they regard as the most overwhelming of scientific and philosophical reasonings, still have to live a life, and they need to find the resources for it. If they cannot deal with that need in terms of a healthy soul, they still have to deal with it in some terms. What shall those terms be? They have to find them in one way or another, and not always are equal. The soul will strike back. Our life is eternal, and this knowledge helps us to make correct choices and comforts us in times of mourning. That eternity does not begin after this life but mortality is a crucial part of eternity. When they seem to be at the crossroads, uncertain as to which way they wanted to go, I sometimes have said to my friends that “Today is the beginning of eternal happiness or eternal disappointment for you.” To know that life is eternal is a wonderful blessing. We have lived as spirits before we came to Earth, and our spirits will continue living after we die. Our comprehension of this life is that it is eternal life—that we are living in eternity today as much as we ever will live in eternity. Our belief is that we lived before we came here; that which is intelligence, that which is spirit, did not have its beginning in this life. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

We believe that we received a spiritual tabernacle before we came into this World. That spiritual body was sent to this World, and here it received a physical tabernacle, the body which we see. The physical portion that we see is of Earth, Earthly. “The first human is of the Earth, Earthly: the second human is the Lord from Heaven,” reports 1 Corinthians 15.47. When our lives go out, that portion which leaves the body, is spiritual, and it never dies. The physical tabernacle lies in the tomb—it is a portion of the Earth—but the intelligence that God has placed within it, that which has power to reason and to think, that which has power to ding and to speak, knowns no death; it simply passes from this sphere of eternal life, and awaits there the physical purification of the physical tabernacle, until the time it will be reunited with this tabernacle, which will be glorified, even as the body of our risen Lord was glorified, if we have lived to be worthy of it. Life is real, Life is earnest, and the gave is not the goal. The spirit that inhabits the tabernacle is immortal. It lives beyond the grave. The body decays and returns to Earth but the spirit lives on. I am thankful that there has been revealed to us and made pain in this latter-day that this life is not the end, this is but a part of eternity. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

If we take advantages of our privileged in this mortal life and do not abuse them, we will eventually come to know that this is but a stepping stone to a greater and more desirable condition. Our purpose here on Earth is to prepare ourselves to live with our Heavenly Father. This lifetime is not given to us as a pastime. There is a solemn purpose in our creation, in the life that God has given to us. Let us study what that purposes is, that we may progress and obtain eternal life. We believe that we are on Earth because we kept our first estate and earned the privilege of coming to this Earth. We believe that our very existence is a reward for our faithfulness before we came here, and that we are enjoying on Earth the fruits of our efforts in the spirit World. We also believe that we are sowing the seed today of a harvest that we will reap when we go from here. Eternal life is to us the sum of pre-existence, present existence, and the continuation of life in immortality, holding out to us the power of endless progression and increase. With that feeling and that assurance, we believe that as humans are, God once was, and as God is, humans may become. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Being created in the image of God, we believe that it is not improper, that it is not unrighteous, for us to hope that we may be permitted to part take of the attributes of deity and, if we are faithful, to become like unto God; for as we receive of and obey the natural laws of our Father that govern this life, we become more like Him; and as we take advantage of the opportunities placed within our reach, we prepare to receive greater opportunities in this life and in the life that is to come. What a happy people we should be with the knowledge we have that this probation is not to prepare us to die, but to live; that our Father’s desire for us is that we may avoid every error and receive every truth, and by applying truth in our lives become more like God, and become worthy to dwell with Him. Prayers are an important introduction to our religion. They contain principles of belief and guides for conduct, and provide a healthy example of the proper relationship between God and people. Through them, children and adults may first come to experience the sacred, something that will sustain them through their whole life. Do not just pray for your children; then pray with them. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

May God walk besides me and my loved once through their lives, guiding our steps into the way proper to us, guiding our us along the sacred path. Dwelling in the shelter of the Most High, abiding under the protection the Almighty, I say of the Lord: “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” He will deliver you from the snare of the fowler, and from the destructive pestilence. He will cover you with his pinions, and under His wings shall you take refuge; His truth is a shield and armour. You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flied by day; of the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor of the destruction that ravages at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; but it shall not come near you. You shall behold with your eyes, and see the recompense of the wicked. Because you have made the Lord your fortress, and the Most High your refuge, no evil shall befall you, neither shall any plague come near your home. For God will give His Angels charge over you, to guard you in all your ways. They shall bear you upon their hands, lest you strike your foot against a stone. You shall tread upon the lion and asp, you shall trample on the young lion and serpent. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

