Every calling is great when greatly pursued. Lord thank you that your gracious hands are upon me. God has created us to be, and we will have everything that God intended for us to have. Considering the Universe as a whole both directions of time are still indistinguishable just as space knows no above and below. Yet at a specific point of the surface of the Earth we call the direction towards the center “downward” direction; in the same way, a living World will distinguish the direction towards the more improbable state from the opposite direction calling the former past, and the latter future. This seems to be the only method which will allow us to conceive the term “space lived in,” which designates a nonobjective relationship to reality that is captured only approximately by such a concept as familiarity, intimacy, and identification, and that corresponds most closely to the way in which a human may be said to have their body. Here for the first time the existentialist problem of human’s becoming oneself is given a deeper foundation. For if confidence, hope, security, and dwelling are indispensable conditions for the possibility of human life, then the concerns of the philosophy of existence can be retained and validated anew only in a philosophical anthropology.  

I believe that I have seen God’s favor in my life is because I have learned to ask for it.  God has helped me to maintain not only what my parents have built, but God has also let me go further. Just as the Universe is created and governed by one God, so both the church and state must preserve administrative unity. However, since the church is the direct channel of communication between God and his creatures, the state and its subjects must be governed in moral affairs by the church. It is interesting that some people actually believe in capital punishment, since God will see to it that the innocent will not suffer in the afterlife. There are two ways of life for the soul, one which is subject to the laws of fate and another which, although it recognizes these laws, is able to rise above them and use them as tools. The conscious subject can be aware of other things only if it is capable at one and the same time of being modified and of remaining identical with itself, or inalterable. The solution of this apparent contradiction might lie in distinguishing between consciousness, understood as thought or pure mentality, and sensibility. The act of consciousness detaches the psychic event from its matrix in reality and thinks it is possible essence or its possibility or quiddity or whatever you wish to call it.

Consciousness is thought turned back upon itself and almost creating itself, but also as freely accepting the yoke of logic. If consciousness were not of this nature, it would be reduced to a logical machine, whereas it is free reflection on itself, grasping itself by directing itself toward objects. However, although the distinctive essence of consciousness is its infinite turning back upon itself (la riflexione infinita degli atti, “the infinite reflection of acts”), this reflection is not an infinite succession in which consciousness would lose itself in an endless postponement but rather is a completed penetration of self, the fullness and richness of the activity of thought. As the Son said: I came forth from the Father and have come into the World; again I leave the World and go to the Father [Johnson 16.28], so anyone may say: Lord, I came forth from you, the All High; I go to you, the All High, and by means of you, the All High. Here is the metaphysical medium leading us back. And this is the whole of our metaphysics: it concerns emanation, exemplarity, and consummation [that is, being illumined by spiritual rays and led back to the All High]. It is the way one becomes a true metaphysician. God has promised to give us the desires of our hearts. I have dreams in my heart that are extraordinary. God’s favor will shine down upon us and make a way. God create opportunities that cannot be taken away.

Pray for great things, expect great things, work for great things, prayer is the hand that moves the World. With the recognition of exemplarism, on the other hand, the whole of creation takes on a sacramental character—that is, it becomes a material means of bringing the soul to God. Nature becomes the mirror of God, reflecting his perfections in varying degrees. Although we see only a shadowy likeness (umbra) or trace (vestigium) of the creator in inorganic substances and the lower forms of life, the soul of man is God’s image (imago) and the angel his similitude. The recognition of God in nature begins in philosophy, but it is continued and perfected in theology. If there are potential beings, then pure act must also exist; composite things imply the existence of something simple; the changeable can only coexist with the unchangeable. More can be learned by the soul reflecting upon itself. The soul, possess memory, intelligence, and will, is an image of God, not only mirroring his spiritual nature but adumbrating the Trinity itself. Memory, which creates its own thought objects, resembles the Father who beget the Son or Logos (intelligence) as an intellectual reflection of himself, and the two through their mutual love (will-the active principle of “spiration”) breathe the Holy Spirit.

One can discover a spiritual God as the ultimate object of the soul’s search for the truth and happiness, however, only a person of faith can find the Trinity manifest throughout the creation. We can return to God by living an upright life—that is, by being rightly aligned with God—and this can be accomplished only through the grace of Christ. This return is a fulfillment of one’s destiny and is called reductio and the creation is achieved through one who praises God for and through subhuman creation. The human mind is right (rectus) when it has found truth, and above all, eternal truth. One’s will is right when one loves what is really good, one’s exercise of power is right when it is a continuation of God’s ruling power. Through original sin or the Fall, humans lost this triple righteousness. The human intellect, lured by vain curiosity, has enmeshed itself in interminable doubts and futile controversies; one’s will is ruled by greed and concupiscence; in one’s exercise of power one seeks autonomy. However, although humanity lost the state of original justice, we all still hunger for it. This longing for the infinite good is revealed in our ceaseless quest for pleasures. Through faith and love (grace), humans can find their way back.