Cresleigh Homes

This year, let’s hit ‘reset’ on décor we aren’t satisfied with anymore and brighten up our spaces! Learn all about it in today’s blog. Link in bio. 🙌 https://cresleigh.com/blog/

Cresleigh Meadows is now selling! Found just north of Feather River Boulevard, Cresleigh Meadows is home of the largest neighborhood in Plumas Ranch as well as the popular Bear River Park. With four floor plans available, ranging from approximately 2,000 – 3,500 square feet offering, three to five bedrooms, we are certain you will find the home that fits your needs and lifestyle.

Popular design elements include open floor plans, large kitchen islands, and flex spaces are staples in Cresleigh homes. Additional game rooms, bedroom space and three-car garages provide other custom possibilities.

Gain the freedom of large home sites and the extra space and flexibility with Cresleigh Riverside. Homeowners will love the convenient commuter access to nearly Sacramento and Yuba City.

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’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Go. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/

Cresleigh offers award-winning, single-family homes, built with Cresleigh’s commitment to quality, value and craftsmanship. Enjoy a warm and welcoming neighbourhoods, perfect for families of all ages. #CresleighHomes

Baseball is beautiful…the supreme performing art. It combines in perfect harmony the magnificent features of ballet, drama, art, and ingenuity. The World-Idea contains from the beginning to the end each individual life in its picture. How much freedom that life really contains is a matter for seers to say, not for intellectual to debate. How old is the series of experiences through which we moved unknowingly towards our present evolutionary position! How lofty is the level toward which we have yet to climb! How ironic is the discovery that what we thought was being done by free person choice was merely blind obedience to universal force; that where we believed free will was exercised, there we merely conformed to the World-Idea! The World-Idea is the ordained will of the World-Mind. Within its large outlines, change is impossible. All its parts serve them. However, it would not be correct to assert that we humans are slaves of that Idea. Somewhere within each part some sort of freedom is possible. That in the end nothing that the human will can do can sway human life into divergence from the World-Idea, that All is fixed by it, is not quite correct. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

The main outlines of World-Idea can certainly not be affected, however, for they are inherent in the nature of things. Every human is offered a chance to live again, not once but as many times as will bring one to one’s diviner being and establish one in that. Human existence is a kind of bewitchment; we experience what we are made to experience. All is simply the expression of the World-Idea—that is, of God’s will—but we share in the making, participate in the divine ideation. In the end the World-Idea triumphs as, in reality and actuality, it is doing at every moment. Even human’s own personal will unwittingly prepares itself for such eventual conformity. The pressure of the World-Idea shapes one’s tendencies and one’s circumstances, denies one any other freedom than the mental position which one finally takes up, than the alliance with or rejection of moral conscience. The World-Idea’s end is foreordained from the beginning. This leaves no ultimate personal choice. However, there is a measure of free will in a single direction—how soon or how late that divine end is accomplished. The time element has not been ordered, the direction has. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

Both the ordinary human and the enlightened human are playing the role allotted to them in the divine World-Idea. Neither could change that part of the planetary fate. However, whereas the first is doing it unwittingly, blindly, and at times rebelliously, the second is doing it knowingly, perceptively, and submissively. There are no mistakes anywhere in the World-Idea, nor even accidents. However, there is enough flexibility in its human part, enough freedom there, to make it seem as if there were some mistakes and some accidents. The meteor which moves across the Earther’s orbit is as much beyond human’s control as is one’s larger part in the World-Idea. Is the human race nothing else than God acting out a multitude of different parts in a tremendous play? If this were so, all humans would be no different than the mere figment of imagination of authors creating characters in novels. However, living humans are different. If they were just as illusory as those creations there would be something wrong with philosophy, with mind, and, let it be said, with God. It is needful to penetrate reflectively more deeply to bring light upon this point. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