Since knowledge is involved at every stage of return, reductio is also a quest for wisdom and hence, in an extended theological sense, it is metaphysical. It is an enlightened return, because every branch of learning is a gift from above, from the “Father of lights,” and can be put into the service of theology. Although human’s return begins with the natural illumination of the divine ideas and then by a varying additional degree of supernatural illumination which culminate in the experiential cognition of God through mystical union. This experience is not the same as the clear vision of the blessed in Heaven but is learned ignorance referred to the mystical union of the soul with God in darkness, granted to saints like Francis before death. Light of the agent intellect illumines the possible intellect. At the birth, the mind is at tabula rasa. It needs sensory stimulation before it can acquire any notions about the external World of objects. Illumination explains how the mind passes judgment on sensible things in terms of their values. For when the mind judges something to be, for example, good or beautiful, there must be an implicit awareness of what beauty and goodness are in themselves; and this requires that the human mind have some knowledge of the divine ideas.

Obviously, this is not a clear or intuitive knowledge of God such as the angles or the blessed in paradise possess. Yet, just as one sees the Sunlight without looking into the Sun itself, so one can have knowledge of divine ideas. These ideas are the residual effects of the divine action—effects which remain in the soul like habitual or buried memories. Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses. The intellect can turn inward, reflecting on the soul and its tendencies, and the mind discovers God and itself as his image. Reasoning proceeds by progressively deepening insights into what the desire for truth and perfect happiness involve. The existence of God is truth implanted by nature in the human mind, and is our desire for knowledge, truth, happiness, or goodness—all of which need explication before humans realize they have God as their ultimate object. Only God is pure actuality. You are good and you are clean. None of this is your fault. This spiritual matter, found both in the angel and in the human soul, is never separable from its spiritual form; hence, such spiritual substances are not subject to change—they cannot die nor disintegrate like terrestrial bodies, nor can they be perfected by a hierarchy of forms, as can corporal matter. Try claiming God’s blessings instead of merely longing for them.

You see one ghost, you have seen then all. A Rolls Royce or Honda Civic, I am gone roll with you. Good is what has an aptness to produce pleasure in us. I usually concentrate on writing to you and loving you more every day that passes. My other lucky charm is a white gold and diamond ring that I wear on my wedding finder. That four diamond represent, Earth, air, water, fire and the white gold represents the mysterious Moon. It has led to my fascination with metaphysics, space, and the Heavens. I have worn it on my finger for the longest time, when I was feeling blue, I examine it, hoping to discover the magic it holds. Planetary demons are like humans without Earthly bodies, they have souls and aetheric or aerial bodies, according to their status; these bodies are like nature to the human spirit, and they live in Heavenly spheres; they perform the function of transmitting celestial influences; they can be both soul and spirit, act on both human’s spirit and soul. Not to make light of your romantic impressions, but a guardian angel is the same as a familiar planetary demon. There are bad demons, of low status and with aerial bodies, who trouble people’s spirits and imagination. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7

The connection between self-interest and morality in the threat of punishment—divine, natural, or civil—that coerces the individual to be moral for the sake of self-interest. However, it has been noticed that this connection breaks down wherever the expected benefit to the individual of moral conduct outweighs the likelihood of punishment and maintaining social privileges. If morality is grounded in psychology, then human nature cannot be as aggressively self-centered as the apostles of self-preservation and pursuit of pleasure maintained. Benevolence and conscience are as deeply rooted in human nature as is self-love. Moral obligation has its source in caring affections, such as love and pity, that are natural and universal as the more aggressive tendencies (“self-affections”), such as envy, greed, and the impulse of self-preservation. Moreover, there is a moral sense in humans that finds unique satisfaction in actions directed toward the common good. This moral sensibility turns us from the pursuit of pleasure toward the performance of duties toward others and explains our admiration of self-sacrifice independently of external reward or punishment. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7

The meaning of good, right, justice, and virtue—by what standards are they attributed to persons and actions; how is it psychologically possible for humans to admire and cultivate morality at the expense of self-interest; and by what rules can ethical disputes be decided in favor of one judgment against another? Considered as mediums of planetary influences, demons are exactly parallel to the Soul and Spirit of the World; the only, but crucial, difference is that the former are individual, personal, whereas the latter is general, impersonal. It would be difficult to believe simultaneously in both kinds of planetary influence; the celestial spirits cannot be both personal and impersonal. No observable facts or logical relations answer to our concepts of goodness, justice, and moral virtue. The terms do not denote qualities or relations, but convey a sentiment of approbation, so that their meaning is to be found in the feelings of the judge rather than on the object judged. We call things good for the same reasons that we call them beautiful: because we find them agreeable. An object is good if it is immediately pleasant, or if it is a useful means for attaining something else that is pleasant. Virtues are qualities that render a person agreeable or useful to oneself or to others, whether they are natural virtues such as talent, wit, and benevolence or artificial virtues like honesty and justice. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7

It might be possible that the impersonal spirit comes from the Heavenly bodies and works on human’s body and spirit, but no higher, whereas the personal spirits, the demons, who have souls, work primarily on man’s mind. People do not usually think logically about magic, especially if they believe in it. It is unsatisfactory because the demons have spiritual bodies closely akin to human spirits on which they can and so act. Indeed, passions of the human body, whether induced by these higher spirits or higher bodies, overflow into the soul in so far as the soul, by acquired or natural affects, has sunk itself in the body. However, there is this difference: that those [celestial] bodies move our souls through our bodies; the [celestial] spirits, on the other hand, both move the soul through the body, and directly move the soul, and move it through that [human] spirit which the Physicians often call the bond of body and soul. God has knowledge, not of what we are compelled to do, but what we freely choose to do, because his knowledge is not the kind of advanced knowledge that is based on casual process, but is due to the fact that, in the mind of God, we have already made our decisions. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7

All of past and future time is spread out in the specious present of the divine mind, so that what, from our limited standpoint, would be prediction of the future is, for God, simply direct awareness of contemporaneous events. Sometimes prayers are weak and disingenuous. These hymns are clearly prayers addressed to spirits of some kind; moreover, on several occasions some of them are addressed to demons. Egyptians religion place in their temples statues fashioned by magic art to attract into them demons and the souls of the dead. Orpheus, devoted man of his hymns not only to celestial [gods], but also to demons and demonic men and women, and added particular fumigations for each. However, much more foolish, wicked and abominable superstitions were introduced by many Priests, both civil and poetic. The demonic human-made gods, and the planetary guardian demons were said to be dangerous. Learned ancients, of course, did not worship idols and animals. The good pagan religion was explained as astrological magic. The status did not represent demons or gods, but humans influenced by certain planets; the animals and other objects were talismanic. The wise and learned priests were not worshiping them; they were just using them for magical operations, by which, presumably, they attacked good planetary demons. The practices led astray the ignorant into idolatry and superstition. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7

Some are strongly attracted to this kind of magic or theurgy, it is valuable, but it is clear that it is also dangerous. If remained within a learned philosophical circle, and kept secret from the ignorant, who distort it into idolatry and superstition, its dangers might be avoided. One must believe in order to understand. Faith is not incompatible with reason but, rather, prepares the soul for rational understanding. Morality is an inner quality, a property of motive or intention rather than of the consequences of one’s actions, a principle that was later stressed by the Reformation and attained its fullest expression in the ethical system. Theological virtues—faith, hope, and love—require faith and divine grace. The two highest goods, or paramount goals of life, are Worldly happiness and eternal beatitude (which has precedence); the former is achieved through natural virtue and the latter is achieved through church and its sacraments. There is a possibility of improving the human condition on Earth through knowledge of nature and intelligent action. This has helped to prepare the climate for the rebirth of natural science, whose first stirrings were felt in the thirteenth century. Informed reason and moral conscience represent an inherent tendency in the nature of humans, and conformity to this nature fulfills both the cosmic plan of the Creator and the direct commands of God revealed in the Scriptures. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7

Nonetheless, I do believe in the law of attract and that what you focus on you will attract. The Exorcist of FOX is a fictional show, but I thought a concept that they touched upon was interesting. A mother was a fading star and her career was going nowhere. So, while on set, she would let her daughter play with the witch board in hopes that a demon would possess her and this would allow her daughter to have supernatural powers that were noticeable so that the media would pay attention to her and her movie would be a success and relaunch her career. However, her daughter did become possessed, she actually attacked a very dark, evil, and powerful spirit into her being, which she passed own to one of her own children later in life.  Bad magic was to do with the devil and demons, and it destroyed God’s freedom of will. God bears the ultimate responsibility for (in other words, is the necessary and knowing cause of) human’s existence as a fallen creature, although on his own level, humans remain individually responsible for his or her personal choices and actions. God has thus created humans imperfect but perfectible has also entered into human life, in Christ, to bring about human’s redemption. The fulfillment of God’s purpose for his creatures in his Heavenly kingdom constitutes a good so great and enduring that it justifies all the pain which have been experienced in order to reach it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7

I was still terrified, though. I did not want to make a wrong move. The first evening was perfect. Dinner, dancing, strolling through Regent’s Park. I did not want to ruin it by suggesting anything improper. I wanted to—oh, God, did I want to!—but I could never have brought myself to ask. I have a small confession to make. Or maybe you have guessed it already. You know, writing this all to you has helped calm my fears somewhat. As long as I still have your letters, a lifeline running to me all the way from Scotland, I will be okay. I told you I brought the book along with me as a lucky charm, but you are my lucky charm. It has been overwhelming to go from living by myself in an isolated cottage to living on a busy block in a wee flat full of children and noise. I am quite dizzy most of the time and seem to have a constant headache from their chatter, but it has been lovely. I was thinking about God today. In the beginning God created a void by withdrawing into himself (contraction), and the void appeared as darkness because God is light. Expanding again as light into the void, God created all the substances of the World. Thus, the World we live in is ruled partly by light (God) and partly by the darkness (the kingdom of the devil). #RandolphHarris 1 of 6