When one is allowed a glimpse of the World-Idea, one feels that one understands at last why one came here, what one has to do, and where one’s place is. It is like an immense enlargement of the mind, an escape from the littleness of the ego, and a finding-out of a long-hidden secret. When the fact of the World-Idea flashes into one’s mind, one stand like Aaliyah on Mount Everest. At last this bewildering enigma which surrounds and entraps everyone everywhere assumes pattern, the countless events and things and processes leave their isolation, their useless chaos, and fit together. One has come to the inner sight of the World-Idea’s meaning for one: that one is to use the human self to lift one’s nature up from the animal one, and that one is to put oneself at the service of one’s angelic, one’s best, self, to lift one’s nature up from the ordinary human. In this way one co-operates with the World-Idea. This is the use one is to make of one’s life on Earth: one’s personal life, one’s family relations, one’s professional career—all must become subject to the higher purpose. The resolve made, the matter of success of failure is no longer urgent, for every subsequent embodiment will point in this direction. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

Philosophy has instructed one in the unreality of time and has revealed to one one’s indissoluble connection with God. All this was seen by the self-actualized long ago and symbolized by them in the Sphinx and the Pyramid. One sees that life is encircled by a great Being, that the Mind behind the Universe—although so still and uncommunicative and, apparently, unconcerned—is in reality sending its messages in varied ways all the time. The World is no longer merely itself. Henceforth it is the expression of a divine Idea. It is then that the awareness of the World-Idea comes to one, explaining one’s planetary surroundings and enlightening one’s situation therein. Every relationship and every event is then sent to be significant, falling into place in this amazing pattern. One sees the World forever changing its forms, forever in process, and one oneself as part of it under the same doom. All is appearance, not reality. However, one sees also the Essence. This is the World as my experience showed it to be, the World as it is revealed to me by God. One of the first and most powerful rituals any American citizen can perform is the Pledge of Allegiance. We all memorized the pledge in grade school, and have held in proud in our minds ever since. Remember the ritual–standing proud, slauting the flag with our right hand over our heart, every morning when we got to schhol. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

Keep in mind that this is still one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all, and this truth is important because or freedom does not come from the government. Our freedom comes from God, and the government was established to protect that God-given freedom. That was their justification for the American Revolution as stated in the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson wrote: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all humans are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among humans, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these end, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government laying its foundations on such principles.” No king or emperor, no president or congress, no court or crowd gives us our right. They come from God Himself and are unalienable. And the Founder built America’s foundation on such principles. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

Our nation’s unity and freedom depend upon being one nation under God, and we highly resolve that people who put their lives on the line for this country and anyone else shall not die in vain; this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and a government that protects and the people and their land, and this kingdom of God shall not perish from the Earth. When we pledge alliance to the flag of the United States of America, we are acknowledging the Founder’s declaration that our freedom comes from God, not the state. The American people’s freedom—the freedom of your neighbour’s, your colleagues, your children, their teachers, are because we are one nation under God. Take that principle away, remove it from our national consciousness, and we will lose the very basis for the freedoms we so easily take for granted. God gave us liberty. When we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God, can the liberties of a nation be secure? Agency makes our life on Earth a period of testing. When planning the mortal creation of His children, God said, “We will prove [test] them herewith, to see if they will do all thing whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them,” reports Abraham 3.35. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

Without the gift of agency, we would have been unable to show our Heavenly Father whether we would obey his commandments. Because we are able to choose we are also responsible for our actions. When we choose to live according to God’s plan for us, our agency is strengthened. Right choices increase our power to make more right choices. As we obey each of our Father’s commandments, we grow in wisdom and strength of character. Our faith increases. We find it easier to make right choices. We began to makes choices as spirit children in our Heavenly Father’s presence. Our choices there made us worthy to come to Earth. Our Heavenly Father wants us to grow in faith, power, knowledge, wisdom, and all other good things. If we keep His commandments and makes right choices, we will learn and understand. We will become like God. “One that keepth his commandments receiveth truth and light, until one is glorified in truth and knoweth all things,” Doctrine and Covenants 93.28. In those divinely captured moments when ego is loosened and God is present in awareness, the amazing pattern of the World-Idea shines clearly. One becomes awed, though such Heavenly glimpses, by the tremendous intelligence behind and within the Cosmos. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