Since everything is of the same nature—that is, a mixture of light and darkness—there are secret sympathies and secret antipathies everywhere, marked by signs which the adept can discover with God’s help. The practice of medicine depends entirely on understanding these forces, as do the practices of chiromancy and astrology. In the past, fear of persecution invited prudence, and some people would not even publish their brilliant books, even though their knowledge proved the superiority of the Moderns. A song works on body, mind, and on whatever intermediate faculties may be between; but it is the text alone which can carry an intellectual content and thus influence the mind. The music, abstracted from its text, can reach no higher than the spirit, i.e. sense and feeling, or at most, through the spirit, the lower parts of the soul, phantasy and imagination. Force denotes the faculty of action or the power to overcomes a resistance. In the physical sciences, it is that entity which changes, or tends to change, the state of rest or of motion of a body. We can capture planetary influences by prayers, either simple or sung with art. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6

Our spirit is consonant with the Heavenly rays which, occult or manifest, penetrate everything. We can make it still more consonant, if we vehemently direct our affections towards the star from which we wish to receive a certain benefit…above all, if we apply the song and light suitable to the astral deity and also the odour. If communication is to succeed, something which, like sense and coloring, is ordinarily counted as part of the significance of the sound. This is called for force of the sound. In a language that is to express everything we wish to convey, we need some special signs for this element. Some people sing prayers to the Sun. Plato us one of the most ancient of the Greeks and he is considered a symbol of powerful, effect-producing singer; and he was a magician. The conception of musical sound is deemed as a living, spiritual being. Some writers say what they write comes from spirits as they are able to produce work as it moves through them. The World is seen as a living being, whose soul, by means of the stars imprints forms on the sub-lunar World; these are conveyed by cosmic spirit, and, if the form has been imperfectly received owing to the inadequacy of the receiving matter, this imperfection can be corrected by attracting more spirit from the appropriate planet. Like, if you wish to attract solarian gifts, wear colours such as gold, and plant flowers and have a picture of the Sun on your mantle, and sing songs to the physical Sun. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6

While the idea of worshiping planets holds great promise, it is also at the same time fraught with grave dangers. Some planet supposedly also have demons attached to them. The Sun is better fitted for uplifting the mind than for securely balancing it. High-strung energy rather than poise seemed to be its natural effect on its votaries. It is believed that the fallen angels are responsible for our free will because they attracted Lucifer to Earth and are the architects for everything we cherish like music, poetry, movies, car, and television shows. My inmost yearning, my purest, though most secret flame, my purest, though most secret flame, my deepest faith and my highest hope—they are still the same as ever, and they all bear one name: the State. One day to build the state like a temple, rising up pure and strong, resting in its own weight, severe and sublime, but also serene like the gods and with and with bright hall glistening in the dancing brilliance of the Sun—this, at bottom, is the end and goal of my aspirations. This kind of magic has many sources. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6

The immense importance attributes to astral influences and the immense importance is attributed to astral influence on the human spirit and one’s acceptance of a cosmic or celestial spirit that acquires a soul from the various stars and spheres it passes through during descent into the Earthly body. On this Earth the vehicle, which began by being fine, shinning and star-like, becomes heavy, dark and damp, and, unless purified and rendered more aetheric, it will at death drag down the soul to hell or to some lower incarnation. This conception of the spirit (for the vehicle is historically connected with Aristotelian, medical and Stoic pneumata) would account for its being peculiarly subject to astral influences, since it derives from the stars, and for the great urgency of its purification, since it does not leave the soul at death, but can drag it down or, if light and dry enough, ascend with it. It would, moreover, have a special affinity to the spheres and their harmony, since its proper shape, before entering the physical body, is spherical, and its proper motion is circular. The astral body was for primarily a religious conception—an explanation, a method of approaching God and salvation which are non—intellectual, such as fasting, lustrations, the use of incenses, incantations, excreta. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6

To all these practices the astral body corresponds exactly; being corporeal, it can be acted on by similar physical things (vapours, scents, sounds); being the seat of imagination, of the irrational soul, it can be affected by prayers and images; since it survives death, its condition is the utmost importance. Humans are marvelous. They have been able to discover the divine nature and produce it, is admirable beyond all marvels. Our first ancestors, then, when they were in grave error concerning the gods, being incredulous and paying no attention to worship and religion, invented the art of making gods. Having done so, they added a virtue appropriate to it, taken from the World’s nature, and mixed these; since they could not make souls, they evoked the souls of demons or angels, and out them into images with holy and divine rites, so that through these souls the idols might have the power of doing good and evil…terrestrial gods and they have in them a natural divine power. And it is for the following reason that people delight them with frequent sacrifices, with hymns and praises and sweet sounds concerted like the harmony of the Heavens: that this Heavenly thing which has been attracted into the idol by repeated Heavenly rites, may bear joyously with humans and stay with them long. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6

Christmas is coming up soon and it is one of my favourite holidays. I make a marvelous Christmas pudding! It is similar to the fruitcake my mother insists on making for us each Christmas. The woman does not set foot into the kitchen all year, unless it is to make a last-minute change to the menu. However, every year, as the Christmas season approaches, she dons a lace-edged apron about as effective as a paper cake doily and waves all the staff out of the kitchen. Mother emerges hours later, hair floured, a smear of molasses on her cheek, and a shine in her eyes that could only be brought about by “sampling” the brandy, but victoriously bearing a fruitcake. It generally has the appearance, textures, and taste of a caramel sundae, and we all eat a hearty slice on Christmas Eve. The joy we had last year. Ava was eating my delightful Christmas pudding. Both Deacon and Tennessee insisted on examining the box I had sent, to make sure I was not holding out on the. Even father begged for more. When my mother asked, with the air of jealous mistress, how this pudding compared to her fruitcake, we were quick to reassure her, “Oh, the Christmas pudding is good, but it is very…you know…British.” We left her to interpret just what that meant. Some prophets receive this symbolic knowledge directly from the celestial souls. Such reception involves the prophet’s imaginative facility.  #RandolphHarris 1 of 5

The holiday was peaceful. I regret to say that last year Santa Claus did not leave a kettle for me, but I did get a splendid new tennis racket. I could not hardly wait until the snow thawed to try it out. Ava stitched a beautiful bookmark that reads, “A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.” And my father presented me with a watch, a gold number with a thick chain. He told me it was his father’s watch and his father’s before him. “Now that you are a man, Ryan,” says he, “and have some direction in your life, you will need something to help guide you. You know where to go, but now you will know when to when to go.” I have a sharp mind that can be wielded like any sharp weapon. The human soul and the rational knowledge it acquires are emanations from the Active Intelligence, which is an entity existing independently of humans, coming from the Divine Source known as God. As such, the body receives the soul and the soul receives rational knowledge. Certain combinations of formed matter induce the reception of Active Intelligence of the vegetative soul. The soul is immortal. If one was to come into being fully mature and rational but suspended in space so that he or she was totally unaware of his or her physical circumstances, one would still be certain of a single thing—his or her existence as an individual self. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5

In a higher form of prophecy that is intellectual, the prophets from the celestial intellects not only the first intelligibles, without the need of the soul’s preparatory activities, but also the demonstrative knowledge involving the internal and external senses—sensation, memory, imagination, estimation, and cogitation, or imaged thinking. Prophetic reception of knowledge thus differs from the philosophical in manner. It also differs in quantity. The prophet receives all or most of the intelligibles from the Active Intelligence all at once. This intellectual revelation is then translated into the language of imagery and divulged to the public. It includes the basic commands of the revealed law, without which man or woman as a political animal cannot survive. Hence, divine goodness must reveal the law at certain moments of discussion through the prophets. Prophecy is thus necessary in the sense that it is required for the survival of civilized society and in the sense that it is necessitated by the divine nature. This is all part of the mystic’s spiritual journey to God: Beginning with faith and motivated by desire and love, the mystic undertakes spiritual exercises that first being him or her to interrupted glimmerings of the light of Truth. These experiences become progressively more frequent and durable until the stage of arrival is reached, in which the mystic has a direct and an uninterrupted vision of God. If you heed the voice of God, all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5

God’s gifts put human’s best dreams to shame. We have forgotten the gracious hands which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessing were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. It is interesting that people take credit for all of the good things in life, but what they do something ungodly, they refuse to take responsibility. This is known as the causality of freedom. Human freedom is categorical or such that their actions are not entirely determined by factors which they have no control. Causation is constant conjunction; humans, when acting voluntarily, always act in accordance with their strongest desires and aversions; justice, morality, and the administration of the laws all require such casual determination of behavior, and so on. However, it seems some people are only helpless products of an impersonal nature who govern neither themselves nor anything else but are simply carried along to whatever destinies the circumstances of their lives inflict upon them. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5

The unconscious is the master of every fate and the captain of every soul. Typical cases are quite well understood by psychiatrists—the man who uses someone and puts his life in danger so he can get TV show and keep paying his bills, while he gets free publicity by emotional manipulating a kind soul. The compulsive gambler who always plays until he loses, the man who inwardly loves filth and so washes his hands constantly, the mother who lets her child perish of illness on the train because she “must get to her destination,” and so in. We can, if we are honest and sophisticated, see our own lives and conduct partially mirrored and perhaps begin to have some inkling of the unconscious, deeply hidden but powerful forces which almost entirely determine what we are and what we do. Father in Heaven, I know you are the God of Acceleration, and if you transformed water into wine in a split second for the wedding party centuries ago, I know you can accelerate things in my life. Thank you for taking me further faster. I know you will thrust me years ahead. I want to thank you thank you that I will accomplish my dreams sooner than I think. God is about to release everything that belongs to you. It will happen sooner than you think. It will be bigger than you imagined. He will bring out gifts and talents you did not even know you had. He will open up new doors of opportunity. God loves to do exceedingly, abundantly, above and beyond. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5