One will begin to see an intelligence moving in and through the Universe which one had not seen before. The Universe will no longer be a strange symbol without any meaning. There is a wisdom within the cosmos beyond our telling or knowing, but if we turn in reverence to it or in remembrance of it, we may feel its presence in tranquil movements. To feel the divine presence is much more common an experience hen to perceive the divine purpose. The World-Idea authentically exists but not in the way that physical things exist. No human mind can receive and hold it in the same definite way it can receive and hold all other idea. Even in those exalted psychological states or mystical experiences when the World’s meaning is perceived, its inner drama understood during a brief glimpse, the seer gets only the fragment which one’s mind can take in, limited and conditioned as one is. The vast coverage of the World-Idea, coupled with the microscopic spaces in which it is equally manifest, transcends human grasp. A few have lifted themselves to receive the Cosmic Vision for historic purposes. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

Other receive glimpses, at best, of part only of the Cosmic vision, but even those are awe-inspiring. What they may expect to find with intellect is at most the slow uncovering of little fragments of the World-Idea: but with intuition the subtler meanings and larger patterns are possible. These include but also transcend the physical plane. A few fated persons, whose mission is revelation, are granted once in a lifetime Cosmic Vision. No human mind is capable of ultimate knowledge of all the Universe’s secrets, nor of absolute comprehension of what is in the World-Mind, no matter what anyone claims. “Only give heed to yourself and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things which your eyes have seen,” reports Deuteronomy 4.9. Wise people co-operate voluntarily with the World-Mind before they are forced into going along with it and its expression, the World-Idea. “Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls,” Matthew 11.29. Only to the extend that one unites one’s own little purpose with the Universal purpose can one find harmony and happiness. Its strength will support one firmly in adversity and misfortune, as it will carry one triumphantly through misery and hostility. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

What is running your life at any given moment is your soul. Not external circumstances, or your thoughts, or your intentions, or even your feelings, but your soul. The soul is that aspect of your whole being that correlates, integrates, and enlivens everything going on in the various dimensions of the self. It is the life-center of the human being. It regulates whatever is occurring in each of those dimensions and how they interact with each other and respond to surrounding events in the overall governance of your life. The soul is “deep” in the sense of being basic or foundational and also in the sense that it lies almost totally beyond conscious awareness. In the person with the “well-kept heart,” the soul will be itself properly ordered under God and in harmony with reality. The outcome will be, as we have said, a person who is prepared for and capable of responding to the situations of life in ways that are good and right. For such a person, the human spirit will be in correct relationship to God. With one’s assisting grace, it will bring the soul into subjection to God and the mind (thoughts, feelings) into subjection to the soul. The social context and the body will then come into subjection to thoughts and feelings that are in agreement with truth and with God’s intent and purpose for us. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

Any given event in our life would then proceed as it should, because our soul is functioning properly under God. The more one learns about the World-Idea, the more one wonders at it. To go father and co-operate with it is to find peace. To bring oneself consciously and deliberately within the World-Idea is a holy act. One is within it anyway, but without the consciousness. One’s personal share in the World-Idea is limited to reception of it in every corner of one’s conscious being. If Nature keeps her lips inexorably shut to the questions of those who abuse her, she graciously opens them in perfect response to those who ask wit quieted, co-operative and harmonious ego. If you live within only human wisdom, you can find it constantly necessary to do what is wrong. And in that case, you will become an authority on what is right and wrong—because, after all, you will have to manage right and wrong. You will have to have ready explanations of why, though you do wrong things, you are still a good person, and why those who do not do as you do are fools. You will become an expert scorner, able to put everyone in their place with appropriate doses of contempt, which is an essential element of scorn. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

We are supposed to delight in the law that God has given. We are to delight in it. We are to love it, be thrilled by it, and we cannot keep our minds off of it because it is so exciting. The law of Gd is beautiful, strong, wise, an incredible gift of God’s mercy and grace. Therefore we must dwell upon it day and night, turning it over and over in our mind and speaking it to ourselves. One does not do this to please God, but because the law pleases one. It is where one’s whole being is oriented. The result is a flourishing life. The image used here is that of a tree planted by water canals. No matter what the weather or the surface condition of the ground, its roots go down into the water sources and bring up life. As a result, it bears fruit when it is supposed to, and its foliage is always bright with life. It prospers in what it does. And likewise the human who is rooted in God through his law: “in whatever one does, one prospers” reports Psalm 1.3. We must come back to the absolutely vital relationship between the law and the soul later. We can be co-workers with the World-Mind only to the extent that we withdraw from our ego. Then only are we able to receive correctly the wonderful revelation of the World’s meaning and laws, so that we can participate intelligently and lovingly. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