Until it pleases God to deliver us from this misery, we can find no ultimate knowledge, but we can, is we are not destructively skeptical, proceed to gain and use scientific knowledge. Time is a child at play. The debates which have surrounded the animal soul or mind have been sensitive indicators of a number of fundamental issues in modern philosophy and science: the immateriality of the human mind, the immortality of the soul, the existence of other minds, and the basis of free will and responsibility. The concept of the animal soul did not give rise to any serious problems until the seventeenth century because to attribute minds to animals would threaten traditional religious beliefs, since the psychological concept of mind was conflated with the theological concept of soul. Some people argued that it would be impious to imagine that animals have souls of the same order as humans and that humans have nothing more to hope for in the afterlife than files and ants have. Similarly, God could not allow sinless creatures to suffer; without souls, animals would not suffer, and humans would be absolved from guilty for exploiting, killing, and eating them. 

However, the most important reason critics deny souls to animals is because of their failure to indicate either by voice or signs that which could be accounted for solely by thought and not by natural impulse. Thus, the use of language became the criterion of thought—the true difference between man and beast. However, like humans, animals do have sensation, imagination, passion, and memory. And to contrive thought to animals involves granting them immortal souls. Animals are said to possess a substantial form, a sensitive soul endowed with all mental attributes except reflection, reason, and will. The purpose was to form a solution to deny animals of an immortal soul. Animals were denied self-consciousness and the power to recognize eternal truths, which were defining attributes of the souls of humans. Different degrees of mentality could be ascribed to creatures at different levels of the scale of beings. However, if all possible gradations in the scale of beings were realized, no qualitative distinctions could be upheld, and no sharp qualitative distinctions could be upheld, and no sharp demarcation would be tenable. Indeed, some extended mental continuity below animals and concerned themselves with the sensations, wishes, and loves of plants; matter alone was held to be completely insensitive.  

The issues became one of deciding which faculties belonged to man alone. The less sure humans felt about their dignity and the power of their reason, the more they accepted the continuity between man and animals; and the more seriously one took biological continuity, the less one could appeal to the clear demarcations on which a faculty of psychology depends. It followed that humans differed only in a degree from the nearest subhuman species, and a heightened interest in apes and primitive tribes reflected this implication. All that was left in doubt was the amount of difference and the means of determining it. Throughout the debate, some measure of mentality has been granted to animals, although their reasons varied. The whole controversy was reduced to absurdity in 1739, when a Jesuit, Father Bougeant, wrote a very telling criticism of the Cartesian doctrine and prevailing alternatives. He concluded that the only solution which would not threaten religion was to grant souls to animals but to consider these the souls of demons or fallen angels inhabiting animal bodies as a punishment. His position allowed him to concede reason and a true language to beasts and neatly to justify their suffering. Father Bougeant’s order rewarded his ironical wit by applying stern disciplinary measures.  

Nonetheless, it is believed that animals are more sensitive to vibrations, much like babies, and have comparatively restricted experiences because their brains are not seemingly as developed at the adult human. Some believe that animals lack language and symbols and rely more heavily on instincts. However, it is believed that animals different from humans in a degree. God promised to resurrect the human body and therefore, it is retained the humans have immortal souls. The association of pleasures and pains with rewards and punishments and the inheritance of acquired habits and structural changes provided the requisite evolutionary mechanism. Any being, create, or plant that is capable of activity, regeneration, sensation, motions, and all other properties usually is explained by appeal to a vital principle or soul. And many of you who have pets or have interacted with animals have noticed that animals are endowed with reason and conscience, and an ape might be taught to employ language, as well as bird. It thus appears that there is but one type of organization in the Universe, and that man is the most perfect example.

Also, one will notice that a lot of new medications and treatments are tested on animals to see how humans might react and valves from a pig’s heart can be used to replace valves in the human heart. Also, animals use tool, form abstract concepts, employ language, and experience beauty and reverence. I sometimes tell my cockatiel Alex that he has pretty feathers and he starts to comb them with his feet and get happy. Also, sometimes when I come home, before I get to the door, he can sense me and gets all exited and starts dancing and singing in his cage. Therefore, it is human’s possession of a highly developed moral sense, or conscience, that constitutes their most important difference from lower animals. The main difference between human and animals is the mental and bodily evolution. However, pay attention to the mental states of the average animal, they tend to be peaceful and proud, while some humans are very savage and troubled. So it is very likely that animals do have souls, and therefore, we should not say we own animals, I strongly dislike when people say, “I own that animal.” Go forth then, and share with your and have a compassionate heart for all living things. Soften harden hearts with love and restore the destitute of their dignity of Spirit.   

The World sprang into existence five minutes ago, exactly as it was then with a population that “remembered” a wholly unreal past, it is logically possible. There is a beginning or a potentiality of goodness in human nature because humans are rational beings and have a moral sense and knowledge. Stop listening to the tyranny of your individual natural life and win freedom into the spiritual life. The Savior has set us free from sin, but this is the freedom that comes from being set free from myself by the Son. We tend to rely on our own energy instead of being energized by the power that comes from identification with Jesus Christ. When the Son of God prays, He is mindful and consciously aware of only His Father. God always hears the prayers of His Son, and if the Son of God has been formed in me, the Father will always hear my prayers. However, I must see to it that the Son of God is exhibited in my human flesh. When I come into contact with the everyday occurrences of life as an ordinary human being, is the prayer of God’s eternal Son to His Father being prayed it me?  

Both learning and thinking are indispensable. Without learning there are no data for inquiry. Without thinking no principle or concept can be reached. The senses of hearing and seeing do not think and are obscured by external things. When one thing comes into contact with another, as a matter of course, one leads the other way. Senses never make a person reflect upon oneself. To the mind belongs the office of thinking. By thinking, it gives the right view of things; by neglecting to think, it fails to do this. Aesthetic perfection arises out of the limits of human understanding. People are unable to conceive, as God can, the real, supreme unity in the enormous variety of things. One must therefore content oneself with introducing an artificial unity (uniformity) into some objects in order to perceive them as wholes; and this is beauty. A beautiful object is not necessarily perfect in itself, but must be perfect in its capacity to be perceived. The perception of beauty strengthens the representative activity of the soul and makes it more perfect, thus causing a feeling of pleasure.  

The perception of beauty causes intuitive knowledge; in its highest stage it becomes the aesthetic illusion in which, for example, fable appears as reality. The conception of beauty explains why some people find pleasurable effects in tragedy. In tragedy, murder is the representation of a morally and metaphysically imperfect event, but its representation may be subjectively perfect. In the sublime, the pleasure in awareness of immensity of distance, size, or number is mixed with some pain because of one’s inability to comprehend it completely. In both cases, aesthetic pleasure is the result of the mixed feeling (vermischte Empfindung) arising in one’s soul: even if some element of the perception is unpleasant, the perception as a subjective whole is pleasurable. However, it is essential that you give people the opportunity to act on the truth of God. The responsibility must be left with the individual—you cannot act for another person. It must be on one’s own deliberate act, but the evangelic message should always lead one to action. Faith always works in a person way, because the purpose of God is to see that perfect faith is made real in His Children.  

Aesthetic feelings must be attributed to a faculty different from intellect and desire, a faculty that called the faculty of approval (Billigungsvermogen). The beauty of an object escapes us if we subject it to a process of analysis and definition; therefore, experience of the beautiful cannot be an object of knowledge. A beautiful object gives us aesthetic pleasure even if we do not possess the object; thus, the approval of beauty must be distinct from desire. Metaphysical perfection, unlike beauty, is both know by intellect and an object desire. Beauty is produced by genius. Genius does not imitate nature, but idealizes it, that is, it exhibits natural objects as God would have created them if his aim had been aesthetic and not metaphysical perfection. Genius is independent of rules because it establishes its own rules. A genius’ procedure is instinctive. Both the existence of God and the immortality of the soul can be demonstrated. The soul is a simple substance and therefore indestructible. The soul might nevertheless lose its consciousness, but the divine wisdom and goodness of God will not allow this to happen. 

The soul is a highly personal endeavor that must always remain open and be capable of organic growth in the light of new evidence. It provides a framework for entering into genuine dialogue with the contemporary situation and is essentially an effort of reason reflecting on their data of experience. The soul is a strong affirmative force of the World and has the power to fix the limits of the activity of the mind. Human reason without the assistance of revelation necessarily falls into error. The reality of the World transcends our consciousness of it. Human behavior is a mosaic of reflexes with its emphasis on the involvement of the organism as a whole in all its separate functions. The body is not just an object among objects; nor is it just a contingent fact that our perceptual experience is specially conditioned by what occurs in one particular sector of the physical World. Instead, it is precisely because consciousness has a locus within the World that out knowledge of that World has the perspectivistic and uncompletable character of the soul. The functioning of the human body itself, at least at its higher levels, can be understood only if we attribute to it the intentional structures that the soul would reserve for pure consciousness. We do indeed create our moral being.  

Nature, like mind, always does whatever it does for the sake of something, which something is its end. Never take a description of the origin of an idea for a definition, or an account of the mental and physical conditions through which we become conscious of a proposition for a proof of it. A proposition may be thought, and again it may be true; never confuse these two things. We must remind ourselves, it seems, that a proposition no more ceases to be true when I cease to think of it than the Sun ceases to exist when I shut my eyes. Self-observation (or introspection) is the way to establish the truth by reducing it to the subjective element of an intimate pathway into one’s own mind, body, and spirit. It allows us to experience new levels of self-awareness, and by so doing to live more conscious, harmonious lives. Because of our conditioning and education most of us live our lives as unconscious automatons. Oblivious to our own real potential, our essence, we are totally identified with our personality, our self-image, and with whatever thoughts, feelings, images, daydreams, or sensations capture our attention at the moment. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7