When one sees the meaning of life, one cannot help but give it one’s acceptance. Circumstances previously rebelled against now fit into a reasonable place in the patterns of things. Nature gives her message to humans, and gives it all the time all at once. However, humans hear it only in bits and pieces, even when and if one hears it at all. How to live well while in this World does not only mean how to live comfortably, nor even morally, but also how to live in harmony with the World-Idea. To be unaware that there is any such meanings to existence is to be unable to live really well and truly wisely as a human being. Bring in a single light and there follows recognition of several objects in a room; there is knowledge of their existence, their form, and often their function. In the same way, some knowledge of the World-Idea makes possible the clearer comprehension of human existence, its hidden purposes, goals, and enigmas. I have only a very partial knowledge of the World-Idea but it is enough to throw a practical working light upon our business here on Earth. Only when one finds out one’s correct relation to the Universe and to one’s fellow creatures will one find one’s own well-being. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

We too are elements of the World like the mountains and flowers around us and need to understand it in co-operation with the need to understand ourselves. The two cannot be separated without loss to our own fullness of understanding and practicality. One who knows not the World-Order, know not one’s own place in it. As is apparent, little could be said about will in its aspect as mover or impeller, though the power of choosing to act or not to act is sufficiently different from other features of human life to warrant a name. Much more could be said abut the kinds of things, values, and forces that move the will and influenced human’s conduct. Much was written—and has always been written—under the general heads of ethics, morals, moral philosophy, and politics. The main movers of the will have been traditionally regarded as the good (apparent good and real good), virtue, duty, and felicity. These terms and things are too vauge to permit close analysis and study of conduct. Yet, one may subscribe to the classic generalization that apparent good is the mother of desire and real good the mother of virtue. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

The classes of good are the self-good, the Good of Communion or duty, and certain practical categories that relate to the mind’s culture. The fresh approach to self-good and good of communion are to be based on the belief that there is formed and imprinted in everything an appetite toward two natures of good: the one as everything is a total or substantive in itself, the other as it is a part or member of a greater body. Self-good—sometimes called individual good—seems to reveal a triple appetite, that of preserving and protecting self, of perfecting self, and of multiplying self. Self-preservation is good because it brings pleasure in its must pure and naturel form—this kind of pleasure is the softest and lowest. A high and more active form of individual good is the appetite to perfect one’s self. Even higher and still more dynamic in the scale of self-goods is the urge to extend and multiply the human species. In all manifestations of the good, the final end is the perfection of form; the mechanism or agent is that of instinct. Human’s desire is to perfect oneself and one’s own kind reflects a profound and eternal sensitivity to form. First, humans seem to have an instinct of an advancement formal and essential. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

Since one’s form and essence is one’s rationality, one will be most strong when one shows a mind well formed and composed in itself. The idea of virtue refers to just such a state in humans. Duty, on the other hand, refers to a mind well formed and disposed towards others. Second, a human’s striving to perfect oneself reflects the appetite in all things to approach the form next above them…there are some nobler natures to the dignity and excellence whereof inferior natures aspire as to their sources and origins. In the case of humans, the perfection of one’s form is one’s assumption or approach to the Divine or Angelic nature. The affection of humans for one’s higher nature maybe an affection that is inseparable from human nature. This alludes, also, to the vestige of goodness that God vouchsafed Adam when he was banished from the Garden of Eden. The will, then, is moved by considerations of self-good and community good or duty. It is also influenced by those conditions that relate culture or training to the mind. These are the dispositions and characters of humans. They are inclination to virtue and vices and to passions and perturbations. The conditions are grouped under two principal divisions: those that the individual that the individual has no control over, and those that one can command. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

In the first division are characters that are profound and radical dispositions that seem to fit one human for business, another for art, one for the contemplative life, another for practical affairs, one for love, another for war, and the like. In the second division is placed a number of things that mold manners and affect both will and appetite. I come now to those points where are within our own command, and have operation on the mind to affect and influence the will and appetite, and so have great power in altering manners; wherein philosophers ought carefully and actively to have inquired of the strength and energy of custom, exercise, habit, education, imitation, emulation, company, friendship, praise, reproof, exhortation, fame, laws, books, studies, and the like. For these are things that rule in morals; these the agents by which the mind is affected and disposed; and the ingredients of which are compounded the medicines to preserve or recover the health of the mind, as far as it can be done by human remedies. Some virtues are habits and can be learned, they too are among the moral conditions that influence the will. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

Yet virtue, in influencing the will, does not function quite like an agent; rather it is a guide, a goal, or an object; and in this respect it is in the family of good, duty, and felicity. These are quite rightly the true objects and scopes of human’s will and desires. In fact, one function of ethical studies is how to make the will of human conformable to the pursuit of those object. Since the human being is one among many other creates existent in the cosmos, if one is to know oneself properly one must know enough cosmology to enable one to do so. Because the World-Mind is there the cosmos is there. Because the cosmos is there you are there. Such knowledge will enable one to make the best use of oneself and one’s environment, for its beneficial influence will pervade one’s general life and work. To what ideal ought young advance? This is where foreknowledge of the World-Idea is helpful to them. The values of a knowledge of cosmology is that it makes a human feel, intellectually at least, that one is part of something immensely great and immensely significant. The highest mystical teachings end, and can only end, in proclamation of the One Reality or, more properly, the Ineffable, the One-without-a-Second. Nothing much can really be affirmed about It other than that It IS. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

However, revelation cannot end with this affirmation. For humans find themselves subject to the necessities of a physical body living in a physical environment. The higher laws governing such Earthly existence affect one vitally. If one is to live in harmony, not conflict of these laws, one ought not to remain unaware of them. If one ignores the fact, truths, laws, and principles of cosmogony, all spiritual study is incomplete. To attempt to justify this neglect with accusation that they belong to the World of illusion is silly and useless. For the accuser must still continue to live in an illusory body and use an illusory self governed by those laws. After every such attempt and for each violation of those laws—upon which the order and harmony of the Universe depend—which one’s neglect brings about, one must pay the penalty in suffering.  As knowledge of the true facts about the World in which we live become available (and I mean knowledge not only scientific knowledge, but also spiritual knowledge and physical knowledge), more and more the human race will discover that it has obligations to the cosmos, and that they cannot be ignored without retribution. “Therefore rejoice, you Heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to the Earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short,” reports Revelation 12.12. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

Never will I say, King of the Earth, that your power has ever been diminished. Today, I saw leaves flying in the wind and they told me not to doubt. Though the strong guests strip the trees of their the summertime finery and empty branches reach black against the twilight sky, my heart will not shudder, nor my spirits fail. You are the guide to whom the events of the World look and they do not stray from the path you are continually laying down: this Winter that transforms the World is a return to Winter’s past. Standing among the fallen leave, I praise you, I prey to you, I bring to mind your glory. Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it. The face of the Lord is against then that do evil, to cut ff their memory from the Earth. The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous, and His ears are open unto their cry. They cried, and the Lord heard them, and delivered them out of all their troubles. The Lord is nigh unto that that are of a broken heart, and saveth such as are a contrite spirit. Many are the misfortunes of he righteous, but the Lord delivereth one out of them all. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

Cresleigh Homes

Mills Station Residence 4 Walkthrough: https://youtu.be/Y7YTiF0JjQg

The biggest home at #MillsStation is Residence 4 at almost 2700 sq. ft. With 4 bedrooms, 3 & 1/2 bathrooms, and multiple customization options, we know that you’ll find your home here!

Check out the interactive floor plan on our website. Link in bio. https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/residence-4/

Mills Station is an intimate enclave of luxury single-family homes within the master plan community of Cresleigh Ranch. Mills Station offers a variety of stunning architectural features and generous open floor plans, including single-story and two-story home designs with up to 5 bedrooms, 3.5 baths, 2- to 3-car garages and approximately 2,000 to 2,700 square feet.

You will also love the award-winning and well-respected Elk Grove Unified School District. The established master planned community of Mills Station offers intimate neighborhood parks for all ages and a large community park with various recreation fields.

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