Many believe that we are masters of ourselves, seldom noticing our own inner fragmentation and our lack of will and choice as a result of this fragmentation. We lose ourselves at every moment in one or another aspect of our lives, out of touch with the remarkable wholeness that is our birthright. Psychology will become the foundation of philosophy that allows us to heal ourselves and see who we truly are. Logic, ethics, metaphysics, philosophy of law, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of education are all little more than psychology or applied psychology. With all of the concepts of the philosophical disciplines, only what is formed in the human soul according to these laws are understood with certainty and clarity, then a certain and clear knowledge of those disciplines is likewise achieved in seeking the transcendental ground of truth—the objective validity of human knowledge. This marks both a return to and a great improvement of the soul. The soul is a whole of which spirit and mind are attributes and emerge only gradually. And there are rational and irrational parts of the soul. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7

Reason, spirit, and desire represent different levels of being alive. The rational soul is some kind of active agency which inhibits the body for a brief period. The rational soul inhabits the head because the head is round (the most perfect shape and, hence, an appropriate place for the seat of reason) and the part of the body nearest the Heavens. As like can be known only by like, the soul, in its rational aspect, must also be eternal. The rational soul makes contact with the brain, which are conceived of as a kind of marrow encased in the skull. The irrational soul makes contact with the marrow of the spinal cord in its body sheath. The better part of the irrational soul, spirit, inhabits the heart and functions in such manifestations of life as energy, courage, and ambition; the worse part, desire, functions below the diaphragm, in appetite, nutrition, and reproduction. The rational and irrational parts affect each other through the liver, which acts as a sort of mirror of thought. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7

In sleep the soul is shut up, and its motion subsides. A few agitations remain, however, and produce dreams. Usually dreams are the expressions of desires which are suppressed. The good person controls one’s desires sensibly and so is not unduly disturbed by them in sleep. In sleep the rational soul, if not troubled by irrational desires, can attain truths not otherwise revealed. The human body receives an impression from without and responds with an inner motion. Some parts of the body—for instance, the hair and the nails—are subject to shock but do not respond with inner movements. Sense organs, however, are good conductors of motion. Thus, hearing, for instance, is the end product of a kind of shock. By means of air in the cavities of the body a blow is transmitted through the ears to the blood and brain and then to the soul. Knowledge does not consist just in sensation but in the activity of the soul in relation to what is transmitted. The transmission is complicated by the intervention of memory, imagination, feeling, and association, all of which act as intermediaries between reason and sensation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7

There is a very intimate connection between the soul and body which is a particular case of the more general relationship between for and matter. The soul is the first actuality of a natural body furnished with organs. If the eye were an animal, eyesight would be its soul, this being the form or capacity of the eye. To speak of soul is to speak of a capacity or propensity to function in a certain way which depends on a certain bodily structure, or it is to speak of the actual exercise of such a capacity or propensity, which is the second kind of actuality. Thus, anger, for instance, can be the appetite of returning pain for pain or the boiling of the blood around the heart, depending on whether the dialectician or the physical scientist is considering it; there is always a biological and a psychological account to be given. Body and soul are a particular case of the more general correlatives, form and matter. When speaking of theoretical reason rather than practical reason, the distinction between matter and form is again exemplified in that reason is both passive and active. However, the active reason comes from without and is divine. It is like the helmsman in a ship. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7

The heart is the seat of life, sensation, and motion. In the transmission of sensation to the heart and in the vitality which flows from the heart, the connatural spirits play an important role. They are thought of as a kind of inner air quite distinct from the outer air which we breathe. Closely associated with the blood, they act as a universal internal medium for the transmission of sensation. Once love has been acknowledged as our Source of all supply—our Being, this is the real secret of prosperity. Love always returns in the form we can use best—its value always being greater than the value we ascribed to the gift we gave. And it is easy to love the loveable. Love, once accepted in whatever form, converts itself into the help one really needs—finds its way into one’s heart and begins to open what was hardened until then, and slowly the object of affection discovers one own Being as the Source. Love gives unto itself and is extended and increases. Besides the specific senses there is sensus communis, which is not a sixth sense but a generic power of sensation as such provides unity for the sensitive soul in its particular manifestations. Love is thus destined as joy accompanied by the idea of an external cause.  #RandolphHarris 6 of 7

There is beauty here, indeed. If we allow it to be so, our experience of life on Earth can be Heaven on Earth. A reviving personality must be nourished with another kind of new communication—communication with people. Besides opening yourself to the riches of art and knowledge, you must also open yourself to the riches of new friendships, particularly to those which can reinforce your newly expanded interest. What God places on us allows us to transform something negative into something excellent. No power on Earth or in Hell can conquer the Spirit of God living within the human spirit; it creates an inner invincibility. You will see that your burden is then lightened by the sense of companionship. God is the place of the World and the whole system of thinking. Everything is a mode or modification of God. Thus, nothing can be adequately explained unless its occurrence can be deduced from principles applying to the system as a whole. Human beings, as part of nature, must exhibit the general characteristics of modifications of God or nature. They must be determined within a system; they must have a mental and physical aspect’ and they must exhibit conatus, or the striving to persist within their own being. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7